Transgender Brookline High Track Runner Wins Girls’ 55-Meter Dash Event At Conference Meet

By Tom Joyce | December 18, 2023, 16:43 EST

Chloe Barnes running in the right lane for Brookline High. Screenshot taken from MSTCA-TV YouTube channel.

A male high school indoor track and field runner won an event at a girls’ meet in Boston last week.

Brookline High senior Chloe Barnes, who identifies as transgender, came in first place in the opening Bay State Conference meet of the season. It took place on Thursday, December 14 at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury.

Barnes ran the 55-meter dash in 9.21 seconds, coming in first place out of 37 competitors in the event. Barnes beat the runner-up, Newton North senior Jadyn Grant (9.33 seconds), by 0.11 seconds.

Had Barnes competed on the male side and finished the run in the same time, Barnes would have come in 13th place out of 29 competitors.

Barnes also helped the Brookline High indoor track and field team win a Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 1 state championship last season, earning a fourth-place finish in the 55-meter dash, as NewBostonPost previously reported.

The contribution from the transgender athlete in the state championship, which NewBostonPost was the first to report on, sparked backlash in national right-wing media and from Republican politicians.  Some of those politicians included former United Nations ambassador and current Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, former California gubernatorial candidate and Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner, and U.S. Representative Mary Miller (R-Illinois), among others.

TB Daily News was the first news outlet to report on Barnes’s transgender identity in January 2023. 

Male athletes who identify as girls can compete in girls’ sports in the Commonwealth. The state allows it due to a 2011 law called “An Act Relative to Gender Identity”; it made gender identity a protected class in Massachusetts public schools. As a result, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education directed the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association to allow people to compete on teams that match their gender identity, rather than their sex.

Barnes and Brookline High girls’ indoor track and field coach Mike DeYoung could not be reached for comment on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.

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