{"id":100361,"date":"2017-02-26T12:20:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T17:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/?p=100361"},"modified":"2017-02-26T12:20:49","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T17:20:49","slug":"transgender-wrestler-wins-girls-wrestling-title-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/transgender-wrestler-wins-girls-wrestling-title-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgender wrestler wins girls’ wrestling title in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
In a 12-2 victory against Chelsea Sanchez in the 110-pound classification, Beggs ended a highly controversial and dramatic weekend by becoming the first transgender participant to win a Class 6A girls’ state championship in Texas high school wrestling.<\/p>\n
“I just witnessed my sport change,” a longtime Texas wrestling coach said moments after Beggs, a 17-year-old junior at Trinity High in Euless whose transition from girl to boy began two years ago and now includes testosterone injections, won a championship. The victory was seen as equal parts unavoidable – quick and noticeably strong, he entered the tournament unbeaten in 52 matches against girls – and contentious. The University Interscholastic League, which oversees sports in Texas public schools, ordered Beggs to continue competing in the girls’ division despite heavy uproar and a lawsuit earlier this month in a Travis County district court.<\/p>\n
So Saturday, those who had packed into Berry Center, a sprawling multipurpose facility in suburban Houston, were divided – like the state and country. It seemed an unlikely place to stage a raging political discussion, but the tournament ended a week in which President Trump revoked federal guidelines allowing transgender students to use public restrooms that match their gender identity; it played out in a sprawling and culturally diverse state divided over a controversial “bathroom bill” similar to the one roiling North Carolina.<\/p>\n
In this time and place, with Beggs cruising to a state championship, the hundreds here had no choice but to confront one of the nation’s most divisive and highly charged issues.<\/p>\n
“She’s standing there holding her head high like she’s the winner,” said Patti Overstreet, a mother of a wrestler in the boys’ division. “She’s not winning. She’s cheating.”<\/p>\n
Overstreet, upset Friday in the moments after Beggs’s opening-round victory, went on.<\/p>\n
“It’s not equal,” she said. “It’s never going to be equal.”<\/p>\n
Other parents tiptoed around the discussion, wondering what to say and how to say it. Kids confronted coaches about topics as complicated as gender identity and as simple as fairness, leading some to squirm and others to attempt explanations.<\/p>\n
“Everybody has been talking about it. It’s in the ether everywhere,” said one longtime Texas high school wrestling coach, who requested anonymity because his school district prohibited its employees from publicly discussing Beggs’s situation. “All this week I’m in school and kids are coming up and talking about it. I’ve never seen anything like this.”<\/p>\n
Beyond the politics are the young people who have been forced to participate within a discussion and scene that, by any measure, is difficult to make sense of. The coach said one of his girls quit the wrestling team rather than face Beggs, who has documented and shared the results of his testosterone use on social media. James Baudhuin, the attorney suing the UIL over Beggs’s participation in the girls’ division, has a daughter who had wrestled against Beggs and, at least before the suit, was among his friends.<\/p>\n
The ordeal grew complicated, on and off the mat. Baudhuin himself said he was so conflicted that, though he’d filed a petition to keep Beggs off the mat, he would nonetheless be cheering for Beggs to win the championship.<\/p>\n
“The 16 girls who are in [Beggs’s] bracket have been put in a very, very unfair situation because of the grown-ups,” Baudhuin said. “To me, this is a complete abject failure of leadership and accountability from the people who regulate sports in Texas. They’re doing wrong by Mack, and not just these 15 girls but all the other girls she wrestled all year.”<\/p>\n
Then there is the experience of Beggs himself. Nearly two years ago, in a video diary explaining his transition, he discussed the sport he loved, the peace he sought and the ambition he had.<\/p>\n
“I want to be somebody,” he said long before all this; before the boos and the cameras; before his coach whisked him on and off the arena floor to minimize Beggs’s visibility; and before a tournament run that sparked an arena, a state and a nation to confront a subject that previously could have been avoided. “Somebody who does something – not just a page in a book. I want to be a book.”<\/p>\n