A Massachusetts high school girls’ field hockey team forfeited in advance of a game against a nearby rival with a male athlete listed on its roster — a year after a female player was injured when a ball hit by a boy smashed into her face during a playoff game.
The Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School was set to play against Somerset Berkley Regional High School on Sept. 17, but Dighton-Rehoboth backed out on Monday.
“The District supports this decision as there are times where we have to place a higher value on safety than on victory,” Superintendent Bill Runey said in a statement Monday.
“We understand this forfeit will impact our chances for a league championship and possibly playoff eligibility, but we remain hopeful that other schools consider following suit to achieve safety and promote fair competition for female athletes.”
The team was able to back out of its match under a rule implemented after a Dighton-Rehoboth field hockey player was injured in a game against Swampscott last November.
She was smashed in the face during a goal attempt made by a male athlete and lost two of her teeth.
The new district policy, which was adopted in late June, updated the school committee rules to better address “serious concerns over the lack of reasonable policy for the safety of female athletes participating in co-op sports,” according to a statement by Christopher Andrade, Dighton-Rehoboth’s regional school committee chair.
The updated language strictly prohibited penalization for any single-sex team that withdraws from a match because of an opposing team’s inclusion of a player of the opposite sex.
The Dighton-Rehoboth forfeit marks the first time this policy has been used since it was implemented.
The Equal Rights Amendment, which is part of the Massachusetts Declarations of Rights and Constitution, was enacted in 1979 and prohibited discrimination based on “sex, race, color, creed, or national origin.”
Following the ruling, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association amended its rules to allow girls to play on boys’ teams if there was no strictly female team in their sport, and vice versa.
“Boys have been competing on girls’ teams, and girls have been competing on boys’ teams, for more than forty years,” the MIAA wrote in a statement following the Dighton-Rehoboth player’s injury last November.
Field hockey, a female-dominated sport in the United States, is largely played by men abroad, particularly in Western Europe.
Very few US schools have enough male players to make a men’s team, let alone compete against any, leaving many aspiring players to rely on fiercely competitive club teams to get involved.
