Non gendered races in middle school

Running one extra race takes 20 min. Still 1/10 the time of a football game or soccer game. Nobody should be directing races that doesnt have 20 min.

It's very important that girls be given the opportunity to beat boys because by puberty it's pretty much over. Girls also need to learn there's nothing special or important about being a girl - since anyone can be now, including boys. Boys on the other hand need to learn some of them are girls. But these schools aren't progressive enough. There should be no winners because that is unfair to the losers. An important lesson in all of this is that distinction of any kind - sex, gender, winners and losers - is prejudicial. Sameness is the only real truth. Except when they leave school they will find distinctions of every kind will apply to just about everything they do.

I hate this backward thinking. It just serves to make women feel bad about running fast. There is nothing wrong with betting "beaten by girls" if they are faster. Not everyone has the same ability. The top girls in HS have and will be much faster than most of the guys.

I agree. Tsegay should be a household name for all young girls to know, even if they aren't going to be distance runners. Girls learn about Flo Jo and Katharine Switzer and Babe Didrikson Zaharias... but now there's a woman who is running faster than a good portion of college men or is within 20 seconds of their best time. If running like a girl is valued as like Tsegay runs...it will not be negative.

And Kipyegon as well for a lifetime achievement of running.

Adding on after speaking to my wife - she said she loved mixed races because it was so much fun beating boys and sometimes winning outright.

To the "being first female isn't as fun as first overall crowd" - please go ask Paula Radcliffe how she felt about being only the first female but not first over the line in the 2005 marathon. I imagine she couldn't give a flying fig. "They won't get their photo in the local newspaper" that seems like a local newspaper being sexist problem rather than race organization problem.

Do you have daughters? No, you shouldn't have cried, but you should have complained. As a former female soccer player and current soccer mom, it is incredible to see how even one or two boys can completely dominate a group of girls playing soccer. I've witnessed this as young as age 5-6. When my daughter first played, they didn't split by gender and there's be a dominant boy with Dad yelling on the side doing 50% of the play with many of the girls never touching the ball at all.

Personally, I finally got an all girls' soccer team in 4th grade and went from barely getting to play (thanks coach) to being one of the better players on the team. In soccer, single gender teams are absolutely critical as young as possible.

I don't think it's a big deal for some races to be run together, but yes, the fastest girls should have the chance to experience the thrill of leading a race, or fighting for the race lead without being surrounded by a pack of boys.

When I ran, smaller meets would sometimes run boys / girls together, but larger meets were separate. I think this is reasonable.

I bet Paula in general loved the thrill of leading races, though. Of course she was happy when she set her world record. But I also bet she would say she loved the other races where she was alone in the lead. Have you ever led a race? It's an incredible feeling. Women should get that chance.

Every meet that my team competes in has 6 races. Why have JV and FS separate if the course can accommodate a larger number?

I think in afternoon races it's reasonable to both combine younger and older kids and boys and girls due to time / daylight constraints.

Time permitting, both girls/boys and younger/older (JV / varsity) should be run separate.

Im shocked. Its seems 80% of the responses are passionately against women/girls running with other women/girls. If paula radcliffs race took 20 min i bet they would have run separately. Why again is XC the only sport why this has to happen? Esp a sport where one race/game is 20 min? Why so against a girls sport and a boys sport by so many here. Its weird. Dont direct a race if you dont have 20 extra minutes, 40 extra for HS. So lazy.

BINGO. i have noticed on the anti-trans stuff they complain about girls losing to "boys" and not whether their boy might lose to a "girl" presenting with the boys.

i think this is where the seams show. this is really about making the religious right happy by effectively establishing their religion in governance. they for religious reasons want to protect their daughters' purity. but the pro-competition pro-business small government folks should be like, everyone for themselves, and if your daughter loses to a boy, get faster, if he harasses you, get tougher. that's their policy response to many a workplace issue.

