CLOVIS, Calif. — Jurupa Valley senior AB Hernandez stood on a hillside overlooking Veterans Memorial Stadium, a booklet of encouraging letters tucked under one arm and two gold medals hanging from her neck.
She rolled the medals between her fingers.
“I still feel like I’m gonna be here next year,” she said. “I guess I’ll process it overnight maybe, then tomorrow, I’m going to Disneyland.”
For most high school seniors, a state championship marks the end of a season.
For Hernandez, it marks the end of three years spent competing as a transgender athlete under a spotlight few teenagers could imagine.
On Saturday, she won state titles in the high jump and triple jump, capping her career as a four-time state champion. Days earlier, she had graduated from high school.
Away from the spotlight, Hernandez likes swimming, spending time with friends and working on her makeup routine. During the past two years, politicians and activists stoked by President Trump have turned her into a symbol in the national fight over transgender athletes’ right to participate in girls’ sports.
“I feel like I’m always going to be in the public eye,” Hernandez said. “It’s never going to go away and that’s weird. But maybe someday it’ll be for something else.”
At the state championships, that fight was visible everywhere except where Hernandez seemed most comfortable: among the athletes competing in the stadium.
At the end of Friday’s preliminary competition, Hernandez and five other high jump contenders sprawled on their stomachs beneath the high jump tent, cheering on West Ranch junior Avery Prestridge and La Jolla junior Anastasia Volkov in a jump-off for the final qualifying spot.
When Prestridge secured the berth, she and Hernandez exchanged a high-five and a smile.
“That’s what will stick with me,” Hernandez said. “Laying on the field, cheering for other girls, everyone being sweet.”
It was a stark contrast to the image detractors tried to paint earlier in the day.
While Hernandez warmed up on the track, anti-trans activists and politicians gathered across the street in an area marked by a CIF sign reading “free speech area.”
There, organizers who have protested women’s athletic events involving transgender participants across California delivered speeches demanding that the CIF prohibit Hernandez and other transgender athletes from competing. They were unmoved by CIF’s policy requiring that any transgender athlete who advances in track and field playoffs or places in competition be joined by the next cisgender girl in the rankings, with both advancing or receiving the same medal.
“The message being sent to female athletes is clear — your opportunities, your records, your placement and your hard work comes second to males,” former NCAA soccer player Sophia Lorey said during the rally.
California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton spoke alongside the protesters.
“The first thing we have to do is overturn the law that set all this in motion, AB 1266, that was passed in 2013, that’s why we’ve been living with this for so long,” Hilton said to Fox News. “That law violates the California state Constitution. … I will immediately suspend the law while we begin legal proceedings to overturn it.”
Earlier in the day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer posted a video on X with Hernandez.
“I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing,” Steyer told Hernandez. “So proud of you for succeeding. So proud of you for competing. That’s really the point. … And I’m going to hope like heck that you don’t just make state but you do really well there. Deal?”
Last year, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that, “As a Male, he was a less than average competitor. As a Female, this transitioned person is practically unbeatable.”
He also threatened to withhold federal funding from California if the CIF allowed Hernandez to compete. That came after he enacted an executive order in February 2025 barring transgender women and girls from participating in sports according to their gender identity.
Transgender participation in sports has become a central Republican talking point in recent years and it is impossible to separate Hernandez’s story from that political context.
Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and California Family Council have invested years and millions of dollars into messaging, advocacy and legal efforts surrounding the issue. According to ProPublica and public filings, those organizations collectively reported hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in 2024.
As a result, a California athlete who confirmed her transgender status became the focus of a national political fight.
“The voice of the kid who’s been targeted gets lost,” said activist Daisy Gardner, who spoke at a news conference supporting Hernandez before Saturday’s meet. “We’re up against a million[-dollar] machine on the other side who has launched the ‘Protect Girls’ Sports’ campaign, and we need to have a little ray of sunshine pushing through the darkness.”
The Trump administration’s Executive Order 14201, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” was issued on Feb. 5, 2025, and was followed the next day by an NCAA ban on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.
AB is not sure whether she will find a way to continue competing in college.
“I don’t think any child should have to go through this,” AB’s mother Nereyda Hernandez said. “These are adults willingly doing this to a minor child. This is a kid, a breathing human, a child. It’s not what people are making this out to be.”
For the first time during Friday’s preliminary competition, the clouds broke and the Clovis sun beat down on the field.
AB, who had posted the top regional mark, needed only one jump to qualify for the next day’s finals. She went last in the second flight.
As she prepared for her attempt, the public address announcer’s voice echoed through the stadium.
“In girls’ long jump, here comes AB Hernandez.”
A ripple of applause spread through the crowd from those who recognized the name. Nereyda and family friend Trevor Norcross were among the loudest.
Two hours later, after completing her triple jump qualifying leaps, Hernandez headed to the high jump, where she again found herself among the final competitors remaining.
During the long wait between events, Nereyda was interviewed by ABC30. At the same moment, AB was preparing for a high jump attempt.
Gardner, the activist, hurried over, tapped Nereyda on the shoulder and pointed toward the pit.
Nereyda quickly turned her phone sideways and hit record.
“Let’s go AB!”
The night before qualifying, AB, Nereyda and friends sat in a hotel room making bracelets. At first, they strung rainbow-colored beads. AB shook her head. Her colors were pink and gold.
“I know what looks good on me,” she said. “I want something that represents me. People see a flag, and that’s not me in my entirety. I want something that is me personally, me entirely.”
While Nereyda felt the familiar butterflies about what the next day might bring, AB focused on what mattered to her. She decided how she wanted to wear her hair and prepared the custom-made letterman jacket she got last year with money donated by supporters.
“She said, ‘I want my letterman jacket,’ and I was like, OK,” Nereyda said. “And she said, ‘I want that to be a reminder every time I wear it, I want it to be a reminder of the people who supported me,’ and that’s what she did.
“It was a daily reminder that she wasn’t alone.”
Those are the memories Nereyda says will stay with her more than the vitriol she and her daughter have faced during the past two years. AB is a reluctant transgender athlete pioneer who prefers to be known for so much more than just her gender identity, but the prospect of hiding because she was relentlessly attacked didn’t feel right, either.
“I’m always going to think about how hard she tried to be here,” she said. “She didn’t quit. Despite all the pressure, you can’t change my kid.”
The night before AB’s final competition, Nereyda felt sick. She suspected it was stress over what the next day might bring.
But Saturday passed with minimal disruption.
AB’s long jump did not meet her usual standard. She finished third with a mark of 20 feet, 2 1/4 inches, a result she described as “bittersweet.”
“It was a little nerve-wracking,” Nereyda said. “I could see it was a different vibe when she got into the high jump and triple jump.”
In those events, Hernandez delivered the top performances of the day to repeat as a state champion.
She leaped 42-8 3/4 in the triple jump, comfortably ahead of Los Altos senior Daniela Hughes, who finished at 41-1 before sharing the podium. Standing together atop the first-place position, the two posed for photos with Hughes’ arm draped around Hernandez.
“I’m just happy with my performance,” Hughes said when asked about sharing a podium. “I wanted to win a championship.”
About 30 minutes after the high jump medal ceremony, AB walked toward her mother.
Nereyda spotted her and threw her hands into the air.
“My baby!”
The two embraced, away from the crowd, the cameras and the ire.
“She did it,” Nereyda said. “With everything else, it didn’t matter, she did it.”
The post Shielded by love, transgender athlete AB Hernandez defeated vitriol stoked by Trump appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
