Florida’s state athletic board fined a high school and put it on probation Tuesday after a transgender student played on the girls volleyball team, a violation of a controversial law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature.
The Florida High School Athletic Association fined Monarch High $16,500, ordered the principal and athletic director to attend rules seminars and placed the suburban Fort Lauderdale school on probation for 11 months, meaning further violations could lead to increased punishments. The association also barred the girl from participating in boys sports for 11 months.
The 2021 law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as girls at birth.
The student, a 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the last two seasons, was removed from the team last month after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation. Her removal led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class two weeks ago in protest.
https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/5/Supplement_1/A792/6241278
Reading into this, my main points of concern are that there is only a population of 8 in each group. That’s far from clinically significant, but if we pretend for the sake of argument that it is a clinically significant population there’s still the fact that TW have more muscle mass and outperformed the CW in their handgrip strength despite lower strength/FFM due to the extra muscle mass. The study authors believe that this is because a difference in oxidative processes in the muscle but don’t go on to elaborate their hypothesis so it may allow some TW to take advantage of their extra muscle mass when in competition and other hormones flood the CNS/bloodstream.
My hypothesis would be that adrenaline temporarily helps to overcome the suppression of muscle performance due to hormone therapy. Note that this is my hypothesis and would need to be studied. Maybe I am wrong, but in my clinical experience the observable results run counter to the small scope of this particular study.
I do think more studies need to be done. My opinion is if a cis woman would be barred for PCOS then barring trans women is fine