someone mentioned XC. HS varsity girls run what HS frosh boys do for distance (2 mi). varsity boys here run 5k. even in NCAA it's 8k vs. 6k. it's a little anachronistic as in TF they tend to run the same distances as the boys for distance races eg 1600, 3200, 5k, 10k. do we think that women who run 10k in spring can't run 8k in fall? too weak? or that a girl who might be running 5k or 10k in college, and is already running 3200s at track and 2 miles their whole track career, can't hack 5k on varsity? my experience the good varsity ones headed to state were faster than the boy's JV over 3 mile type races.

there are some other quirks that feel more sexist with time, hurdle heights, hurdle distances, implement weights. i assume some of it is to keep the records stable.

last points to complicate what i just said. 1 in my state we are now doing some wheelchair races as part of the program. 2 if you're going to be obnoxious and exclude trans from all women's sports unless they compete birth certificate class, why not give them "open?" the exclusionary impulse leads me to believe this is less about classification and more about being a jerk.

i mean, if i wanted to be blunt, when i was subvarsity track, sometimes frosh and JV ran separate, sometimes together in the hears. then were pulled back out for their separate ranks. so john aka joan runs with the girls but ranks open. or is the idea to make them feel bad?

i personally feel like an additional open class is a fix for this. maybe girls want to race boys. maybe weaker boys want to race girls. maybe trans deserve a place. ok, open race. or nothing is stopping you from running a single race and then statistically pulling it back apart however you want, as one poster said, like almost every road race or even some college races i have seen. the idea the girls would get beat up is sexist. our JV soccer team would scrimmage the varsity women. no serious person was worried the poor girls would get battered.

last thought but i think up to about roughly junior high age some countries like norway just have the kids doing fun races or fun games and not anything that counts. the idea being to just get the kids together and have fun and learn their sport, and see if they have the passion to put in more time and get serious as they reach an older age.

part of what you're butting up against here is a mentality where we need to have winners and losers and pretend like it hints at the future -- when people are 10. USATF's records hint that until about age 14 or so the fastest ones don't predict big time excellence. only then are there record holders who went on to be big name professionals. likewise, most of the leading U10 select soccer players turned useless by U16 or U18. what is technically impressive for a 10 year old, say, juggling, may not matter much by the end of HS. a lack of foot speed may mean they can't handle all the running. so you want to make a big deal about who wins a U10 boys category -- like we'd miss it if we went open -- when it may mean very little.

so it's parents who want to believe johnny is superior and on the road someplace even when it's not really true. it's really HS when it matters.

last, in my area we have 7th and 8th grade school sports but not below. those are usually gendered. i wouldn't mind if they added 6th grade or below but it was a mass open race.

Oooor..they can stop worrying about hurting some boys feelings, and make him run with his competition

whattt? Nooo.

It's like how women can't win prize money at the Boston marathon, if they're not in the seeded race. So they can just draft off the male marathon runners and it gives them an unfair advantage, as opposed to running in the women's seeded race. (am I getting off topic now and talking about drafting).

to state the obvious: high school boys are faster runners than high girls overall though. Even if Becca Heitzig is the girls state champion, she still won't be anywhere close to the top 25 boys in the state, and those are just the advantages of being male. Stronger, faster!

To summarize: I don't personally *feel bad* about beating boys (in h.s. or wherever), some of those boys hardly work out all summer and that's all on them. Some of those people have the potential to be faster, but they lack the discipline to go running every day. How is that on me? However, I would feel bad if I never had the opportunity to win; if every race I got beaten by another gender (drafting advantages aside) that has testosterone as their primary s#x hormone, stronger muscles, smaller body fat percentage, narrower hips, all advantages in running.

It's just middle school, who gives a crap?

acting like getting beaten by a faster person (in this case a women) is some sort of humiliation? That's stupid. That is what I was responding to. That reeks of "oh we must protect boys feelings" or reminding girl their are emotional consequences for their win. How about we don't even mention it?

I'm happy you have to attitude that their race isn't "on you". You just contradicted that in your preamble.

I've been beaten by women many times and I've never once felt humiliated. I just assume they were faster than better than me. At the same time, as a master, I've beaten many younger runners, I hope they don't feel bad cause an old guy beat them.