After a hard-fought tie-breaking fastpitch game Sunday morning, the PNW Shamrocks’ winning pitcher worked her way over to the losing team, waiting quietly to catch the eye of the Cowlitz Elite’s pitcher, then reached out her hand to thank her for a good game.
I watched in awe, thinking how well her parents had trained this young woman in good sportsmanship, a microcosm of the teamwork and sportsmanship on display at the Olympics in Paris.
It all starts when they’re young, training competitors to work hard but respect their rivals on the other team.
My husband and I spent three days over the weekend cheering on the Cowlitz Elite team at the North American Fastpitch Association’s Northwest 5GG Summer Nationals in Newberg, Oregon. I’m in awe of the dedication it takes for parents of kids participating in sports, giving up every weekend to cheer on their offspring and teach them about good sportsmanship. (By the way, Cowlitz Elite’s 12-and-under team placed fifth among 26 teams, and our granddaughter was one of 10 players to receive All World recognition.)
Of course, like everyone else on social media, I saw memes and footage of Thursday’s boxing match between Italian Angela Carini, a biological female, and Algeria’s Imane Khelif, who was born with female body parts but has both male and female chromosomes because of Swyer syndrome. Carini halted the match after 46 seconds, falling to her knees, crying, “This is unjust.”
People fed up with the theft of women’s sports titles by transexuals — biological males identifying as females — posted, reposted, ranted and raved about a man beating up a woman in a boxing match, although it turned out Swyer syndrome is indeed a rare genetic condition where women have normal female reproductive organs but both X and Y chromosomes.
After Khelif beat Carini, President Donald Trump, author J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame and Tesla’s Elon Musk all weighed in with comments about the injustice of transexual but biological males beating up biological females. It upset me, too, until I learned more about the details of the genetic disorder and the fact that Khelif is indeed a female albeit with testosterone.
“I send a message to all the people of the world to uphold the Olympic principles and the Olympic Charter, to refrain from bullying all athletes, because this has effects, massive effects,” Khelif was quoted as saying during an interview in Arabic. “It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”
The Russian-led International Boxing Association permanently banned by the Olympics since 2019 for alleged corruption and ethics violations, claims both Khelif and Lin Yu-ting failed tests for women’s competition in world championships a year ago. The International Olympic Committee has backed both competitors.
I appreciated the Facebook posts by people apologizing for jumping to conclusions before knowing all the facts — as I had — but so many continue reposting the memes while voicing disgust.
Women worked too hard to earn a place in the world of sports to forfeit their titles to biological males, and it’s truly a women’s rights issue. It’s unlikely a biological female identifying as a male could compete against men and win their titles because, let’s face it, men are stronger than women. God made them that way.
I wonder why the National Organization for Women is so unwilling to fight for the rights of female competitors. Instead, the liberal organization issues statements in support of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people who want to participate in athletic programs, saying those of us who want to keep women’s sports for biological females engage in “the politics of cruelty, exclusion and discrimination.”
Baloney.
A shining moment in sports occurred in early December 2012 when Spanish long-distance runner Iván Fernández Anaya noticed his Kenyan cross-country rival just ahead of him stopped short of the finish line, thinking he was finished.
Instead of racing past to claim the win, Fernández Anaya caught up with Abel Mutai and gestured that his competitor needed to cross the finish line first and pushed him forward, later describing his rival as “the rightful winner.” His coach Martín Fiz commended his gesture of honesty but said he “wasted an occasion.”
When a journalist asked why he did what he did, Fernández Anaya replied, “My dream is that someday we can have a kind of community life where we push and help each other to win.”
Although he could have won the race, Fernández Anaya said, “What would be the merit of my victory? What would be the honor in that medal? What would my mother think of that?”
That’s what it boils down to — values passed from parents to children, one generation after another — even in our mixed-up crazy kind of world where, as the Kinks sang in “Lola” way back in 1970, “girls will be boys and boys will be girls.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
