Photo by Bill Slattery Jr. via Flickr
Guy Ciarrocchi: Coach Guy’s tipping point
As readers, listeners and friends know, I’ve been coaching softball for 26 seasons. My family, faith, and conservative politics are the only things that I’ve been involved in longer.
While coaching, I have purposefully kept a wall between my softball world and my political world. I even ignored a phone call from soon-to-be Speaker Kevin McCarthy while coaching at the Pennsylvania Little League Softball Championships.
I’m duty-bound to crack the wall.
Our local high school softball team has advanced to the state tournament — the “sweet 16.” I coached many of those players in Little League and beyond. I still attend their games.
Recently, I saw the videos and read the story about Minnesota’s state high school softball championship. The “winning team” won the championship by having their pitcher throw back to back shut-outs.
Their pitcher is a biological male.
I can be silent no more.
I do not live in Minnesota. I do not know any of the players. Yet I know that what happened was wrong. It must not be allowed to happen, especially not in competitive softball or any sport with prizes, titles and scholarships on the line.
Whatever one thinks about the morality or the politics of transgender issues, we should all agree that when it comes to competitive sports, allowing a biological male to pitch — from 43 feet away — to high school girls is wrong. It’s a safety issue.
And, yes, it’s a fairness issue.
Let me tell you about the girls I’ve coached. They put in thousands of hours of practices, drills, conditioning and lessons—and play hundreds of games. They play when it’s 101 degrees and the infield is like playing at the beach. They play after rain, when the batter’s box and pitcher’s mound are like swamps in Louisiana. They play in the early spring and late fall when the wind chill is in the 30’s. I’ve been at games when it was snowing.
They play with bruises, blisters, and soreness. The pitchers throw until their arms almost fall off.
They play for their coaches and trainers. They play for their teammates and parents. They play for themselves.
They deserve better.
As a nation, we watched men playing college and high school volleyball spiking the balls into the faces of girl opponents. We watched track and field championships turn into dark comedy and tragedy as males win medals, sometimes beating female opponents by outlandish differentials.
We watched the Olympics allow a man to literally beat up female boxers — and they rewarded the male athlete with a gold medal.
I can be silent no more. This is wrong and it must be stopped.
Sporting events are becoming mockeries of competition. Someone is bound to get hurt. Someone might get killed.
Part of the reason I chose to coach softball was that 26 years ago, girls’ sports had fewer coaches, crappy equipment, and less support. Through a change in culture and Title IX, eventually that changed over time.
Until now.
Now, that hard work of advocates, parents, coaches, and female athletes is being yet again pushed aside and devalued. Adults with an upside-down sense of morality and “fairness” have not only tolerated this injustice, but fight to make it so. Women’s sports, they allege, must allow men identifying as women to participate.
These adult administrators, commissioners, and league officials are ruining careers and crushing dreams to advance an ideology — or out of fear of expressing common sense. Then, they often allow these men to use the locker rooms and shower next to our daughters.
Enough.
I don’t know the Minnesota high school softball pitcher who is a biological man that alleges he identifies as a woman. Perhaps his feelings are genuine. Perhaps he’s wrestling with identity issues. Perhaps he has other emotional issues. Perhaps he has self-esteem issues. Perhaps he’s “scamming the system” to win prizes.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that no matter what his story is, no matter what his reality is, he should not have been allowed to pitch in the high school state softball championship.
Maybe he needs counseling. Maybe he needs tough love. Maybe he needs support — be it for a battle he’s fighting or because he’s genuinely confused. Maybe he needs love.
We can empathize with the student and with his parents. We can respect his feelings as genuine. We can send him our prayers. Perhaps we should do all those things.
What we should not do is give him a gold medal and his team a championship trophy.
His feelings do not outweigh biology, common sense, fairness, and safety.
What happened in Minnesota was my tipping point — perhaps because it was softball. Even more than the cruelty of boxing and the embarrassment of track and field, this compelled me to break down my wall.
This madness in girls sports must stop.
Guy Ciarrocchi coaches softball at the Little League and travel levels, as he has since 2000. He writes for Broad + Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. Follow Guy on X/Twitter at @PaSuburbsGuy.
Guy, it is super simple: “Treat people the way you want to be treated” vs “Treat people how others demand you treat them, regardless of irrationality or costs.”
Why has it taken you this long to stand up for common sense? I have a deep loathing for the costal elite types that wrapped themselves up with political correct nonsense, in their 60s +, who looked down on the stupid “deplorables in fly-over country.”
At one point your local library created the children’s section. Then a bunch of disgusting twisted men hijacked that children’s section to spout their political garbage and target little children. They could go anywhere else in the libraries but they insisted on occupying the children’s’ section. Hey, at least you are starting to wake up… but it is probably too late for you to get into an actual physical fight about any of this stuff. If you own a gun, cool, but both sides of the fanatics want to take those away so they can really be in control. Recently those that voted in Biden Administration, they let in waves of actual invaders.
So next time you are near your local police station at dusk let me know how many devout Muslims are on the property saying Maghrib. Last night I saw six (6) in my “mainline” town in DelCo. I’ll bet there are a few at yours, too. Sharia law seems more attractive to me though than this alternative godless broad spectrum of non-heteronormative garbage. Sharia law… also a form of tyranny… but at least they agree on basic stuff like male vs female.
I couldn’t agree more, Guy. My one and only daughter competed in track and field all through junior high and high school (’14 – ’19) and I attended just about every meet. And there is no sport that highlights more the undeniable physical differences between boys and girls. All one needs to do is view the “box score” results of ANY high school track meet; boys run faster than girls, boys jump higher than girls, and boys throw farther than girls.
I will always stand for saving girls sports!
The radicals behind the insane and cruel position of encouraging, enabling, and forcing males into female places, care nothing about “the sport”. My sense is it’s part of a strategic plan to publicly demonstrate their organizational power. By convincing their supporters to demand the right, while overwhelming the majority by stuffing a extreme position down their throats; it provides them with legitimacy and ammunition to stamp out resistance in other areas.
Guy, Well said. My granddaughter played HS and club Vball. There is a height difference in where the net is set for boys v. girls Vball. Wonder why that is? Thank you for taking on this issue. More need to speak out, over and over again. We need to aggressively challenge all rule-making bodies to protect girls’ sports and private places. There is no compromise. We also need to boycott events where boys are allowed to participate.
This is so obviously hysteria invented by the media to distract the masses so they don’t pay attention to real issues. With continuing inflation, chaos in LA, an absurdly high national debt, and ruling class elites (oligarchs) becoming ever more powerful, the radical far-right thinks what we all need is to be WEIRDLY OBSESSED with what genitals athletes have. In Utah, Banana Republicans thought their most important contribution to the people of their state would be to make legislation that affects the ONE OUT OF 85,000 athletes who is actually transgender. In other states that passed similar legislation, the legislators COULDN’T CITE A SINGLE INSTANCE OF A TRANSGENDER ATHLETE in their state! In SC, Rep. Ashley Trantham said she knew of NO transgender athletes competing in the state but was still proposing a ban. In TN, House Speaker Cameron Sexton conceded there may not actually be transgender students participating in middle and high school sports. In places like Mississippi and Montana, they could only point to a pair of runners in Connecticut. PATHETIC! When will the media report on REAL ISSUES!?