A biologically male runner who identifies as a female has been dominating high school girls’ cross-country track competitions across Maine since he transitioned following a lackluster freshman season competing against other boys.
The student, a junior at the Maine Coast Waldorf School in Freeport, dominated at the Western Maine Conference Championship in Standish on Wednesday, Oct. 16.
He took first place in the five-kilometer cross-country run.
The dominant long-distance runner defeated the second-place finisher, Zoe Carroll from York High School, by one second, finishing the 5k in 20 minutes and 29 seconds compared to Carroll’s 20:30.
Although he took first place competing against the girls, his performance was far from impressive when comparing his times against the other high school boys who ran the meet.
The top male runner, Aiden Ring, finished the 5K in 16:58, while the 1st place girls’ runners’ time would have placed him in 43rd place.
His herculean triumph over female runners in the Western Maine Conference Championship race rocketed his overall ranking in cross-country runs, bringing him up to second place overall among girls cross-country runners from class C schools in the state, according to a site that tracks runners’ performances.
Before that race, he was ranked fifth overall.
Whether male students who identify as female should be allowed to compete against female students has been a hot topic in schools and adult sports leagues across the country for several years. Because men’s natural physical advantages in athletic contests don’t disappear when they begin identifying as female, some have claimed that trans athletes have an unfair advantage over their competitors.
The Maine Principals Association’s (MPA) policy allows athletes to compete based on gender identity rather than biological sex “unless such participation would result in an unfair athletic advantage or would present an unacceptable risk of injury to other student-athletes.”
The MPA does not consider Waldorf school runner’s biological sex an “unfair advantage” when he competes against girls in the 5k run.
Last year, The Maine Wire covered the young man’s fifth-place ranking in the 5k at the Maine XC Festival of Champions.
In the same race in 2022, prior to his transition, he competed with the boys and ranked 206th.
