By Suzanne Bowdey

People on the fence of one of America’s burning issues — girls’ sports — will have a tough time staying there after this week. For the first time in history, a biological boy didn’t just steal a woman’s title or spot on the team, he ripped a four-year Division I scholarship out of a deserving woman’s hands, pouring gasoline on one of the few debates in this country that’s uniting all parents.

Tate Drageset’s story is no ordinary one. Son of a trans activist, who’s been all too eager to exploit her son’s journey for the last decade, Tate still managed to hide his gender from coaches, parents, and other teammates. “Drageset has already been part of several girls’ volleyball teams that made it to state championships, and this year, he was named the MVP at the Girls Junior National Championships. Drageset also won the California Interscholastic Federation’s Division 5 Player of the 2022-23 Year,” Breitbart reported.

And while Tate made a name for himself in girls’ sports, most people had no clue that he was “a male playing as a transgender girl.” Referred to as “T” in most of Stacey Drageset’s media interviews, the towering teenager has intimidated opposing players — “taking opportunities from natural born girls for years.”

But this latest injustice, financially profiting from his fantasy — and robbing a legitimate female athlete to do it — is a bridge too far. In giving Drageset one of the school’s 12 Division I scholarships, the University of Washington has broken new and horrifying ground in the battle for Title IX and women’s rights.

The face of the girls’ sports movement, All-American swimmer Riley Gaines, blasted the college for even considering it. This is a “soon-to-be Big 10 school,” she pointed out, and they’re letting a 17-year-old boy “[steal] the already few opportunities for women at the collegiate level. How can he be proud?” she demanded to know. “UW Volleyball should rescind the scholarship if they really care about women. He can play with the men.”

And where is the NCAA in all of this? The collegiate body, who just hired new president Charlie Baker, has been MIA in the fight to protect women, opting instead to encourage front-liners like Gaines privately. “Keep up the pressure,” NCAA former president Mark Emmert told her, refusing to lift a finger himself. Now, as every nightmare conservatives predicted comes to pass, the cowardly body is abandoning its girls, leaving its best athletes twisting in an unforgiving wind.

Macy Petty, former Family Research Council intern and NCAA volleyball player, had just finished writing an op-ed on Fox News about the indifference of the association when the news broke. “In women’s volleyball,” she points out, “the nets are over seven inches lower than in men’s volleyball.” Ironically, she wasn’t talking about Drageset, but another male player, who’d just severely injured a girl in California during a game — ending her season and — potentially — career. “Reportedly, this male athlete was taller and could jump higher than his female opponents, and he was playing on a net over seven inches shorter,” Petty wrote.

“It’s a tragic illustration,” she insisted, of why the adults in the room need to act. “Three years ago,” Macy went on, “as a freshman NCAA volleyball player, I began testifying before state legislatures about my experience playing against a trans-identifying male athlete in what was supposed to be a female-only club league in high school. Some legislators dismissed the save women’s sports bill[s] under the claim that it was not a worthy problem.”

Sadly, she said, so has the collegiate system. “The NCAA won’t fight for us.” Surely now, with men looting college scholarships, international competitions being hijacked by teenage boys, and girls being displaced from their rightful spots, someone somewhere will engage.

Of course, we already know that person won’t be President Joe Biden. The most radical trans ideologue America has ever seen, his White House is already on a crusade to make Tate’s story the norm. For months, he’s been trying to unilaterally change the Department of Education’s Title IX rules to give away girls’ sports to boys — a mission he’s delayed because of unprecedented pushback. More than a quarter million comments were filed by the public, a record, many officials believe.

Resurrecting that crusade now, as parents’ frustrations boil over these latest injustices, will be difficult for anyone — let alone a president as unpopular as this one.

Adding to the insanity, a story in Canada shows everyone where this could lead, now that a 50-year-old man is swimming against teenage girls and sharing their locker room. In the Trojan Cup this month, Melody Wiseheart, placed second in the meet, competing with Swimming Canada’s blessing. But then, if you can identify as a girl, why not a teenager? There are no limits here.

“It’s all so confusing for the kids,” one parent told the Toronto Sun. “No one is comfortable. Everybody is accepting of all people, but them swimming against our kids and being in the locker room with them is not appropriate.”

Here in America, the tight-knit community of Irish dance is roiling over a boy who competed as a girl in the Dallas Oireachtas in early December and won — displacing a girl for worlds, despite already qualifying for the international competition as a boy. The future of the sport now hinges on a governing body who slipped an “inclusivity” statement past parents, schools, coaches, and others in July and agreed to change the rules as recently as October 30 — without so much as a public debate.

“At the Southern Region Qualifying Oireachtas, dancers may compete in the competition appropriate for the gender they identify as in their everyday life, without regard for their gender at birth,” the motion read. “[It] passed by secret ballot,” Southern Regional Director PJ McCafferty admitted. Now, parents are frantically scrambling to file complaints and line up expert witnesses to stop the rule before the sports’ most prestigious tournament next year. A petition is already circulating, with help from Gaines, to save girls’ Irish dance.

For now, stories like Tate’s are a red alarm that the erasure of women is near. “The evil of this ideology is obvious,” FRC’s Meg Kilgannon lamented. “It is built on the lie that a person could be born in the wrong body. So when a delusional or deluded family lies about their son so totally that he can compete for and receive money meant for women scholar athletes, we shouldn’t be surprised. This is the level of disrespect being shown for women, for men, for sport, and certainly for God our Creator.”

“And as angry as I am at this situation and state of society and the injustice faced by the real women athletes,” she said, “the injustice of allowing this kind of destructive and perverse thinking to become institutionalized in medicine, therapy, education, and sports makes victims of its adherents who are telling a lie they believe but will never, ever be true.”

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.