Cassidy Carlisle has been an athlete for as long as she can remember. She was wearing hockey skates before she could even walk. By the time she was in middle school, she was participating in hockey, soccer, Nordic skiing, and track and field.
Carlisle never thought that being an athlete would mean sharing a locker room with a boy or competing against a male in the girls’ category. But that’s exactly what happened.
Carlisle knows firsthand just how different females and males are in athletics. In seventh grade, the only middle grade hockey team in her small town was co-ed, and competing with the group of teenage boys made her decide to give up competing in hockey, she said.
“I just felt that my physical abilities to keep up with the boys weren’t there,” she told IW Features.
It was also in seventh grade—when she was just 13 years old—that Carlisle said she was forced to share a locker room with a boy.
“I went to change for gym class,” Carlisle said. “There was a biological male standing in front of me. And the feelings that I have for that moment are… I didn’t know how to put into words what I was seeing. I knew something wasn’t right.”
Carlisle explained that she went to her school’s social worker to express her extreme discomfort with having to change in front of a male, but she was told that her only option was to change in the single-stall bathroom—along with all of the other girls who were uncomfortable with the situation—and risk being late to class.
“He was taking an entire space away from 15 to 20 girls who were all changing,” Carlisle said.
Eventually, Carlisle said that the boy began changing in the single-stall bathroom, and after a few weeks, the girls decided to take their locker room back.
“But then you don’t know if one day you’re going to walk in there again and he is going to be in there,” Carlisle added.
As she moved into high school, Carlisle’s athletic career continued to grow. She started playing soccer, became a state champion in racewalking, placed twice among the top Nordic skiers in the state, and made the Maine state Nordic ski team.
But then things took another turn.
“[My dad] was looking at cross-country running results from the fall, and he had started to notice a name that hadn’t been there in previous years,” Carlisle said.
As her father investigated the surprise new competitor, Carlisle said they discovered that the athlete’s name was listed in the boys’ results for previous years. Only now, the boy identified as female and was competing against high school girls like Carlisle.
When winter arrived, Carlisle found out she would be skiing against the boy.
“I think in that moment, some of the trauma of what happened when I was 13 years old came out,” she said. “I was so upset, so defeated. For the longest time, we would show up to races, and… the crowd cheered 10 times louder for him than they did for any girl that was competing.”
As the crowd made an extra effort to validate the feelings of the boy, Carlisle said she and the other girls felt demoralized knowing that they were already set back a place even before the race had started.
“I watched firsthand girls lose spots, lose places, lose drive in general, because nobody wants to put so much time into something that doesn’t matter,” she said. “I know the time and the energy that it takes to be a state champion and to be high up in your sport, and for that to be taken away by someone who has a physical advantage over you is terrible. And it’s so wrong.”
Some people even told her that she just needed to train harder and improve her skiing abilities, Carlisle said. But the physical, biological advantage that the boy had was undeniable. Bone density and structure, the number of fast-twitch versus slow-twitch muscle fibers, and of course hormonal makeup, are just a few of the differences that give males a physical advantage in athletics.
“I trained day and night, early mornings,” she said. “I ate the right foods, and yet I still felt like I wasn’t good enough.”
Carlisle said she knew the situation was simply wrong and unfair. It’s why she is now standing up for female sports and spaces and speaking out for the athletes who cannot do so without being punished.
“I have a couple close friends, one in particular, who lost the state championship, but she doesn’t want to speak out because she’s now competing in college athletics, and speaking out against this issue could force her to lose her scholarships,” Carlisle said.
Beyond scholarships and future athletic opportunities, Carlisle emphasized how the chance to engage in fair competition helps girls develop their character and mature as individuals.
“Athletics have played such a huge role in who I am as a person, the type of leader I am,” she said.
Unfortunately, these opportunities are being stolen from girls across Maine as the state currently allows individuals to compete under their “gender identity,” not their sex, in violation of Title IX. Fortunately, fathers, mothers, and concerned citizens across the state have banded together to petition for a ballot measure that would clarify state law to protect female-only sports and spaces.
In line with this, Carlisle said she believes that no individual should be prohibited from competing in athletics. Instead, she proposed female, male, and co-ed categories where each individual competes according to their sex.
Today, Carlisle is studying biomedical sciences at Liberty University. Her activism has taken her all the way to the White House, where she shared her story with Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“I wouldn’t have the opportunities I have without [my faith in Christ],” she added in conclusion.
