Transgender Runner Helps Brookline High Girls Win Division 1 Track & Field Massachusetts State Championship

By Tom Joyce | March 6, 2023, 18:16 EST

The Brookline High girls’ indoor track and field team recently won a Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 1 state championship.

Brookline earned 63 points at the MIAA Division 1 state championship meet for the winter 2022-2023 season on February 17, outperforming teams like Newton North (51 points) and Wachusett (43 points).

In its state championship-winning effort, the Brookline girls’ team received contributions from a transgender athlete:  Chloe Barnes. The junior is a biological male who identifies as a transgender girl, as TB Daily News reported in January 2023 and Brookline’s student newspaper, The Sag, reported in June 2022.

Barnes competed in the 55-meter hurdles and came in fourth place (8.72 seconds), earning five points for Brookline in the championship meet. Barnes finished 0.24 seconds behind the winner of the race:  Sarah Dumas, a junior at Franklin High (8.48 seconds).

Barnes competed only in this one event at the championship meet.

Although Barnes was a part of Brookline’s four-by-200-meter relay team earlier in the season, as NewBostonPost previously reported, the team changed its lineup in that event. Brookline took Barnes off of its four-by-200-meter relay team, which earned three points at the Division 1 championship meet with a sixth-place finish.

At the state championship meet, teams earned points based on their performances. The top eight finishers in each respective event earned points for their team.

Here is a breakdown of how the scoring system works, according to the MIAA:

 

First place: 10 points

Second place: 8 points

Third place: 6 points

Fourth place: 5 points

Fifth place: 4 points

Sixth place: 3 points

Seventh place: 2 points

Eighth place: 1 point

 

The MIAA invites track & field athletes to its state championship meets based on their regular season performances. The MIAA sets minimum benchmarks athletes must beat to qualify for the event. For a Division 1 girls’ track athlete to compete in the state championship meet, that competitor needed a 55-meter hurdle time of 9.65 seconds or lower during the regular season. Barnes outperformed that benchmark in all 13 meets Barnes participated in this past season, according to Athletic.net.

Before this NewBostonPost story was published, no news media outlet had reported the contribution Brookline received from a transgender athlete in the Division 1 championship meet. Although The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald reported on Brookline winning the Division 1 state championship meet, their reporting never mentioned Barnes’s status. 

 

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