A girls basketball team from a Muslim high school in California may have canceled a game after the school’s board was made aware that the opposing team had a trans-identified male player.
On Thursday, January 4, Averroes High School was set to compete against San Francisco Waldorf in a girls varsity basketball event, but the event was abruptly canceled. While the school has not provided comment on the reason why the sudden forfeiture took place, the decision was reportedly the result of the institution being made aware that a male player was participating on the Waldorf girls’ team.
Averroes is an Islamic school in the Bay Area, and sources close to the matter speculate that the hesitancy to compete against Waldorf was due to religious objections regarding the Muslim girls risking physical contact with the male player.
While the name of the male student will not be released at the request of sources, Reduxx has reviewed past game footage featuring the boy on the Waldorf team. He is seen towering above his female counterparts, boasting an obvious height and limb length advantage. According to team rosters, the male student has also retained his “masculine” name.
Speaking to Reduxx, Julie Lane of Women Are Real, an independent, California-based women’s advocacy group, revealed that information on the Waldorf player was first brought to their attention by a concerned father in November of 2023. His daughter had played a game against Waldorf, and had been left “traumatized” by the experience. Following the tip, Lane scouted out a Waldorf event to see for herself.
“The boy had an obvious advantage,” she says. “[The girls] didn’t necessarily run their offense through him, probably because they didn’t want to be targeted. But he got most rebounds and was able to jump much higher than the girls.”
She continued by noting that the male player “was not particularly skilled,” but that he had a longer range of arm reach and could jump significantly higher.
“They were at a complete disadvantage,” Lane says. “I caught one scramble for the ball with another player and my heart stopped. She was more than a foot shorter than him and could have been seriously injured.”
According to the statistics tracked by MaxPreps, the Waldorf Wolverines Girls Varsity team has won all but one game it has participated in over the past year.
Determined to raise awareness of the Waldorf player, the team at Women Are Real looked into the school’s upcoming games. Learning about their scheduled appearance against Averroes, a religious school focused on Muslim youth, the group then contacted the school’s board to alert them to the presence of a male on the opposing team.
“I was hopeful and thought there was no way this board would let their female athletes participate with a boy,” Lane said, noting that she never received a response from Averroes.
On January 4, Lane and some members from the Women Are Real team arranged to attend the match between the Waldorf and Averroes teams. But upon arriving, Lane was unable to locate the girls’ event. Confused, Lane approached some parents for answers, and was directed to speak to a female Waldorf student who had been sitting on the bleachers watching the boys’ game.
“I approached her and asked if her team was playing and if she was on the girls team, and she said she was on the team and they were not playing. I asked what happened, and she said ‘oh the other team didn’t have enough players.'”
But Averroes has avoided providing a concrete, official answer about their motivation for abruptly canceling the match, and did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Jean Berns, another representative with Women Are Real, believes the confusion and silence surrounding the cancelation suggests Waldorf’s male player was the cause.
“As the school hasn’t made an official statement we can’t say for sure why the game was canceled. However, none of the multiple reasons we have heard from various sources make sense. We heard from the school director that there were not enough athletes to field a team, yet they played a game two days later with more than enough players. We heard from others that the coach was ill, yet he was able to coach the boys team the same evening of the cancelation. All this mystery and secrecy leads me to believe that the true reason for the cancelation most likely involves the male athlete,” she said, adding that she was “relieved” when she learned the game had been called off.
“On one hand, I feel strongly that no girl’s safety should ever be compromised and that no girl should be competing against a boy unawares. On the other hand, I’m saddened that the result is girls quietly self-selecting out of sports,” she continued.
“Will girls’ sport die a silent death here in California? Seeing that the boys game went on made me angry. Nothing has happened to them. What message are we sending these young girls?”
Speaking with Reduxx, Marshi Smith of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports speculates that the confusion surrounding Averroes’ forfeiture may be the result of concerns about potential penalization from the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF).
“The CIF falsely claims that boys who say their ‘gender identity’ is ‘female’ have legal entitlements to girls’ opportunities and access to girls’ teams, dorms, locker rooms, scholarships, titles and records,” she explains. “Families and schools like Averroes are wrongly told they’ll be in violation of federal law if they don’t force their daughters to compete against or with males. Tragically, feeling powerless, teams will quietly forfeit more and more.”
But Smith says CIF’s threats are “false and unethical,” and calls on schools and families to push back against gender ideology-based policies.
“Families must boldly oppose this injustice against women and girls now. There are millions of Americans ready to champion them.”
UPDATE: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that SF Waldorf had won “every single” game it had competed in over the past year. This has been updated to reflect a single loss.
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