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Connecticut Transgender Track Athlete Wins Girls’ State Championship

By Tom Joyce | May 30, 2024, 12:09 EDT

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2024/05/30/connecticut-transgender-track-athlete-wins-girls-state-championship/

A male athlete who identifies as transgender won a high school track state championship in Connecticut this week.

Conard High School junior Lizzy Bidwell is a male who identifies as a transgender girl.

Bidwell won the triple jump (36 feet, 8 inches) at the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Class LL girls’ outdoor track and field state championship on Thursday, May 29, according to Athletic.net. The distance was 14 inches longer than the runner-up’s best triple jump.

Bidwell also helped Conard, a public high school in West Hartford, Connecticut, win a CIAC Class LL girls’ outdoor track and field team state championship in May 2023.

Conard got 85 points at the meet – and Bidwell was the difference-maker. Bidwell edged out Glastonbury (79 points) by six points in the May 2023 state championship meet, according to CT Insider.

During that meet, Bidwell finished third in two events:  the triple jump (35 feet and 3 inches) and the high jump (5 feet and 2 inches), according to the report. Third-place finishes count as six points in Connecticut high school track state championship meets, according to the CIAC’s web site, meaning that Bidwell got the team 12 points in the championship meet.

Had Conard not received these points, it would have finished six points behind Glastonbury.

Connecticut allows male athletes who identify as girls to compete in girls’ sports, per Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference policy.

“The CIAC has concluded that it would be fundamentally unjust and contrary to applicable state and federal law to preclude a student from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the public gender identity of that student for all other purposes,” the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s transgender athlete policy says.

Bidwell is not the only state-champion transgender athlete in Connecticut track and field.

Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, two males who graduated from high school in 2020, won a combined 15 girls’ track state championships over their four-year high school careers, according to the CT Post.

Bidwell’s transgender identity was first reported by Reduxx earlier this year; Reduxx is a gender-critical feminist web site. NewBostonPost has confirmed Reduxx’s report.

Lizzy Bidwell’s mother is Carla Bidwell, according to two relatives’ obituaries posted in 2023; neither obituary states that Lizzy Bidwell has any siblings. Additionally, in an obituary from another relative in 2009, Carla Bidwell’s child’s name is stated as Lucas — Lizzy’s original first name, according to the Reduxx report. The Washington Times also reported that Lizzy Bidwell is an only child.

Carla Bidwell identified herself as a parent of a transgender person in a 2018 Teen Vogue article and in an open letter published by the Human Rights Campaign in 2017. Both said that at the time of publishing she lived in Georgia. The Human Rights Campaign’s letter said Carla Bidwell lived at the time in Acworth, Georgia. The only Carla Bidwell in the United States who has lived in Acworth, Georgia is the Carla Bidwell who now lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, according to People Finders; she moved to Connecticut in 2020 after living in Georgia for more than a decade, according to People Finders.

Carla Bidwell is a mathematics instructional coach in the East Hartford Public Schools, according to the district’s web site. It’s a position she also held in the Marietta Public Schools system in Georgia, according to her LinkedIn page. Acworth is 22 minutes from Marietta, according to Google Maps.

Conard High athletic director Jason Siegal could not be reached for comment on Wednesday or Thursday this week.