A Massachusetts highschool women’ subject hockey crew forfeited upfront of a recreation in opposition to a close-by rival with a male athlete listed on its roster — a yr after a feminine participant was injured when a ball hit by a boy smashed into her face throughout a playoff recreation.
The Dighton-Rehoboth Regional Excessive Faculty was set to play in opposition to Somerset Berkley Regional Excessive Faculty on Sept. 17, however Dighton-Rehoboth backed out on Monday.
“The District helps this resolution as there are occasions the place we have now to position a better worth on security than on victory,” Superintendent Invoice Runey stated in a press release Monday.
“We perceive this forfeit will impression our possibilities for a league championship and probably playoff eligibility, however we stay hopeful that different faculties contemplate following go well with to realize security and promote honest competitors for feminine athletes.”
The crew was capable of again out of its match beneath a rule carried out after a Dighton-Rehoboth subject hockey participant was injured in a recreation in opposition to Swampscott final November.
She was smashed within the face throughout a aim try made by a male athlete and misplaced two of her tooth.
The brand new district coverage, which was adopted in late June, up to date the college committee guidelines to higher handle “severe considerations over the shortage of cheap coverage for the protection of feminine athletes collaborating in co-op sports activities,” based on a press release by Christopher Andrade, Dighton-Rehoboth’s regional faculty committee chair.
The up to date language strictly prohibited penalization for any single-sex crew that withdraws from a match due to an opposing crew’s inclusion of a participant of the alternative intercourse.
The Dighton-Rehoboth forfeit marks the primary time this coverage has been used because it was carried out.
The Equal Rights Modification, which is a part of the Massachusetts Declarations of Rights and Structure, was enacted in 1979 and prohibited discrimination based mostly on “intercourse, race, colour, creed, or nationwide origin.”
Following the ruling, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Affiliation amended its guidelines to permit women to play on boys’ groups if there was no strictly feminine crew of their sport, and vice versa.
“Boys have been competing on women’ groups, and women have been competing on boys’ groups, for greater than forty years,” the MIAA wrote in a press release following the Dighton-Rehoboth participant’s harm final November.
Subject hockey, a female-dominated sport in america, is essentially performed by males overseas, significantly in Western Europe.
Only a few US faculties have sufficient male gamers to make a males’s crew, not to mention compete in opposition to any, leaving many aspiring gamers to depend on fiercely aggressive membership groups to become involved.
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