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Girls' track and field athletes don't stand on podium next to trans athlete at Oregon state championship
By Jackson Thompson
Published June 01, 2025
A pair of girls' track and field athletes did not stand on the medal podium alongside a transgender athlete for high jump at the Oregon state championship on Saturday night.
Footage obtained by Fox News Digital showed the two high school seniors, Reese Eckard of Sherwood High School and Alexa Anderson of Tigard High School, step down from their respective spots on the podium next to a trans athlete who represented Ida B. Wells High School.
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Eckard, in fourth place, and Anderson, in third, each finished ahead of the trans athlete, who tied for fifth place. But the two females faced the opposite direction as the other competitors received their medals from officials.
The footage then showed an official confront the two young women, and gesture for them to move away. Eckard and Anderson were then seen walking away from the podium and standing off to the side.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Oregon School Activities Association for a response.
The trans athlete previously competed in the boys' category in 2023 and 2024, Fox News Digital previously reported.
Eckard and Anderson were praised for not standing on the podium on social media, and were even shouted out by prominent conservative activist Riley Gaines.
"We didn’t refuse to stand on the podium out of hate. We did it because someone has to say this isn’t right. In order to protect the integrity and fairness of girls sports we must stand up for what is right," Anderson said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Girls and women making symbolic gestures to protest trans inclusion in sports has become a growing trend in 2025.
On May 17 at a California track and field sectional final, Reese Hogan of Crean Lutheran High School stepped from the second-place spot onto the first-place medal podium after her trans opponent, AB Hernandez stepped down from it. Hogan's stunt was lauded on social media by Gaines and others.
On April 2, footage of women's fencer Stephanie Turner kneeling to protest a trans opponent at a competition in Maryland, and subsequently getting punished for it, went viral and ignited global awareness and scrutiny against USA Fencing.
Oregon is one of many Democratic-controlled states that saw transgender athletes compete in girls' track and field championships this weekend, with other highly-publicized incidents taking place in California, Washington, Maine and Minnesota.
The America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonpartisan research institute, filed a Title IX discrimination complaint against Oregon for its laws that allow biological males to compete in girls' sports on May 27.
The complaint was filed to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, which has already launched Title IX investigations against the high school sports leagues in California, Minnesota, Maine and Massachusetts.
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Oregon girls' track and field athletes Reese Eckard and Alexa Anderson don't stand on a medal podium next to a trans opponent. (Courtesy of America First Policy Institute)
"Every girl deserves a fair shot – on the field, on the podium, and in life," said Jessica Hart Steinmann, AFPI’s executive general counsel and vice chair of the Center for Litigation, in a statement.
"When state institutions knowingly force young women to compete against biological males, they’re violating federal law and sending a devastating message to female athletes across the country."
President Donald Trump signed the "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" executive order on Feb. 5 and his administration has made combating the continued enabling of trans athletes in girls' sports by Democratic states a priority.
The U.S. Department of Justice has already launched a lawsuit against Maine for its defiance of Trump's executive order, and the president suggested on Tuesday that federal funding pauses could be coming against California amid the situation involving Hernandez.
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https://www.foxnews.com/sports/girls-track-field-athletes-dont-stand-podium-next-trans-athlete-oregon-state-championship