Track and Field COACH Fired After Protecting Women’s Sports

Women's Sports Daily Report June 19,2024

A high school near Portland, Oregon fired its head track and field coach for suggesting that the state should change its laws for high school athletes to compete against their own biological sex, not their chosen one.

John Parks, head track and field coach at Lake Oswego High School, sent letters to the executive director of the Oregon Student Activities Association and a state senator before and after the state championships in May. In them, he lamented the existing Oregon law (and female-sports-destroying measure) under which it is statutorily cemented that trans-identifying biological males have the right to compete in female sports.

For example, he proposed that Oregon follow the lead of other sports organizations, like the International Olympic Committee, by implementing hormone testing on trans-identifying athletes who participate in student sports. Parks further suggested an “open division” to be created, which would allow participation that included all without discrimination.

Parks said his suggestion — an open division not only so-named as not to directly compete or discriminate, but as a defined opportunity to compete for transgenders — should increase their numbers and differ among themselves.

Parks said advocacy organizations may need to take up the legal battle and that he was troubled about the health of trans-identifying athletes, adding that he saw boos being thrown at a trans-identifying athlete when an athlete identifying as a female triumphed in a girls state race.

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Lake Oswego School District communications director confirmed that Parks is no longer employed by the district, but did not reveal why, citing a policy of not commenting on personnel issues.

 

Trangender athletes dominating women’s sports is becoming increasingly more common. 

Parks is refuting the decision, though. “I am fighting now because I have been wronged. I am going to fight for little girls, I am going to fight for women, I am going to fight for female sports, and everything should be fair for everyone. It is about fairness in sports, not politics,” he said.

Parks said unfair competition from males at championship events adversely impacts scholarships and other opportunities for women.

Women’s sports activist and former college swimmer Riley Gaines made it public on her social media by saying, “He’s taken his team to the state championship 3 years in a row. The problem is his stance was way too reasonable, so they ousted him.”

Female athletes at high schools and colleges in numerous states have complained that it has cost them awards and scholarships by allowing biological males, transgender females, to compete.

There have also been injuries, like the North Carolina high school volleyball player who last year sustained serious head and neck injuries after being hit by a volleyball spiked by a trans-identifying male player.