Society · Girls’ Sports · California · May 11, 2026

Share

He Won Three Jumping Events in the Girls’ Finals. She Stepped onto the First-Place Podium Anyway.

On May 9, 2026, at the CIF Southern Section Division 3 Track and Field Preliminaries at Yorba Linda High School, transgender athlete AB Hernandez — born male, competing under a female gender identity per California law — won the girls’ long jump with a mark of 20 feet, 4¼ inches, more than a foot ahead of the nearest female competitor. Hernandez then won the girls’ triple jump with 42 feet, 4 inches, beating second place by nearly three feet. Then tied for first in the girls’ high jump at 5 feet, 2 inchesalongside Reese Hogan, a female athlete from Crean Lutheran High School in Orange County. Three events. All top finishes. All in the girls’ division.

Reese Hogan’s response went viral. In a prior competition where Hernandez had won the triple jump and stepped off the first-place podium briefly, Hogan stepped up and stood on the top spot — not because it was hers to claim by the scoreboard, but because she believed it should have been. The crowd erupted. Riley Gaines, the former NCAA swimmer who has become the most prominent voice in the women’s sports equity movement, wrote on X: “When the boy got off the podium, she assumed her rightful spot as champion.” Gaines called Hogan “the real champion.”

None of this happens without a direct chain of political decisions running from Sacramento to the CIF gym floor. California Education Code § 221.5(f) — enacted via AB 1266, signed by Governor Jerry Brown (D) in 2013 and effective January 1, 2014 — requires schools to allow students to compete in sports consistent with their gender identity. The California Interscholastic Federation has complied for more than a decade. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has defended the policy every time it has been challenged. The result is a biological male athlete dominating female competition at a postseason meet while the federal government sues California for violating Title IX — the federal law originally designed to protect female athletes.

• 20′4¼″long jump, 1st placeAB Hernandez's winning mark — more than 12 inches ahead of the 2nd-place female competitor (19′1½″)
• 42′4″triple jump, 1st placeHernandez's winning mark — nearly 3 feet ahead of 2nd place (39′7½″) and more than 4½ feet ahead of 3rd (37′8″)
• 5′2″high jump, tied 1stHernandez and Reese Hogan both cleared 5′2″ — Hogan's tie is the only event where a female athlete matched the mark
• AB 1266California law, 2013Signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D); codified at Ed. Code § 221.5(f); requires gender-identity-based sports participation; in effect since Jan. 1, 2014

The CIF Southern Section Division 3 Prelims are not a club meet or an invitational. They are the postseason qualifier for the California state championships — the threshold where high school athletic careers end or continue. Every place matters.

This was not Hernandez’s first dominance on the girls’ track circuit. In 2025, Hernandez won the California state high jump and triple jump championships in the girls’ division, placed second in the girls’ long jump, and won the River Valley League championships in all three jumping events — winning the triple jump by nearly 7 feet, the long jump by more than 3 feet, and the high jump by a full foot. Before track, Hernandez competed for three years on Jurupa Valley’s girls’ volleyball team, a participation that caused 10 opposing schools to forfeit rather than play.

Reese Hogan is a track and field athlete at Crean Lutheran High School in Orange County. She has competed directly against AB Hernandez for two consecutive years. She is 17 years old. She did not quietly accept the situation.

“We're still waiting for the CIF to protect girls' sports.”

Reese Hogan, Crean Lutheran HS · speaking at the Save Girls' Sports rally outside Yorba Linda HS · May 9, 2026

Hogan had previously gone viral for stepping onto the first-place podium after Hernandez briefly stepped aside — a spontaneous act of defiance that the crowd received with applause and that spread widely on social media. In the triple jump at the 2026 prelims, Hogan watched as Hernandez stood atop the podium for an event she had not won. She made her statement clear to anyone watching and to reporters at the venue.

