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.
Hernandez is currently ranked third in California in the triple jump, but is not ranked as a top athlete nationally. She has been outperformed by over 2 meters in her jumps by girls competing in states that have banned gender-affirming care.
“We’re not seeing a dramatic increase in trans people winning competitions or a dramatic increase in injuries or other potential risks to other participants,” said Elana Redfield, federal policy director of the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. “There isn’t evidence to support these actions.”
Chino Valley Unified School District President Sonja Shaw, who is also a candidate for California superintendent of public instruction, nevertheless insists transgender girls like Hernandez have an advantage.
“In 2026, my biggest goal is to make sure communities across California elect [school board] members who are going to stand up and say no,” Shaw said at a press conference outside of the track meet. She doxxed Hernandez, revealing her name, her high school and the fact that she is trans, in February. Shaw also recently authored a motion to support banning trans athletes from youth sports. “We’re asking for President Trump to pull the funding. We have to have the funding pulled so girls can win.”
Leandra Blades, a school board member for the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, agreed. “I’m calling for city councils to put this on your agendas. It can’t just be school board members that are doing it. We will not be silenced and we will not go away.”
Hernandez ultimately placed first in triple jump, eighth in high jump and third in long jump at Saturday’s event.
“All I thought was, I don’t think you understand that this puts your idiotic claims to trash. ‘She can’t be beat because she’s biologically male.’ Now you have no proof that I can’t be beat,” Hernandez said.
Studies show trans athletes have not outperformed their cisgender counterparts. Transgender women were found to be disadvantaged compared to cisgender women by several measures. But some attendees believe it was not fair to allow AB to compete.
“It’s frustrating to have a daughter that might be the one girl that doesn’t advance because there’s someone else that’s going to take a spot from an actual biological girl. Athletics, physicality — it’s about body types, period,” said one father whose daughter competed against Hernandez. “There are two body types. There’s not a continuum. That’s science fiction.”
Four attendees who spoke to Capital & Main proposed segregating trans athletes to their own league. Hernandez says that the overwhelming majority of athletes competing alongside her support her.
“Girls were just shocked that people would actually come to do that, and really bully a child,” she said. Hernandez has competed on the track team for three years, and says this is the first year that her presence has drawn any negative attention. “I’ve done this for two years prior and nothing, so why now?”
Over the past few years, Hernandez has trained meticulously to meet her goal of becoming a top long and triple jump athlete. She says one of her inspirations is Alyssa Hope, who attended Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Riverside and is now competing on the University of Southern California’s track and field team.
“I’ve trained so hard. I mean, hours of conditioning every day, five days a week. Every day since November, three hours after school. And then all of summer, no summer break for me,” she said. “A few people think I’m brave and strong and they hope to be like me one day. I say, don’t just hope, make it happen.”
Superintendent candidate Sonja Shaw strolled around the stadium arm in arm with Jessica Tapia, a former gym teacher at Hernandez’s high school who was fired after stating she would not respect trans and nonbinary students’ pronouns. The two women are part of the Save Girls Sports association, which has a goal of banning transgender athletes from California youth sports. They chatted with supporters, including an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy who asked for an extra large size of a Protect Girls Sports T-shirt they were handing out. John Luciano, a contributing photographer for OC Sports Zone, a sports journalism outlet covering Orange County, told Shaw, “I completely agree with you.”
Shaw and Tapia also had several heated exchanges with attendees who came to support Hernandez, including the student’s mother.
“What a coward of a woman you are, allowing that,” Shaw said to Nereyda Hernandez. “How embarrassing!”
AB Hernandez and the other top nine athletes in each event will advance onto the next round in the leadup to the California Interscholastic Federation State Track & Field Championships on May 30 and 31.
“You really can’t get a team like mine anywhere else. My team is very special, very diverse. We have probably one of the strongest bonds known. We’re probably unbreakable,” Hernandez said. “Everyone tells me, ‘Well, you gotta win now, you got to win. You got to let the haters talk about something new.’”
