I coached my two sons’ sports teams from the time they were six years old all the way through middle school. Years on the sideline, thousands of hours of practice, over a decade of watching how kids compete and grow. I also grew up playing sports. I got shipped off to an eight-week all-boys sleepaway camp from age six to fourteen and we played sports, competitively, all day, every day.
Here's what I know: girls don't belong in boys' sports and women don't belong in men's sports. And biological boys and men don't have any place in women's sports. This has nothing to do with identification. This has nothing to do with discrimination. This has nothing to do with belonging. It has everything to do with common sense.
Practice together. Compete separately.
You can scrimmage. You can practice together. Women's high school and college basketball teams have always scrimmaged against men's teams because they're stronger, faster and tougher, and it makes everyone better. We see it in basketball, tennis, volleyball, soccer and other sports. There are also sports that are intentionally co-ed, like mixed doubles, and they've been widely accepted for years. None of that is controversial because practice is one thing and competition is another.
Rules exist for a reason. There are weight classes, age restrictions and gender divisions in every sport. You don't get to wipe those away because you identify as 175 pounds and don't want to wrestle in the 200-pound division. That's ridiculous.
I saw this coaching youth sports all the time. We played AAU basketball and travel baseball, and every tournament required a birth certificate because there were always people trying to circumvent the rules. We had parents who wanted their kid to "play down" because "he's a small sixteen-year-old." One time we went to an AAU basketball tournament and I swear we were playing against college-aged kids. The coach had the audacity to tell us they were all seniors in high school, conveniently ignoring the fact that some of them had apparently been seniors for two or three years. It wasn't about what year they were in school. It was about how old they actually were.
Nobody argued those rules were unfair. Nobody accused tournament directors of discrimination because they wanted proof of age. Nobody thought the solution was to ignore the rules because someone had a compelling personal story. The rules existed to protect the integrity of the competition, and every parent there understood why they mattered.
That's the point. Rules and restrictions exist for reasons. It has nothing to do with whether you like the person, support the person, identify with the person, respect the person or enjoy their company. It has everything to do with the integrity of the sport, the safety of the athletes and fair competition. You can't fake your age. You can't ignore weight classes. And you can’t dismiss the biological advantages men have in sports. Sports only work when everyone agrees to play by the same standards.
Aside from the very loud online voices, 90% of parents (10% will always try to cheat, unfortunately) want the same thing for their kids: a fair game, run by clear rules, judged on who's actually good. That's it. That's the whole ask. Protect that, and girls' and women's sports will always have something worth protecting.
In Health,
Greg Scheinman
Founder, Midlife Male
Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach.
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