Dianne Fallon of Kittery Point is an educator and a parent of a one-time trans athlete.

According to Lending Tree, Maine leads the nation in high school sports participation at 62%. Nationally, only 34% of students play sports. Most Maine schools are small. Not everyone can make the basketball team, but anyone can sign up for cross-country or track.

This open-to-all athletic culture means that every student has opportunities to benefit from the camaraderie, teamwork and exercise that athletics provide, including the small number of trans kids — one to five students annually — who under Maine law can play on teams aligned with their gender identity.

If you are a Mainer who believes that limiting the rights of trans kids to play K-12 sports seems reasonable, consider the following.

First, those who want to ban trans kids — specifically trans girls — from gender-aligned participation cite concern for girls’ safety. The idea that women need protection has long been used to limit women’s rights; now, it is being flipped on its head to limit the rights of trans girls. This argument kept women out of the Boston Marathon until 1972. During the same era, girls and their dads fought against the idea that girls were too fragile to play Little League.

In Maine, girls have participated in heavy contact boys’ sports like football and hockey. In 2008, Marshwood High School’s Deanna Rix Betterman narrowly missed becoming the nation’s first Class A boys’ wrestling champ in a hard-fought match with her male opponent. Girls compete in wrestling today, sometimes against girls and sometimes against boys.

Some girls’ sports have rules to avoid injury — lacrosse, for example, does not permit body checking — but girls often do get hurt, especially in soccer, where concussions and torn ACLs are now routine. If we care about safety, let’s look at improved training routines and safety gear to better protect athletes.

In reality, the kids most likely to be hurt while playing sports are trans kids — not by their fellow athletes, but by adults harassing them from the sidelines and on social media.

A second argument claims that girls’ privacy is at stake when trans girls share facilities. Teenagers are typically ultra-private about their bodies, especially trans kids. Most schools in Maine have private showers and changing facilities. My town’s middle and high schools have no locker rooms. Kids just make do.

If privacy is a concern, let’s consider the impact of “gender checking.” One might say, “Everyone knows the trans kid.” Does that mean we needn’t concern ourselves with that student’s privacy? Laws limiting participation have implications for all students: universal requirements for birth certificates, or possibly intrusive “gender checks.”

Will a girl who “could be” transgender be forced to have her genitals checked by school staff to verify her athletic status? (Yes, this has happened in other states with laws banning trans athletes). Such privacy violations impact the well-being of all students.

Finally, ban proponents say it isn’t fair for trans girls to compete with other girls. In Maine, trans athletes have won first place in a couple of races and a state championship track event, but the evidence doesn’t support the idea that these athletes had an “unfair” advantage. None have come close to setting a Maine girls’ performance record.

Is it possible that a trans athlete could surpass a record previously set by a Maine student-
athlete? Given the small number of trans athletes, such an achievement would be exceptional. Does that possibility mean that it’s OK to make a child’s ability to participate in sports illegal?

Flipping the lens, we might see that inclusivity for trans athletes serves all students. Even with Maine’s high participation rate, many teams struggle to fill rosters. Students travel long distances to play on co-op teams in hockey and other sports. In wrestling and volleyball, coed competition is not uncommon. An athletic culture that needs students to thrive benefits when everyone can participate without government-imposed limits.

Athletics supports students’ physical and mental well-being. Keeping trans kids in the game helps all kids stay in the game. And a kid sitting on the sidelines might just say, “If she can do it, maybe I can too.”