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Only a few days after President Donald Trump sent a warning to California to let a transgender athlete compete in the girls’ athletics championship, the state allowed a Trans athlete to take two titles against female competitors on Saturday.
Ab Hernandez, a transgender student-athlete for Jurupa Valley High School, took first place in the height of girls and triple jump to the state championship on Saturday at the Veteran’s Memorial Stadium in Clovis, in California.
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Transgender athlete Ab Hernandez de Jurupa Valley participates in the height jump of girls during the CIF state athletics at the Veterans Memorial Stadium on May 30, 2025 in Clovis, California. (Images Kirby Lee / Getty)
Hernandez also finished second in the height jump of Loren Webster of Woodrow Wilson High School, who was the only woman to finish in front of Hernandez in any competition that the Trans athlete competed this weekend.
Hernandez previously took first place in the three events during the preliminary round on Friday.
However, the competitors who finished behind Hernandez in the events all increased a place and received the medal they would have won if the trans athlete had not contributed.
The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) has made a series of rules in the days preceding the event to ensure that all the women who finished behind a biological man would be appropriately rewarded a medal according to their placement among the competitors.
So, during medal ceremonies for the three events, the competitors who finished a place behind Hernandez had to stand next to the trans athlete on the podium.
Ab Hernandez shares first place on the Triple Jump podium at the California Track and Field State Championship with a competitor. (Thanks to Beth Bourne)
AB Hernandez shares second long jumping place on the podium of the medal with a competitor of California State Track and Field Championship. (Thanks to Beth Bourne)
However, the presence of Hernandez in the competition of girls aroused controversy and a strong presence of protest throughout the weekend.
Contradictory demonstrations tormented the championship from Friday with pro-LGBTQ demonstrators and pro-feminine demonstrators who express signs, flags and clothes expressing their respective messaging.
People have sporting safeguard signs to protest against the transgender athlete Ab Hernandez de Jurupa Valley (not illustrated) at the CIF state athletics at the Veterans Memorial Stadium on May 30, 2025 in Clovis, California. (Images Kirby Lee / Getty)
Friday, a plane piloting a banner that read “No Boys in Girls’ Sports!” Same past on the stadium.
However, the conflict between the demonstrators at some point has become violent, when an LGBTQ protester has hit the local conservative activist Josh Fulfer on Friday with a flag pole. The images obtained by PK Press Club Digital show that the demonstrator LGBTQ Ethan Kroll seems to attack Fulfer through a car window, and Kroll is later arrested.
The police files obtained by PK Press Club Digital show that Kroll, a man, was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm, hindering an official and a vandalism.
Clovis police sergeant. Chris Hutchison told PK Press Club Digital that no other criminal incident occurred during the track meeting or nearby on Friday evening.
“Our position is always to allow people to exercise their constitutional right to freedom of expression and protest,” said Hutchison. “They have the right to do so in a way that does not encourage violence or not causing other problems. … We have no room for violence or material damage or something like that.”
California Town gathers behind Trump as he welcomes an athletics championship in the middle of the controversy of Trans athletes
But on Saturday, the awareness director of California Family Council, Sophia Lorey, was escorted from the commemorative stadium of the veteran by CIF officials for having distributed bracelets “Save Girls’ Sports” with pro-feminine messages to spectators. Images shared by Lorey on social networks show that the confrontation between it and the CIF manager while Lorey came out of the place.
Lorey told PK Press Club Digital that she had transmitted messages at previous events without any problems.
“We distributed half-page leaflets during the Prelims event and we didn’t tell us that we couldn’t do that,” said Lorey.
PK Press Club Digital contacted the CIF to comment on Lorey’s video.
Lorey and local conservative activist Beth Bourne told PK Press Club Digital that, unlike previous events, a man on a megaphone ordered spectators not to make derogatory comments on competitors, officials or other spectators on Saturday.
Lorey organized a press conference during the competition earlier in the day when the candidate for the post of Governor of California in 2026, Steve Hilton, spoke to protect the sports of girls against trans inclusion.
Current governor Gavin Newsom has been the subject of frequent local and national criticisms throughout the athletics elimination series for having allowed the Trans athlete to compete, despite the previously admission to his podcast that he thought that the men who compete in the sports of girls were “deeply unfair”.
Trump distinguished Newsom in a social article on Tuesday when he threatened to reduce state funding if a trans athlete was authorized to participate in the girls’ competition this weekend. But the state did not give in to Trump and simply adopted the changes in rules to accommodate other female athletes.
The United States Ministry of Justice announced on Wednesday an investigation into the state on the issue, and the United States Ministry of Education has been investigating the state on the issue since February.
However, California is far from being the only state that has seen its athletics championships for girls overshadowed by the controversy of Trans athletes.
This same weekend, the Trans athletes would have participated and won state competitions in Maine, Washington, Oregon and Minnesota.
Trump signed his decree of the executive “keeping men out of female sport” on February 5, but many democratic states openly challenged order, leading to multiple controversial situations like that involving Hernandez across the country in 2025.
