On Sept. 10, a Massachusetts high school field hockey team forfeited a game against an opponent due to a male player on their opponent’s roster. Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School opted out of playing Somerset Berkley Regional High School citing safety concerns, seemingly related to an injury that one of their players sustained from a male player on a different team last season.
In a match against Swampscott High School, during a defensive penalty corner, a Dighton-Rehoboth player suffered “significant facial and dental injuries” after a male player’s shot on goal hit her in the face. What followed were calls to change the Massachusetts law allowing a member of the opposite sex to play on a high school sports team if there is not one for their sex. This law came with Title IX, a landmark federal civil rights law preventing the discrimination of anyone based on sex in federal funded schools.
The demands to change the law to ban male players from competing on female teams are inherently sexist. The shot that injured the Dighton-Rehoboth player could have been taken by a female athlete and had the same consequences; the fact that it was a male player has been taken way out of context and other incredibly important circumstances are being ignored in this conversation.
First, in the video posted by Boston 25 news and confirmed in the Sun Chronicle, the girl who was injured (as well as the other girls participating in the corner) was not wearing a corner mask. According to rules of hockey from the International Hockey Federation, field players are allowed to wear “a smooth, preferably transparent or single coloured face mask or metal grill face mask, which follows the contours of the face, when defending a penalty corner or penalty stroke for the duration of that penalty corner.”
A defensive penalty corner (DPC) occurs when a defensive player commits a foul in the penalty circle or a deliberate foul within 23 meters of the goal. Examples of this would include the ball hitting the defensive player’s foot, a defensive player intentionally hitting the ball out of bounds through the goal line, etc. Four defensive players line up on the goal line, usually inside the goal with the goalkeeper, as the offensive team positions themselves along the penalty circle, minus one player who stands on the goal line and sends the ball to their team on the referee’s whistle. Once the ball comes out and past the line of the circle, it can be shot as the defensive team runs out to defend the goal. Thus, adequate protective gear is important as defensive players are essentially running towards the shot.
While corner masks and other face protection are not required, they are recommended. Once you reach the collegiate level, teams are rarely seen without a pile of masks and extra padding behind the goal they are defending.
On my high school field hockey team, most defensive players brought masks or goggles (previously required face protection for the entire game) to be worn during DPCs. One of my teammates, Lydia Bennett, currently plays NCAA Div. I field hockey for Towson University and agreed on the importance of face protection.
“We wear hockey gloves on all players, masks on all players and posts and left trail [DPC defensive players’ positions] wear knee guards,” Bennett said in an interview with The Beacon. “They are necessities.”
Along with optional gear like gloves and goggles, players are required to wear a mouthguard and shinguards, which are much larger than soccer shinguards as the field hockey ball is harder and solid. However, this is much less protective gear than similar sports like ice hockey.
“With the ball and stick being as hard as they are, it is not surprising that when lifted off of the playing surface, even when legally done, this can cause significant injury,” Dr. Elizabeth Gardner, sports medicine researcher at Yale University School of Medicine, said.
Injuries are common in field hockey, especially to the head and face. DPCs and other incidents inside the penalty circle in particular account for 50% of all field hockey injuries in international tournament play. Approximately 22% of all players have experienced at least one injury to the face or teeth.
Another aspect is the teaching and coaching of correct plays, positioning, tackling, and stick handling, especially at the high school level. Players may be new to the sport or just generally have less control over their sticks; therefore, injuries happen more frequently with hard hit balls and wildly swinging sticks. Referees as well need to be fully knowledgeable in legal positioning and dangerous shots in order to keep everyone safe.
“Officially considered a non-contact sport, field hockey often results in injuries related to contact with another player, the stick, or the ball,” Dr. Eric W. Edwards, a pediatric and adolescent orthopedic sports medicine specialist, said. “The face is also at unique risk because of this [semi-crouched] body positioning and is often struck by the ball or an opponent’s stick.”
I have personal experience with field hockey injuries. I got hit in the face with a stick at a clinic the summer before my junior year. However, I was incredibly lucky as the trainers on site said that I was less than an inch from a shattered eye socket and could have gotten a concussion; I only ended up with some pretty gnarly cheek/eye bruising and a bleeding split lip, from which I still have a scar. A female player did that to me. A female player also hit one of my teammates in the forehead, which required stitches, and another teammate got a bad concussion with a neck injury from a girl as well.
Even the top collegiate players do not escape injury from this dangerous sport. Arguably the best current U.S. field hockey player, UNC’s head coach Erin Matson, had the top of her finger cut off during a game from a ball and doctors were considering amputating it.
“One of my assistant coaches literally picked up the top of my pinky from the field and carried it off,” Matson said in a Tiktok in 2022.
This conversation around banning male players is sexist. It makes it seem like one male player would decimate an entire team of girls just because he is a boy. He wouldn’t. Any player could have taken the shot that hit the girl in the face, it just so happened to be the male player in this game. Swampscott, the team with the male player who injured the Dighton-Rehoboth player originally, beat DR in that first round MIAA playoffs game, but lost in the next round to an all-female team.
In a letter to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, the captain of the Dighton-Rehoboth team said that “boys do not belong in girls sports,” which is inherently discriminatory, and using the same language that men have used to try and keep women out of traditionally male-dominated sports. Changing this law would not just ban male field hockey athletes from playing, it would also impact the 260 female wrestlers and 93 female football players in Massachusetts high schools. Sex-based discrimination includes men and boys, and not allowing someone to play a sport based on their gender, male or female, is discrimination. There are girls who are just as strong and could cause the same amount of injury as male high school players. Choosing to focus on the sex/gender of the player instead of the safety aspect perpetuates the sexism that lingers around female athletes.
I’m not saying all-girls high school teams must face an all-boys team and that it would be 100% evenly matched. Field hockey is not a popular enough sport amongst boys in the United States for that to happen any time soon, but allowing the one or two boys who do want to play onto the girls team will not make games any more dangerous than they would be with a girl who goes on to play at the top level of Div. I and professionally afterwards. In general, when you sign up for a sport, you have to be aware of the possibility of getting hurt, especially if you choose to forgo the recommended protective gear.
