Massachusetts Girls' Field Hockey Team Refuses To Play Opponent With Male Players

A terrible scene played out last year during a high school girls' field hockey game in Massachusetts.

The rules in the state allow boys to compete on the girls' team if there is no male equivalent for a sport. So, to be clear, this was not a transgender athlete. 

This was just a boy who wanted to play field hockey, but there was no boys' field hockey team at his school, Swampscott. 

Thus, he was granted the right to play on the girls' team. 

Well, during a playoff game against Dighton-Rehoboth in November, the boy fired a shot that hit a girl in the face and she "sustained significant facial and dental injuries," including the loss of two teeth.  

The video below shows the incident and while it's hard to see the injury, the scenes are disturbing as girls are heard screaming when they realize the damage that occurred. 

As Riley Gaines' social media post says, Dighton-Rehoboth has decided that it does not want that to happen again. 

The team has a game scheduled against Somerset-Berkeley, another girls' team that has male players on it. 

But the school announced that it is going to forfeit that contest rather than subject the girls to potential injuries. 

A high school girls' field hockey team in Massachusetts forfeited a game rather than force its players to compete against male opponents.

(Stock Photo/Getty Images)

In fact, as CBS reported in July, the Dighton-Rehoboth school district put a new rule in place that allows girls' teams to refuse to play against teams that have male players.

This is the first time that the rule will be used to avoid such an opponent. 

"Our Field Hockey coaches and captains made this decision," the school wrote in a release posted on social media. "There are times when we have to place a