A flyer featuring a pink background was the top Instagram post on California state superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw’s page on Saturday morning. It read, in blue, “a male athlete” held the top spot for an upcoming high school girls’ track and field meet, listing the event start times for protesters.
It was a tactic Nereyda Hernandez previously faced when her daughter, Jurupa Valley High track and field athlete AB Hernandez, first hit the national spotlight last year.
It has been about a year since President Trump targeted AB, who is transgender. As a result, the athlete and her mother knew what to expect when the track postseason began in May. There would be cameras, protesters and vitriol directed at a high school athlete.
“In November, we took a trip,” Nereyda said. “We went to New York and Cancun, we had a blast. We knew we had to get ready, we had to have that peace, because they were going to do this again.”
CIF policies allow transgender athletes to compete alongside other cisgender girls. If the transgender athlete places high enough to advance in qualifying or to medal at a CIF event, the athlete advances or receives the medal. But so does the next athlete in line. As a result, AB shared the first-place podium alongside another athlete twice at the state track and field meet last year.
This effort to include everyone did not quell protests.
Outside of a track and field preliminary meet at Yorba Linda High on Saturday, an anti-transgender advocacy group called Save Girls’ Sports organized a protest against California policies that allow transgender athletes to compete based on their gender identity. During a news conference they streamed before the event, they accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom of failing to protect fairness in girls’ sports.
“Girls across California will continue losing placements, safety and opportunities that they rightfully earned,” said former Vanguard University soccer player Sophia Lorey, who is the outreach director of California Family Council.
Nereyda said this year hasn’t been as bad as a year ago when Hernandez was first thrust into a national anti-trans backlash.
“Once they started posting [online] about their protest, I thought, ‘Wow, it’s going to be another crazy year,’” she said. “But no, on the outside, they had maybe, maybe 10 people. … They’re there to target one child, but they affect all of them.”
California’s two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates, businessman Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, sent statements that were read at the rally against Hernandez’s participation. Shaw also participated in the protest.
Hernandez competed in girls’ volleyball the past three seasons and has stayed in the news cycle whenever she competes in track events.
“I told AB, this is a [midterm] election year,” Nereyda said. “They’re gonna hit us hard, because they’re using us for their campaigns.”
Several sports governing bodies have banned trans girls and women from women’s sports since Trump’s executive order in January 2025 that directs federal agencies to restrict transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports. But the California high school athletics governing body has resisted, sparking outrage from anti-trans groups.
Nereyda constantly reminds people that Hernandez’s participation does not violate any California law or CIF bylaw and she doesn’t block anyone else from participating in competition.
“She has been doing this sport since freshman year [of high school],” Nereyda said. “She’s not doing anything wrong.”
On Saturday, Hernandez placed first in three events at the CIF Southern Section Division 3 preliminaries — triple jump, long jump and a five-way tie for high jump — a year after she won two state titles in triple jump and high jump. (She earned silver in the long jump.) Hernandez’s triple jump and long jump scores this weekend were the state’s best marks this season, but behind state records.
Protesters have demanded Hernandez and other trans girls not be allowed to compete with cisgender girls at all, regardless of CIF’s inclusion rules.
“These young women trained for years for this moment, and they deserve a level playing field,” Lorey said in the press conference. “The CIF’s policy doesn’t protect inclusion; it destroys it. Girls’ sports exist because women fought for them. We will fight for them again.”
The Justice Department is suing California over its transgender athlete participation rules, while the U.S. Department of Education has expanded investigations into multiple California schools and athletic organizations over what it calls Title IX violations tied to trans athletes competing in women’s sports.
Hernandez is poised to face more backlash in the coming weeks, but Nereyda said they are ready for it.
“It’s just the outsiders,” Nereyda said. “They’re infiltrating, pretending they’re parents or they know people, but I’m the mom. I know who they are.”
Hernandez will compete in the Southern Section finals next weekend with the goal of closing her high school athletics career in three weeks at the state track and field championships in Clovis.
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