Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent of Schools Bill Runey is desperately trying to ease tensions as recriminations rise in his Massachusetts community after a boy playing alongside girls at a school field hockey game knocked out the teeth of a girl on the opposing team.
The incident occurred on November 2 during a game between Swampscott High School and Runey’s Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High when a boy playing for Swampscott slashed a shot that impacted the face of a girl playing for Dighton-Rehoboth.
The video of the incident shows the injured girl collapsing to the ground and shrieking in pain.
Superintendent Runey appeared on Outkick The Morning on Thursday and pleaded for people to address the situation calmly, Fox News reported.
“It’s very hot. The tension is very high,” Runey said. “At first, it was a sense of trauma. I went to meet the bus when the girls returned from Swampscott because I wanted to let them know that they had the support of the district.”
He added that the school had “resources available” for the kids and the victim but noted that “the trauma that I saw in their eyes, the sadness I saw in their eyes and in the eyes of the coaches is something that I will never, ever forget.”
But since then, it has ginned up to another level.
“And now, it has turned to an outrage because of the fact that it doesn’t seem as if anybody is willing to listen to change,” he said.
For a change, this is not a transgender issue because the Bay State’s Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) rules allow a boy to play on a girls’ team if the sport he wants to play is not offered for boys (and vice versa).
Runey told his school that he spoke to the MIAA, and they told him there was nothing to be done.
In speaking with a representative of the MIAA this morning, she shared that the MIAA handbook has a legal note explaining how the Massachusetts Equal Rights Amendment makes the participation of males on female teams legal. I understand that the Mass ERA legislation is voluminous; and therefore, is very difficult to modify in total. However, seeing the horror in the eyes of our players and coaches upon greeting their bus last night is evidence to me that there has to be a renewed approach by the MIAA to protect the safety of our athletes. In years past, there were provisions in girls’ volleyball that, although boys could participate, they could not play on the front line because their ability to spike the ball created a higher level of risk. I have been told that those restrictions were deemed illegal and no longer exist. Athletics has come so far in the realm of safety, but the equipment and the training that our athletes are receiving in today’s day and age requires us to be more thoughtful about all of our rules and policies regarding safety.
Dighton-Rehoboth field hockey captain Kelsey Bain is also asking for change.
“You have a chance to change the negative publicity the MIAA has been receiving due to the incident that happened on Thursday night by moving forward with the proposal for a seven versus seven boys league,” she said in a letter to the MIAA.
For its part, the left-wing MIAA essentially said it does not care about player safety or the concerns of girls because “inclusion” is more important.
“We respect and understand the complexity and concerns that exist regarding student safety. However, student safety has not been a successful defense to excluding students of one gender from participating on teams of the opposite gender,” the MIAA said in a statement. “The arguments generally fail due to the lack of correlation between injuries and mixed-gender teams.”
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