Coach Dean Vergillo expressed frustration as his Cedarcrest High School girls’ track team lost to a male transgender athlete, Veronica Garcia, at the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association state meet.
Vergillo highlighted the unfairness of the situation, noting the male physiology of the competitor affecting race outcomes.
The coach criticized the lack of preparation and transparency from state education officials regarding the participation of transgender athletes, stating that coaches were unaware until the last minute.
“As a cross country and track coach, everybody has a running style,” Vergillo said. “It’s kind of like your fingerprint — everybody runs a little bit differently. In this case, it was obviously a male running.”
“As a coach, I found out about it just through talking to other coaches from around the state,” Vergillo said. “Then, in the [girls’] 400-meter open race, the individual from our school that qualified only found out about an hour before.”
“It’s definitely going to be a bigger issue given that we’ll know what’s happening going into it. My biggest disappointment in this situation is how our state association [the WIAA] didn’t prepare us for what was coming,” he said. “We’ve had many coaches, through text, emails, or just verbally, state their displeasure with the situation.”
“I guess maybe I expected sportsmanship because I was cheering the rest of them on when they were called. So, I guess I expected to get that reciprocated. But I didn’t get that,” Gacria said.
While some states have restrictions, Washington allows transgender individuals to compete based on their self-identified gender, sparking debate over fairness in high school sports competitions.
