PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The issue of transgender athletes competing in women's sports was the focus at the White House on Wednesday, but it wasn't a major topic for Philadelphia high school athletes gathering at Saint Joseph's University.
Two hundred and fifty female high school athletes from district and charter schools attended a program celebrating National Girls and Women in Sports Day. Before the event, keynote speaker Jill Bodensteiner, the athletic director at St. Joe's, told KYW Newsradio that President Donald Trump's action banning transgender women from women's sports addresses an issue that really doesn't exist at her college.
“I think it's absolutely making good on campaign promises,” she said. “For some institutions, this is a very critical and important issue and sort of a live one if you will. And for others, it's more theoretical, including us.”
Regina Johnson, the athletic director at Martin Luther King High School and a former college field hockey player, said potentially losing federal funding for women's sports remains a concern.
“I think we think about Title IX all the time,” she said, referring to the law preventing sex-based discrimination in any school that receives federal funds, “not just with transgender [women], with women in general, because I'm a product of Title IX.”
Bodensteiner said she's concerned about what's happening to inclusion efforts across the country, and that's why it's important that the city's young women athletes are celebrated on this day. “I care very much about these young girls in the room and their futures,” she said.
“So we're watching and waiting like everybody else to see what's real and what's rumored and what's going to happen, and of course we'll follow the letter of the law.”