Two runners mentioned in a lawsuit over the participation of transgender athletes in Connecticut high school sports raced against each other Saturday at a state track championship in New Haven.
Canton senior Chelsea Mitchell won the girls 55-meter dash.
“I was just trying to focus on getting a good start -- getting a clean start -- working on my acceleration, finish,” Mitchell told reporters after the race.
Mitchell and her mother are among a group of people suing Connecticut’s governing body of high school sports, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference.
The Mitchells’ attorneys argue that two state athletes shouldn’t be allowed to race in girls events because they are what the lawsuit calls “biologically male.”
Bloomfield senior Terry Miller is one of the two girls whose participation is being challenged in federal court. She finished third behind Mitchell, a few tenths of a second off the record pace Miller set in last year’s event.
“My whole season wasn’t close to any of my personal bests,” Miller told Connecticut Public Radio, “but I was still trying to work my way to how I was, because stuff happened and I’m not in my groove like I was last year, so I just kept pushing.”
Miller and Mitchell also ran against each other just three days after the lawsuit was filed; Mitchell won that matchup, too.
The CIAC says that it is committed to equity in providing opportunities to student-athletes in Connecticut and that its policy on transgender athletes is appropriate under both state and federal law.
