Diocese Bars Girls from Playing Contact Sports with Boys

By Mary Pilon
New York Times
September 30, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/sports/roman-catholic-diocese-of-harrisburg-bars-girls-from-playing-contact-sports-with-boys.html?ref=sports&_r=3

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg in Pennsylvania has adopted a policy requiring boys on its school wrestling teams to forfeit matches against female opponents, school officials said Tuesday. The policy also barred girls from joining Catholic school tackle football and rugby teams.

The policy said that boys and girls competing together in sports that involve “substantial and potentially immodest physical contact” would conflict with the diocese’s religious mission.

Safety and modesty were at the root of the policy change, Joe Aponick, communications director for the diocese, said Tuesday. “For students, we think about the mind, body and spirit,” he said. “It’s a holistic approach. When we look at the athletic field, that doesn’t exist on its own. It’s an extension of the classroom. That’s where the modesty piece comes in.”

The policy prohibiting participation by both sexes in the three sports went into effect in July. It was first reported Tuesday by WITF, a radio station in Harrisburg.

Under the rules, a boy would have to forfeit a wrestling match against a girl on an opposing team. Though the rules bar girls from tackle football or rugby, teams in those sports would not be barred from playing against a non-diocesan team with a female athlete. “Catholic coed sports policy is only for Catholic teams and cannot impose its policies on other teams,” the policy said.

Currently, there are no girls in those sports among the roughly 11,000 students in the diocese’s kindergarten-through-12th-grade school system, Aponick said. “Preparation for Christian adulthood likewise involves the development and encouragement of appropriate, dignified and respectful forms of contact between male and female students,” Bishop Ronald W. Gainer wrote in a letter to students and parents regarding the policy. “The Diocese therefore believes that it is incompatible with its religious mission and with its efforts to teach Gospel values to condone competitions between young men and women in sports that involve substantial and potentially immodest physical contact.”

Aponick said that he had “not really had much reaction” to the change.

In 2013, a middle-school girl successfully sued a Pennsylvania school district for her right to participate on her school’s boys wrestling team.

The Philadelphia Interscholastic Athletic Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.