A dozen high school cross country runners found themselves on the front lines of the transgender athlete debate at a meet in Washington on Tuesday.
The teenage girls from Camas High School in Camas, Washington, defiantly refused to compete on October 13 after discovering that they were being pitted against a biological male athlete.
Logan Mihailoff, a junior at Camas High, switched from the boys’ competition to the girls’ midseason, competing in the male field as recently as September 5.
The switch sparked outrage among parents and students with a large group of the female Camas runners deciding to take a stand.
Almost half of the girls competing in Tuesday’s race walked off the course in protest of the biological male’s participation.
When the horn blared, the transgender competitor and the remainder of the female runners took off but around 11 girls slowly walked past the starting line with their arms linked and into the nearby tree line, exiting the course and the race.
A dozen female high school cross country runners walked off during Tuesday’s race
The girls from Camas High School in Washington protested competing against a trans athlete
Their bold move saw them sacrifice one of their high school competitions. However, their decision was supported by their parents, many of whom attended the race with signs calling to keep men out of women’s sports.
‘The more I heard about her friends wanting to do something, the more I heard about her team wanting to do something, we definitely were in support of that,’ Kevin Burns, the father of one of the protesting girls, Holly, told OutKick. ‘We told her, do what you think is best.’
‘You hear about it, but you just never think it’s going to be on your kid’s small cross-country team,’ Holly’s mother Sarah added.
Mihailoff has run in boys’ races as recently as last month. They competed in the junior varsity boys’ race at the Ultimook Race in Oregon, finishing 76th out of 301 runners on September 5, according to The Columbian.
Just over a month later on October 10, Mihailoff finished the second-fastest member of the Camas High girls’ team in the women’s elite race at the Nike Hole In The Wall XC Invitational in Arlington.
Mihailoff ran a personal best time of 18 minutes, 36.8 seconds, which saw them finish 39th in the race, which features elite high school athletes from across the Northwest.
‘I don’t see how it’s OK to discriminate against my daughter and the daughters of everyone else that is trying to fairly compete,’ Kevin Burns said.
Kevin and Sarah said that they were challenged by security when they attempted to hold up the signs protesting against transgender athletes competing in sports.
Logan Mihailoff, a junior, switched from the boys’ competition to the girls’ midseason
The girls walked past the starting line with their arms linked and into the nearby tree line
They also claimed that they faced backlash from a woman, who confronted them during the race.
‘I had a lady that came up to me and said she was a psychiatric nurse and that I was a disgusting human for holding up this sign and that I was doing psychological damage to these children,’ Sarah said. ‘I told her that one day I’m gonna have to stand before my Lord and Savior and I’m gonna feel good about this.’
The protest comes less than a month before Washington voters are set to head to the polls to cast their ballot on an initiative to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.
The state will vote on Initiative 638 on November 3, which, if passed, would ban biological males from competing in girls’ K-12 sports.
It took hundreds of thousands of signatures from across Washington to get the measure on the ballot.
And, despite being an overwhelmingly liberal state, there is optimism among activists that the initiative could pass.
Tentative new local polling has reportedly shown that Washington voters will cast their ballots in favor of passing the ban.
Polling conducted by Let’s Go Washington, a conservative-backed political action committee that advocated for the proposed ban, earlier this month shows 56 percent of the vote going in favor of the ban in November, according to KUOW.
Washington state is set to vote on barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. Washington Superintendent Chris Reykdal is pictured in 2021
‘People are with us, and they don’t wanna say it out loud,’ Hallie Herzberg, a spokesperson for Let’s Go Washington, told the outlet. ‘They don’t want to be villainized for it. They will support us, and they will stand up for girls, but they will do it in the safety of their own ballot.’
Meanwhile, nationally 66 percent of Americans are said to support policies that force trans athletes to play on sports teams that ‘match their sex at birth,’ according to polling that the Pew Research Center published last year.
Voters trend towards supporting banning trans athletes from competing with cisgender girls after they read the language used to describe the initiative as it will appear on the November ballot, according to Andrew Villeneuve, the founder of Northwest Progressive Institute, which has conducted some additional polling on the matter.
However, Democrats have conducted limited polling on the matter with party spokesperson Stephen Reed telling KUOW that, ‘This is not a slam dunk like some folks think it might be.’
27 states have already passed policies that separate biological males from competing in women’s sports in K-12. However, all of those policies were passed by state legislature rather than the popular vote.
Therefore, should Washington pass the initiative in November, it would become the first state to enact the policy through voter approval, according to Fox News.
Furthermore, it would also become the first state that Donald Trump lost to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election to adopt such a policy.
Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2025 aimed at keeping trans athletes out of girls’ and women’s sport
The President signed an executive order in February 2025 aimed at keeping trans athletes out of girls’ and women’s sports.
Washington outright rejected the order with the state’s Superintendent Chris Reykdal immediately speaking out against the policy.
Reykdal said in a statement that the order tried to force schools to ‘discriminate against trans female athletes’ in exchange for federal funds, and that it sought to ‘restrict transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports with their peers.’
He called the order unlawful, saying it contradicted the Washington Law Against Discrimination and state school rules. He added: ‘Our state law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and we will not back down from that.’
