NC volleyball player urges transgender ban for schools’ female sports

A North Carolina high school volleyball player has urged the state legislature to pass a bill banning transgender athletes born male from playing on female sports teams after she was seriously injured when a transgender girl spiked a ball at her.

Payton McNabb, a senior at Hiwassee Dam High School in Murphy, told state representatives Wednesday that she suffered a concussion and neck injury during a game in September when the trans athlete sent the ball into her face.

“Due to the North Carolina High School Athletic Association policy allowing biological males to compete against biological females my life has forever been changed,” McNabb said, WLOS reported.

She said she still struggles with the effects of her injuries, including impaired vision, partial paralysis on the right side of her body, unremitting headaches, anxiety, and depression.

McNabb claimed that she also has been forced to obtain accommodations at the school as a result of her “impaired” ability to understand and retain information.

“I was unable to play the rest of my last volleyball season, and although I’m currently playing softball I’m not able to perform as well as I know I have in the past because of the injury,” she told the legislature.

“I’m not here for me because I know that my time playing is coming to an end,” McNabb said. “I’m here for every biological female athlete behind me. My little sister, my cousins, my teammates.”

She added: “Allowing biological males to compete against biological females is dangerous. I may be the first to come before you with an injury, but if this doesn’t pass I won’t be the last.”

Also on hand to push for the legislation was former All-American Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who tweeted: “Watch the clip of Payton McNabb getting spiked in the face by a male competing with the women.

“Then watch her testimony she gave today for the first time publicly. I was honored to stand alongside her in NC to continue the fight to protect women’s sports,” she added.

Gaines was previously a teammate of the controversial athlete Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who competes in college women’s swimming.

Gaines gained national prominence for criticizing an NCAA decision allowing Thomas to compete against her in Division I women’s races.

On Wednesday, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled House on Wednesday passed H574, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which would prohibit transgender girls from joining female sports teams in middle school, high school, and college.

The veto-proof vote was 73-39 — with three Democrats voting in favor — to separate sports by biological sex, based solely on students’ “reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

The bill now heads to the Senate, where a competing proposal could reach the floor as soon as Thursday. The Senate bill would only create restrictions for middle and high school athletes.

“This bill is a bill to be inclusive, not to be exclusive,” said GOP Rep. Kristin Baker, the bill’s primary sponsor. “This bill is to allow fair and particularly safe, physically safe, competition.”

Democratic Rep. Vernetta Alston blasted the GOP for amplifying a few isolated incidents she said to blow the problem out of proportion, saying injuries happen all the time in sports regardless of who’s participating.

“It is a pretext for bigotry and part of a larger effort to ban transgender people from living their lives,” Alston said during floor debate, warning that the bill would further exclude a small and already vulnerable population.

But Baker argued an injury like McNabb’s is one too many.

With Post Wires