A male volleyball player's spike left North Carolina teen Payton McNabb with a brain bleed and partial paralysis.
Washington state still lets males onto the girls' wrestling mat.
What happened to one Washington girl on that mat in December 2025 should have ended this fight for good.
What Happened to Kallie Keeler at Emerald Ridge High School
Kallie Keeler was 15 when she stepped onto the mat at a girls' tournament at Emerald Ridge High School on December 6, 2025.
Nobody told her that her opponent was male – she found out afterward from a coach on another team.
Keeler says that opponent sexually assaulted her during the match.
Her mother, Stephanie Brown, caught the match on video, and her daughter's distress is plain to see.
Keeler says she let herself be pinned just to make it stop.
A Title IX investigator who reviewed the footage concluded the male wrestler likely made forceful contact with Keeler's genitals, according to The Epoch Times.
It took school officials 53 days to bring in law enforcement.
Two Rogers High School officials – Principal Jason Smith and Athletic Coordinator Peter Collins – were hit with gross misdemeanor charges for allegedly ignoring Washington's mandatory reporting law.
The wrestler was never charged, because Pierce County prosecutors leaned on state case law holding that athletes implicitly accept physical contact.
The U.S. Department of Education opened a Title IX investigation in February 2026.
Two Federal Courts Brushed Off the Danger to Female Wrestlers
Keeler and her mother, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, asked for modest relief.
They wanted Keeler kept away from male opponents, or at least warned ahead of time and allowed to opt out without penalty.
The Puyallup School District promised not to punish Keeler for sitting out a match, but ADF says the WIAA could still penalize her with forfeits.
On August 23, U.S. District Judge David Castillo in Tacoma turned the family down.
A girl who says she was assaulted on the mat could not convince him the danger of it happening again was likely enough to justify relief.
On September 25, the Ninth Circuit refused too, holding Keeler to an extra-demanding legal standard for emergency relief.
The appeals court said there was no emergency because the season does not begin until November, and it called the request "too broad" for covering every male opponent instead of the one involved.
The family's experts – University of Nebraska exercise scientist Gregory Brown and former American Medical Society for Sports Medicine president Chad Carlson – testified that males pose "predictable, identifiable, increased, and unequal risks" to female wrestlers.
The WIAA's own rulebook admits the bodies are different, setting a 7 percent minimum body fat for male wrestlers and 12 percent for females.
Yet the association says it "remains committed to following Washington State law."
That policy has a loud champion in Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal, whose office is a defendant in the case.
Reykdal defied President Trump's executive order on girls' sports and insisted it was "inaccurate to say, biologically, that there are only boys and there are only girls."
On October 5, ADF took the fight to Justice Elena Kagan with an emergency application.
The filing lays out the warnings the WIAA already had.
A male athlete won state titles in girls' track and field in 2024 and 2025, and another male tackled a girl in girls' basketball, sparking a federal Title IX investigation.
According to the filing, the WIAA changed nothing.
"No girl should have to choose between playing the sport she loves and her safety," said ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch.
The Supreme Court Already Settled the Question Washington Keeps Dodging
On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in West Virginia v. B.P.J. that states may keep males out of girls' sports, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing that safety and fair competition justify it.
Washington read that ruling and kept its policy anyway.
So a teenage girl who says she was violated on a tournament mat is now begging the highest court in the land for a heads-up.
Not a ban.
A warning.
Two federal courts looked at this case and found reasons not to act.
The danger was real enough for the Title IX investigator who reviewed the video, and real enough for the girl on the bottom of that pin.
The girls' wrestling season opens in November, and every family with a daughter on a Washington mat should be watching what Justice Kagan does next.
Sources:
- Greg Piper, "Female Wrestler Who Claims Male Sexually Assaulted Her on Mat Seeks Emergency Order From SCOTUS," Just the News, October 5, 2026.
- Jackson Thompson, "Washington Family Requests SCOTUS Injunction After Daughter Was Allegedly Sexually Assaulted by Trans Athlete," Fox News, October 5, 2026.
- Ari Hoffman, "WA Teen Asks Supreme Court to Protect Her From Trans-Identified Male Wrestling Opponents After Alleged Sexual Assault in Competition," The Post Millennial, October 5, 2026.
- Tom Gantert, "High School Wrestler Asks Supreme Court to Allow Her to Avoid Competing With Boys," The Epoch Times, October 5, 2026.
- Alejandro Avila, "Washington Female Wrestler Appeals Title IX Case Over Alleged Assault by Trans Opponent to Ninth Circuit," Fox News, September 3, 2026.
- Jackson Thompson, "State Education Chief Says It's 'Inaccurate' to Say There Are Only Two Genders, in Defense of Trans Athletes," Fox News, February 21, 2025.
- Stephanie Weaver, "Who Is Payton McNabb? Trump Honors Former Volleyball Player at Speech," FOX 5 New York, March 4, 2025.
- U.S. Supreme Court, "West Virginia v. B.P.J.," U.S. Supreme Court, June 30, 2026.
Related posts:
Dick Durbin Bolted on Female Athletes Without Hearing a Single One and Katie Britt Unloaded
2028 Democrat Darling is Desperate to Excuse His Girls Sports Decision After the Supreme Court Ruled Against Him
Watchdog Accuses Senate Candidate of Acting as Decoy While Colluding With a Group Spending Millions
