A crowd of about 30 adults, including three local school board members, spent hours at a track meet at Yorba Linda High School heckling a 16-year-old transgender athlete on Saturday. AB Hernandez, a student at Jurupa Valley High School, has been the target of a right-wing campaign to ban trans athletes from California youth sports.
“There’s nothing I can do about people’s actions, just focus on my own,” Hernandez told Capital & Main in an exclusive interview on Saturday during a break in the track meet. “I’m still a child, you’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person.”
Campus security guards and Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies stood by as the adults continually yelled at Hernandez from the sidelines. At one point, the noise caused a false start in a race. The Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, which the high school is part of, “prohibits discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying in all district activities.” The district did not respond to a request for comment.
