When East Valley of Spokane runner Verónica Garcia crossed the finish line at Mount Tahoma High School after winning the Class 2A 400-meter dash on Saturday, she looked over at the scoreboard, saw her time of 55.70, and smiled.
Ignoring the boos she heard from the crowd, Garcia took a moment to bask in her accomplishment of winning her second consecutive Class 2A 400-meter state title.
As a transgender person, Garcia has heard the boos before. She heard them last year when she hit the straightaway on her first state title run. She heard them again on Saturday, as the crowd cheered loudly for every other runner during the medal ceremony, before boos rang out when Garcia was announced as the winner.
While she warmed up before the race, a man near the starting blocks wearing an American flag shirt that read “Save women’s sports” repeated “Let’s go girls!” and “girls’ race!”
She heard the heckles, but the 17-year old Garcia didn’t let it negatively affect her performance. Instead, she used it as fuel.
“I’ll be honest, I kind of expect it,” Garcia said. “But it maybe didn’t have their intended effect. It made me angry, but not angry as in, I wanted to give up, but angry as in, I’m going to push.
“I’m going to put this in the most PG-13 way, I’m just going to say it’s a damn shame they don’t have anything else better to do. I hope they get a life. But oh well. It just shows who they are as people.”
Garcia’s time put her ahead of second-place finisher Lauren Matthew of West Spokane by nearly a full second, and beat her time from last year’s state final by .05 seconds.
Garcia won the 2024 championship with a time of 55.75, which made her the first transgender athlete in Washington State to win a state track title.
“I’m really proud of myself,” Garcia said. “I did what I came to do, and that’s good enough for me.”
East Valley’s coach declined to talk to The Seattle Times.
Garcia is reportedly one of fewer than 10 transgender student-athletes who participate in girls sports in Washington State, where the WIAA rule allows them to participate in sports in a way that is consistent with their gender identity.
In December, a group of 14 school districts proposed an amendment to the WIAA handbook that would restrict participation in middle and high school girls sports to students who were assigned female at birth. Another proposed rule change would create a new “open division” that all students would be eligible to compete in.
But the WIAA announced in April that the amendment votes would be advisory only, as it was determined that the rules would violate state law if enacted. Neither proposed amendment got the required 60 percent of votes required to pass anyway.
Washington’s state law allowing transgender athletes to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity has been in place since 2007, and was the first policy of its kind in the country.
With President Donald Trump’s February executive order titled “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” and the Department of Education recently announcing an investigation into the Tumwater School District’s decision to allow a transgender athlete on the opposing team to participate in a basketball game, the future of Washington’s inclusive policy is unclear.
While Garcia was the most high-profile of East Valley’s athletes, she wasn’t the only one who performed well.
East Valley’s Talan Hughes won the 300 hurdles with a time of 37.81, and Hayden Andersen took second in the girls 300 hurdles with a time of 44.54.
Garcia was a part of the 4×100 relay team that took first place earlier in the day with a time of 48.39, and was the anchor for the Knights’ 4×400 team that finished third with a time of 3:57.31.
Before and after that race, an opposing relay team from Tumwater wore black t-shirts that read “Keep Women’s Sports Female.”
For Garcia, who plans to study fire science and someday drive a Spokane Fire Department engine, winning the state title wasn’t just about herself.
“One of the things that Martin Luther King always pointed out is that you have to do what’s right,” Garcia said. “Even if there comes risk, you still have to do what’s right.”
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