Trans athlete AB Hernandez — a 5'9", 120-pound senior from Jurupa Valley High School — just swept all three jumping events at the CIF Southern Section Masters Meet at Moorpark High School, and California's solution to the obvious problem was to make the girls share the first-place podium. Because if you can't beat unfairness, just pretend it's a tie.
Problem solved, right? Wrong.
Hernandez took first in the long jump at 20 feet 0.75 inches, first in the triple jump at 40 feet 7 inches, and first in the high jump at 5 feet 8 inches. That's a clean sweep of every field event entered. The biological female competitors? They trained their entire high school careers for this moment and got to stand next to a biological male on a "shared" podium as a consolation prize.
The CIF — that's the California Interscholastic Federation for those keeping score — enacted a pilot program that says any female athlete who finishes behind a trans athlete gets bumped up one spot. So Hernandez wins, the next girl also "wins," and everyone pretends this is normal. Riley Gaines, host of the "Riley Gaines Show" on Fox News, nailed it on X: "If you have to create a shared podium for the boy competing in the girls' event, you've already admitted you know he isn't a girl."
Boom. That's the whole argument in one sentence.
Here's a detail that tells you everything. During the long jump medal ceremony, Hernandez was reportedly warming up for the next event and wasn't on the podium. So Moorpark High School's Gianna Gonzalez stood alone in the first-place spot — despite finishing more than a foot behind Hernandez. For one brief, beautiful moment, a girl got to stand on top of the podium by herself. Then reality came crashing back in.
A retired California track official told OutKick exactly what everyone is thinking: "This is all a farce." Another observer — the mother of a high jump competitor — put it plainly: "I have a son, and I would never let my son compete against my daughter."
Governor Gavin Newsom's office, ever the profile in courage, offered this masterpiece of nothing: "The Governor has said discussions on this issue should be guided by fairness, dignity, and respect." Fairness. He actually used the word fairness. The guy who signed AB 1266 back in 2013 — the law that opened the door to all of this in California — wants to lecture us about fairness.
Meanwhile, President Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 addressing biological males in women's sports, and the DOJ and Department of Education are investigating California schools over their policies. Tennis legend Martina Navratilova, hardly a right-wing firebrand, called out Newsom directly: "Newsom could overturn this in a second. No excuse."
And now Hernandez has qualified for the state championship meet next weekend at Buchanan High School in Clovis. So we get to do this all over again. More swept events. More "shared" podiums. More girls standing next to a biological male pretending they both earned first place.
The NY Post reported on the meet results and the "shocking medal decision," which is generous phrasing. There's nothing shocking about it anymore. California has been telling us exactly who they are on this issue for over a decade. The only people shocked are the ones who still believed "fairness, dignity, and respect" meant something coming out of Sacramento.
To every girl who trained for years, pushed through injuries, gave up weekends and summers to shave fractions of an inch off her jump — we see you. And the fact that the adults in charge created a "shared podium" instead of protecting your category tells you they know exactly what's happening. They just don't care enough to stop it.