NH "Trans" Track Athlete Favored To Win State Championship MeetFebruary 5, 2024 If betting on high school sports were legal, then it would make sense to bet on the male competing on the girls’ side of the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 2 state championship meet next weekend. That’s not a hunch. Going into the Division 2 state championship meet on Sunday, February 11, Kearsarge Regional High School sophomore Maelle Jacques, a biological male, is ranked as the top high jumper in the division, according to the state’s Track & Field Results Reporting System. The championship meet is scheduled tol take place at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Jacques has competed in four regular season meets this season, and has earned a first-place finish every time, according to the Track & Field Results Reporting System. Jacques is also the only Division 2 girls’ competitor in New Hampshire who has cracked the five-foot mark this season. Jacques’ top jump is 5 feet 1/2 inch — besting the top jumps of the next two best girls’ competitors season-bests by 0.75 inches. (And adding to Jacques’s advantage: one of those competitors appears to be out with an injury, while the other competes in several events and has regressed in the high jump as the season has progressed.) In the spring 2023 outdoor track season, Jacques finished second in the 1600-meter run (5:32.39) and fifth in the high jump (4 feet, 10 inches) at the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association Division 3 championship meet. Kearsarge Regional School District superintendent Winfried Feneberg defended allowing Jacques to compete on the girls’ sports teams, in a written statement emailed to NewBostonPost last spring:
The Independent Council on Women’s Sports reported the runner’s transgender status in a tweet on May 25, 2023. Several right-of-center news outlets reported on Jacques’ transgender identity at the time, including TB Daily News, Breitbart, Daily Wire, and The Washington Times, among others. The organization that governs interscholastic sports in New Hampshire allows athletes to compete based on their self-selected gender identity. Here is the organization’s transgender athlete policy, according to its web site:
Kearsarge Regional High School, the public school in Sutton that Jacques attends, has about 520 students. It serves the towns of Bradford, Newbury, New London, Springfield, Sutton, Warner, and Wilmot. Sutton is a small New Hampshire town with about 2,000 residents located about 25 miles northwest of Concord, New Hampshire, the state’s capital. Feneberg could not be reached for comment on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Nor could Jacques. Back to "There's only H" page, trans-sports section |