In the closing hours of the state track and field championships, we found out where the state’s governing body for high school sports draws the line: having fun.
In the closing hours of the state track and field championships, we found out where the state’s governing body for high school sports draws the line: having fun.
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The California Interscholastic Federation spent most of last week changing its standards seemingly on a whim amid a controversy surrounding transgender athlete AB Hernandez competing in girls events at the state championship in Clovis.
But in the closing hours of the state track and field championships, we found out where the state’s governing body for high school sports draws the line: having fun.
Yes, really.
North Salinas runner Clara Adams won the 400-meter race at Buchanan High’s Veterans Memorial Stadium on Saturday, and then trotted off the track to celebrate with her father.
After running a blazing time of 53.24 in the 100-degree heat, Adams walked up to David Adams and grabbed a fire extinguisher from him.
In a display of harmless joy, Adams went away from the track – and her competitors – and blasted her shoes with the fire repellent. Olympic champion Maurice Greene did the same thing when he won the 100 meters at a race in Carson in 2004.
“I told Clara, ‘You’re on fire,’” her father, David, told the Monterey Herald. “She did not do it in front of her opponents. She wasn’t disrespecting anyone.”
No harm, no foul, right? Well, not according to CIF officials.
For that offense, Adams had her gold medal ripped away and was disqualified from competing in the 200-meter race.
Because, heaven forbid, a teenager shows emotion after achieving the ultimate goal in her sport.
Madison Mosby, a senior at St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood, was given the gold medal instead.
“I don’t know what’s going through my mind right now,” Clara Adams told the Herald late Saturday. “I’m disappointed and I feel robbed. I am in shock. (The officials) yelled at me and told me, ‘We’re not letting you on the podium.’ They took my moment away from me.”
The decision to strip Adams of her medal and ban her from running in the 200 meters came mere minutes before it started.
Her father believes race was a factor for his daughter, who is Black.
“I have video of it,” said David Adams said.. “She was on the other side of the wall. I told her to step off the track. She did not spray her shoes on the track. We have protested the decision. I feel it was racially motivated.”
The CIF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on David Adams’ allegation of racial discrimination, or the decision to take away his daughter’s medal while disqualifying her from other events.
Whether or not her race played a role in CIF’s actions, its move to punish a teenager celebrating the biggest win of her young life was undeniably extreme.
Having covered high school sports for six years across two different states, an athlete partaking in what is essentially an inside joke with her dad — away from her competitors — does not even make the top 10 for the most ridiculous celebrations I have seen.
What Adams did was nowhere on the level of what the Coronado-San Diego team did in 2021, when it was stripped of a regional basketball title after the team program celebrated the victory by throwing tortillas at the mostly Hispanic opposing team.
Adams’ celebration certainly did not merit swift action from an entity that had spent the previous week unable to set rules on a far more serious topic.
Under fire by President Donald Trump’s administration and facing a threat to the state’s federal funding, the CIF made changes to its rules in an attempt to appease both sides of a controversy surrounding a transgender athlete competing in girls sports.
The CIF decided to suddenly gift multiple gold medals in events that Jurupa Valley’s Hernandez medaled in rather than take a stand in either direction.
St. Mary’s-Berkeley’s Kira Gant Hatcher shared the long jump gold medal with Hernandez, and Monta Vista’s Lelani Laruelle and Long Beach Wilson’s Jillene Wetteland shared gold with Hernandez in the high jump.
The CIF decided to name multiple winners. In the state championship.
Regardless of where you stand on transgender athletes competing in female sports, there is no denying that having multiple winners from different schools for one state championship event is unconventional to say the least.
Under fire from both sides of the political aisle, the CIF could have kept a low profile at the state meet after walking through fire in the days leading up to the competition.
Instead, with the Hernandez situation beginning to fade, it made a bad decision that took a gold medal away from a sophomore who wasn’t trying to show up her opponents.
She was just having fun.
