A girls' football team has been penalised for making a statement in favour of equal pay for men and women in sport.
In the middle of a game against another school, some members of Vermont's Burlington High School (BHS) team took off their blue uniform strips to reveal custom-made white T-shirts underneath.
They bore the slogan “#EqualPay”.
However, league rules ban the players from wearing slogan T-shirts during official matches, and the referee issued yellow cards to four of the girls for doing so that night, the Burlington Free Press reported.
The team’s #EqualPay T-shirts are part of a wider campaign launched by the team to raise awareness for the pay disparities between male and female football players.
The girls, who were inspired by US football star Megan Rapnioe's efforts to close the wage gap, wear the T-shirts for training and have started selling them to other local football teams.
The shirts cost $25 (£19.25) but the team is asking men to pay 16 per cent more at $4.80 (£3.70) in order to represent the average wage gap between men and women in Vermont.
So far, they have received orders for more than 500 tops.
All funds raised from sales go towards funding girls football teams in BHS’s local community.
One player, Maggie Barlow told the WPTV news channel that unequal pay as “appalling”, adding: “It’s ridiculous that that’s still a thing.”
