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Kendall Kotzmacher will never forget the day she entered the box of the striker against Marissa Rothenberger.
It was a semi-final of the Minnesota state tournament. Kotzmacher and his teammates from White Bear Lake High School were looking to run in the state championship match. Kotzmacher had just transferred to White Bear Lake for his last year in order to win a championship, alongside his little sister and his teammate.
But Rothenberger, a trans athlete, was on the mound that day for their opponent, Champlin Park High School.
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Marissa Rothenberger launched a complete laundering in the quarter -final round of the Minnesota Women’s Softball Tournament. (Amber Harding / Outkick)
“They move ten times more,” Kotzmacher told PK Press Club Digital of Rothenberger’s land.
“I saw movement grounds, so when your hands are larger than a biological woman at this age, in Minnesota, in particular, you turn the ball ten times more. And I would say that this athlete was not on their best game that day, but even half of their best, they always blow it in front of us, turning the ball more, which cannot strike.”
Kotzmacher has locked enough to establish contact with Rothenberger that day. But Rothenberger held White Bear Lake just two points in seven strokes. It was the greatest number of points scored off Rothenberger throughout the season. But it was not enough, because during the last round, Rothenberger came to strike too.
After hitting a double to trigger a two-point rally earlier during the day, Rothenberger struck a double to relaunch the final round, and set up a peak-courier to win the match for Champlin Park.
“It was a half-swing. This athlete did not fall in their full potential, and the ball has always been extremely affected,” said Kotzmacher, who played a receiver behind Rothenberger that day. “It was difficult to call land because it seemed that every land I called, this athlete could strike.”
The career at the Kotzmacher high school ended right there. She will never have another chance of realizing her childhood dream to win a secondary school championship. She fell into her little sister’s arms and started to sob.
“Honestly, I just wanted to leave right away. I didn’t want to do anything else,” Kotzmacher said. “I couldn’t even treat what just happened.
“How do you recognize that you lost against a biological man? How do you treat these events that happened? And that was something all night, I still couldn’t do it … We lost against a biological man in a female tournament.”
The administration of President Donald Trump treated the incident and determined that Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) violated title IX by allowing him to perform. The institution has until October 10 to modify its policies to allow women in the sports of girls, or the risk of reference to the Ministry of Justice.
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Champlin Park celebrates the victory of the state championship while Bloomington Jefferson looks. (Amber Harding)
A press release from the Ministry of Education announcing cited the launcher’s performance during the 2025 season for the recent repression, declaring that “the male launcher has mastered female athletes for five consecutive games, abandoning only a deserved race in 35 rounds and withdrawing 27 female strikers.”
Kotzmacher is in his first year of college now, playing softball for Western Michigan University. But she hopes, for the good of her younger sister, that the Minnesota agencies will comply with the president’s decree to keep biological men outside the sports of girls and women. Rothenberger still has a high school season.
Minnesota has become one of the country’s first states to announce that it will not comply with the decree in February. The Democratic Directorate of Minnesota, led by Governor Tim Walz, the prosecutor General Keith Ellison and a legislature of the Democrat-Majjetority, took some of the positions that are most difficult to commit to allowing biological men to compete in the sports of girls during Trump’s mandate.
Ellison filed a complaint against Trump and the Doj, and boasted of “pursuing them first” on the issue. Ellison is also on the defendant side of a trial by three other softball launchers for girls from Minnesota, who remained anonymous, alleging that their rights IX rights were also raped last season.
And yet, Ellison’s office defended the concept of letting men play in the sports of girls.
“In addition to doing the exercise and the pleasure of competition, playing sports is accompanied by many advantages for young people. You are establishing friendships who can last a lifetime, you learn to work as part of a team, and you feel as if you belong,” said Ellison in response to girls’ trial in May. “I believe it is bad to distinguish a group of students, who are already confronted at higher levels of intimidation and harassment, and to tell these children that they cannot be part of the team because of whom they are. I will continue to defend the rights of all students to play sports with their friends and their peers.”
The state’s legislature did not adopt a bill that would have prohibited the trans trans of Girls ‘Sports, the “Preserving Girls’ Sports Act” in March. He fell from a shy vote to go to the Walz office. Meanwhile, the state legislator, the representative of Lian Kozlowski, who identifies himself as “non -binary”, called the bill “another version of intimidation and the genocide sanctioned by the State”.
Kotzmacher was in the state capital that day. She was in a rally outside the capital building, looking at Riley Gaines and the former Vikings of Minnesota, Jack Brewer, conducting a demonstration in support of the bill.
“This is a bit likely, like ‘I’m not going to go back from this problem and I will speak for other girls just like [Gaines] I spoke for myself, ” said Kotzmacher.
In addition to admiring sheaths, Kotmzacher has also become close to the founder of XX-Sox Jennifer Sey athletics throughout the recent increase in activism on the question of “saving female sports”.
But for Kotzmacher, it was only one of the many problems that made him, as well as his Minnesota adolescents, against the long -standing democratic authorities of the state.
“Right now, Minnesota is going through a lot of troubles. And there are a lot of bad things with what’s going on. It’s not the same state I grew up,” she said. “It is no longer sure to be there, if we are going to be honest, I am no longer allowed to go to St. Paul or to Minneapolis, my parents will not leave me, because it is too dangerous.”
In the meantime, Kotzmacher hopes that the Trump administration will take action to at least tackle the girl’s sports problem because she hopes her younger sister will have a fair and safe softball season in 2026.
“Knowing that it is recognized at a higher level is enormous … Seeing that people finally do something on this subject and recognize that they have done something wrong and they have removed us, it means a lot and I am excited to see what is happening and what is happening.”
