NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A trans athlete made a girls’ high school volleyball team in Illinois, igniting chaotic debate among many of the town’s parents.
Conant High School in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, saw a parade of angry parents speak out at its school district’s board meeting Wednesday night amid the local controversy involving the biological male making the team.
An anonymous parent told Fox News Digital that her daughter did not make the cut for the team while the male student did make it, prompting her daughter to break into tears after her first day of school Monday. The mother said the trans athlete quit the team the very next day amid the controversy.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
The anonymous parent and another parent, in a Facebook post, claimed that the school’s girls’ volleyball coach quit her position amid the situation and is now only coaching boys’ volleyball at the school.
Many speakers at the District 211 board meeting on Wednesday spoke in opposition to trans inclusion in girls’ sports, but others, in the left-leaning community, spoke in defense of it.
Karen Powers, a mother of a Conant graduate, yelled loudly at the board members in outrage at girls having to compete against a biological male. Powers also referenced the apparent resignation of the coach from the girls’ team.
“A longtime beloved coach of the girls’ volleyball team quit, and if she is here or watching, I have the utmost respect for you standing firm on your morals and values,” Powers said, later raising her voice to yell, “It’s not a girl’s responsibility to feel uncomfortable or unsafe for the sake of a boy pretending to be a girl! He should be participating in sports designated for boys because he will always be one! When do the girls in D 2-11 get to feel safe, recognized and protected!?”
Fellow Illinois mother Angela Christman, a longtime teacher, delivered a tempered lecture in opposition to males in girls’ sports.
“The current policy is trampling on the rights every other girl and her rights to privacy and protected spaces,” Christman said. “My daughter will not hide in spaces where she was told she would be protected. And she will not be counseled into feeling comfortable taking her clothes off in front of a 6-foot-4 biological male, and frankly it’s criminal that that’s the solution that you offer.”
Another mother, Vickie Wilson, lambasted the district’s current policy as “egregiously unfair.”
“While many of you may want to prioritize certain kids over others, two things must be said. One, that’s clearly wrong and egregiously unfair and creates new issues with the kids you’ve decided are less important. Second, you aren’t even helping the kids you’re thinking you’re prioritizing,” Wilson said.
“Because if you actually cared about these kids, you wouldn’t promote a dangerous ideology that does not get to the root of their problems. It pushes experimental and dangerous interventions that enables greedy people to turn them into lifelong lucrative patients, very often leading to serious regret and higher suicidality.”
ILLINOIS TRANS ATHLETE CONFLICT GROWS AFTER TENSE TRACK MEET AS STATE REPUBLICANS CALL FOR TRUMP’S HELP
Many of the parents who spoke in opposition to allowing males on girls’ sports teams referenced the story of former high school girls’ volleyball player Payton McNabb, who suffered permanent brain damage when she was spiked in the face with a volleyball by a trans athlete during a game in 2022.
One speaker there who expressed support for trans athletes in girls’ sports suggested that McNabb’s injury shouldn’t be used to justify banning males from girls’ volleyball, and that any female athlete who injures an opponent should also be banned in that case.
“Since 2012, more than 214,000 high school and college women’s volleyball players have been injured. Almost every one of those injuries involved cisgender peers. So why is no one calling for the cisgender athletes involved in those injuries to be banned from sports?” asked Justin O’Rourke. Fox News Digital can not independently verify O’Rourke’s injury statistic.
District 211 issued a statement to Fox News Digital later Thursday.
“Information regarding individual students and coaches is confidential. District 211 supports students’ access to District athletic opportunities consistent with Board policy,” the statement read.
Conant High School has significant history on the issue of trans athletes in girls’ sports, after a 2015 incident and court battle over a transgender student seeking locker room access.
Tracey Salvatore, of Schaumburg, speaks on Dec. 2, 2015, during a meeting at Conant High School to consider a settlement in the case of a transgender student seeking locker room access. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/TNS)
The district reached a settlement with former President Barack Obama’s Department of Education that ultimately allowed the trans student access to the girls’ locker room. The district faced first-of-its-kind sanctions from the Obama administration for initially barring the trans student from the girls’ locker room.
Tension within the state over the issue has grown across multiple communities over the last year.
In May, a youth track meet became the focus of national controversy after a biological male competed in the seventh-grade competition against girls at the Naper Prairie Conference meet. The incident prompted a series of heated debates, which went viral on social media, at the Naperville 203 Community School District board meeting that month.
Naperville’s school board saw more scrutiny this week as students returned to class when board members followed Title IX.
Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., sent multiple letters to President Donald Trump’s administration asking for federal intervention to counter the issue.
Currently, there is one federal Title IX probe in Illinois regarding transgenders impeding on female spaces, but it is only against one school.
Deerfield Public Schools District 109 is facing a probe by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights after middle school girls were allegedly forced by school administrators to change in front of a trans student in the girls’ locker room.
Illinois mother Nicole Georgas brought light to the situation in March after filing a complaint to the Justice Department and then delivering a school board meeting speech that went viral on social media.
Now, Georgas is looking for more action to be taken as the issue continues to plague girls’ sports in Illinois and hopes the recent Naperville incident will be a turning point. She is pleading for the president’s administration to bring more pressure to Illinois on the issue.
“The tides are going to turn after this. We as the parents have had enough,” Georgas previously told Fox News Digital. “We are at the forefront, we are in the crosshairs and we need help. We need help right now. In our state nothing has changed from March, and it’s getting worse!
“They’re using these kids to just almost test President Trump because they know they’re not doing anything. They’ve forgotten about Illinois. They’ve forgotten about us.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) announced in April it will not comply with Trump’s executive order to keep trans athletes out of girls’ and women’s sports. Transgender athletes have been permitted to compete in girls’ sports in Illinois since 2011.
Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Jackson Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital. He previously worked for ESPN and Business Insider. Jackson has covered the Super Bowl and NBA Finals, and has interviewed iconic figures Usain Bolt, Rob Gronkowski, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman, Mike Trout, David Ortiz and Roger Clemens.
