TACOMA – After a controversial victory, last year’s champion in the girls 400-meter dash is seeking to retain her title at this year’s State 2A track and field championship meet at Mt. Tahoma High School.
Verónica Garcia, an East Valley High School senior, earned her title last year after finishing the sprint a full second before West Valley’s Lauren Matthew.
Garcia’s victory gained national attention – the now-17-year-old runner became Washington’s first transgender athlete to win a state track title.
She finished the lap around the track in 55.75 seconds.
When accepting her award last year, Garcia was booed by the audience, and her competitors didn’t applaud her like she did for other athletes on the podium.
The jeers continued this year at Friday’s preliminary events. Booing was audible from the stands when Garcia took her mark, and nearby watchers rooted “for the real girls,” they yelled as racers waited for the starting gun.
Despite hecklers, Garcia finished first in her heat, earning her a place in Saturday’s finals against seven other girls.
She wasn’t the fastest to qualify on Friday, placing third in the prelims in 58.22.
Matthew, a junior, took the fastest time at 56.47 and West Valley teammate Quincy Andrews finished the preliminary race fourth in 58.91.
Transgender student-athletes’ participation in school sports has become a hot political topic in recent years, although the main authority over Washington school sports allows trans kids to play on whichever team matches their gender expression. It’s been on the books since 2007, the first of its kind.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association estimates there are five to 10 transgender student-athletes among the 250,000 in the state.
Several conservative school boards moved to change this policy at a recent WIAA general assembly meeting, though the WIAA found that such exclusion would contradict the state constitution and civil rights laws at the state and federal level.
Some area school boards, including Mead and Central Valley, have formally decried this policy in recent months as the Trump administration has taken a strong stance against trans girls playing girls sports, most recently threatening to withhold federal funding from California if the state didn’t stop a trans girl from competing at the state track competition.
In April, President Donald Trump’s Department of Education launched an investigation into Washington’s policies surrounding transgender students.