Her statement was not an act of hostility toward any individual. It was an act of factual insistence: the record of who competed as what, under what biological conditions, should be visible. The crowd at Yorba Linda agreed. The protest outside the venue — organized by the California Family Council’s Save Girls’ Sports rally — reinforced it.

The competition and protest drew national coverage. The following segments cover the meet results, the podium moment, and the broader California girls’ sports policy debate.

Riley Gaines, who tied transgender swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place at the 2022 NCAA championships but was denied the trophy, has spent the years since building the most prominent national campaign for female sports equity. She was watching the CIF meet.

Navratilova’s posts came alongside those of Olympic gold medalists Nancy Hogshead and Kaillie Humphries, who both addressed the California situation directly on X. Hogshead, a Title IX legal expert and former Olympic swimmer, and Humphries, a bobsledder who led the fight against Canadian team policies, represent a growing cohort of elite female athletes breaking from the standard institutional silence on this issue.

President Trump has made AB Hernandez’s participation in California girls’ sports a personal federal target. He posted to Truth Social threatening to withhold federal education funding from California — $44.3 billion annually — if the state does not bar transgender athletes from girls’ sports.

That threat preceded a formal legal action. In January 2026, the DOJ opened a Title IX investigation specifically into Jurupa Valley USD — Hernandez’s district. The U.S. Department of Education subsequently found California in violation of Title IX. The DOJ then filed a full civil lawsuit against California over the state’s transgender athlete policies. The CIF, notably, modified its competition rules during the controversy to expand access for cisgender female athletes to the state championships — an implicit acknowledgment that Hernandez’s participation displaced girls who otherwise would have qualified.

AB Hernandez’s participation in California girls’ sports is not an oversight. It is the direct, intended result of over a decade of deliberate state policy, passed by Democratic supermajorities, signed by Democratic governors, and defended by the current Democratic governor against federal law.

The federal government’s position is the inverse of California’s. Trump issued Executive Order 14201 in February 2025, directing federal agencies to treat Title IX as prohibiting biological males from competing in girls’ sports in federally funded institutions. The DOE and DOJ have both followed through. California’s $44.3 billion in annual federal education funding — of which $3.8 billion remains subject to immediate withdrawal — is the concrete pressure point in the standoff.

Title IX, enacted in 1972, reads: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” The original intent was to expand opportunity for female students who were being systematically excluded from sports programs.

AB Hernandez is a senior at Jurupa Valley High School. The controversy over Hernandez’s participation in girls’ sports has built across three school years.

“The boy standing atop the podium holding up a 'number 1' is a fraud enabled by @CIFSS, @CA_Dem & @CAgovernor.”

Riley Gaines · X post · May 9, 2026

The debate over transgender athletes in women’s sports is often framed as a culture war abstraction. The CIF Southern Section Division 3 Prelims make it concrete. There are named female athletes, named officials, named laws, named officials who signed those laws, and a scoreboard with specific measurements showing the gaps.

Reese Hogan did not file a lawsuit. She did not give a press conference. She stepped onto a podium. That act was possible because she had competed fairly, under the rules as written, and still found herself standing next to someone competing under a different biological reality. She knew the crowd saw it. She let them.

Governor Newsom’s framing — that critics are trying to “vilify individual kids” — confuses the target of the criticism with the source of the policy. No one named in this story is accused of a crime or a personal failing. The accusation is systemic: California passed a law, California Democratic legislators blocked every attempt to revise it, California’s governor has defended it through federal legal challenge, and the result is a biological male competing in postseason girls’ athletics with margins that are not close. Naming Gavin Newsom (D-CA), naming the legislature, naming AB 1266, naming the CIF — this is what accountability journalism looks like when the subject is a policy with documented, measurable consequences.

Title IX was passed to protect female athletes from exclusion. The federal government now argues California is using a state law to re-impose that exclusion on the girls who competed under the original promise. The courts will resolve the legal question. The scoreboard already answered the factual one.