Emily is 14 years old.

I started playing girl’s lacrosse in 6th grade. Two years ago, I was playing 13U girl’s lacrosse. We traveled to Boulder for two games. One team clearly had two boys on their team – they wore boy’s shorts, had hairy legs, were taller and more muscular than all of us and had much deeper voices. One boy was a defender and one was the goalie. The goalie was twice as big as any of the girls.

Guess which team won.

We were very upset that their team clearly had two boys. There was almost a fight on the sidelines between the parents of our two teams. The goalie made a save and one of our dads said, “Great save by a boy!”. The parents of the other team yelled at him, “You’re insensitive. That’s a girl and her name is Betty”. They squared off, but it did not get physical as one of our moms pulled the angry dad away from the crowd. The Boulder parents were shouting at our dad about how “rude” he was being.

Boulder is woke.

The team with boys won narrowly.

In the parking lot after the game, I was crying – we were all crying – not because we lost, but because we were mad that we had to play a team with two boys on it and that made the game unfair and that we felt powerless to do anything about it.  As a team, together and united, through angry tears, we all vowed we would not play that team again – if we had to face them in the playoffs, we would forfeit the game in a team unity of protest against the CGLA (Colorado Girls Lacrosse Association) allowing an unfair advantage of “transgender girls” to play girls lacrosse.

We didn’t face them in the playoffs, so we didn’t get a chance to protest – but this team won the championship that year – with the two boys on defense.

This is why I, my parents and my brothers, stand with #SaveWomensSports.

Too bad for the team that lost.