Senate decides against girls’ sports bill

AUGUSTA – It’s two outs in the ninth inning for a bill aimed at expanding sports opportunities for high school girls who are good enough to play with the boys.

Rep. John Michael’s bill would allow girls to try out and play for any school’s baseball, football, wrestling, boys basketball, hockey or soccer team. Some schools allow it already.

But the general policy, followed by many high schools in the state, says girls can play on boys sports teams only if there’s no equivalent or comparable sport for girls.

“Some girls can go out for the team and play with the best of them,” Michael, an independent from Auburn, said Thursday. “But some schools hold them back to only-girls teams.”

Michael said that’s not fair, and he swayed a narrow majority of the House to his point of view in an earlier vote on his bill. But the Senate disagreed and voted to kill it.

Now, Michael is hoping to salvage at least some portion of the bill by persuading lawmakers to appoint a negotiating panel, made up of equal numbers of opponents and proponents, to work out a compromise.

But even if the conference committee is able to agree, there’s no guarantee the House and Senate will go along with a compromise it offers.

Michael’s lineup of supporters before the Education Committee included Katie Lachapelle, formerly of Lewiston and now of Schenectady, N.Y., where she coaches ice hockey and field hockey for Union College.

Lachapelle began playing ice hockey with boys when she was 5 years old, and she was a member of the Lewiston High state championship team of 1995.

“Being able to continue playing ice hockey with the boys enabled me to compete at the highest level I could to prepare me for college,” Lachapelle said in testimony to the committee. It helped her to win a partial scholarship to Providence College, she added.

A younger female athlete, April Gerry of Auburn, plays baseball in her local Little League, where she’s a starting catcher and “a pretty good hitter, sometimes getting doubles and triples,” she told the committee.

While Gerry believes she will be allowed to try out for Edward Little High School’s baseball team, she said not all girls in her position would have the same opportunity. “I hope I will always be allowed to try out and play for the best team when I’m in school,” she said.

Rep. Gerald Bouffard of Lewiston voted against Michael’s bill, saying he agrees with the gist of the proposal. But the Democrat believes that having it apply just to girls is discriminatory.

“If you’re going to have equal opportunity, you should have it apply for all boys and girls,” Bouffard said. He added that he has reservations because he thinks some sports – such as hockey – might be too rough for girls playing on a boys team.

Michael believes allowing boys to play on girls teams could “destroy” the girls teams. He pointed to a 1999 Superior Court decision allowing schools to bar boys from girls field hockey teams because boys tended to take over those teams, forcing rival schools to recruit boys in order to remain competitive.

In 1996, the state Human Rights Commission ruled that girls have a right to compete on boys wrestling teams.

Michael said a random check shows a variety of policies at Maine high schools. He said schools in Portland, Auburn and Lewiston allow girls to play on any boys team, while Bangor does not allow it.