Two high school seniors turned their backs on ‘fairness’ at state championships – and officials weren’t having it
The dramatic moment two Oregon high school girls stepped OFF the medal podium rather than share it with a transgender athlete has erupted into a national controversy after officials allegedly ordered them to “get out of the photo” entirely.
Alexa Anderson, 18, from Tigard High School, and Reese Eckard, also a senior from Sherwood High School, made headlines Saturday when they staged a silent protest at the Oregon state track and field championships – refusing to stand alongside a biological male competing in the girls’ high jump event.
But what happened next has sparked even greater outrage.
“We stepped off the podium in protest and, as you can see, the official kind of told us ‘hey, go over there, if you’re not going to participate, get out of the photos,'” Anderson revealed in an exclusive interview on Fox News‘ “The Ingraham Angle” Monday night.
The teen athlete, who finished third in the competition, claims officials didn’t just ask them to step aside – they demanded the protesting girls be completely erased from the official championship photos.
“They asked us to move away from the medal stand, so when they took the photos, we weren’t even in it at all.”
‘Someone has to say this isn’t right’
The viral footage shows Anderson and Eckard stepping down from their respective podium positions – third and fourth place – and turning their backs as a trans athlete who represented Ida B. Wells High School stood to receive a fifth-place medal.
The footage then showed an official confront the two young women, and gesture for them to move away.
In a powerful statement that’s resonating with female athletes nationwide, Anderson made her position crystal clear:
We didn’t refuse to stand on the podium out of hate. We did it because someone has to say this isn’t right. In order to protect the integrity and fairness of girls sports we must stand up for what is right,” she told Fox News Digital.
The transgender athlete at the center of the controversy previously competed in the boys’ category in 2023 and 2024, according to reports. The athlete, who now goes by Liaa Rose, competed in the boys’ category in 2023 when he went by the name Zachary before transitioning to girls’ competition this year.
Trump’s ‘war on women’s sports is over’ declaration
The Oregon controversy comes at a pivotal moment, just months after President Trump signed his landmark “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order in February.
With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump declared during a White House ceremony on February 5, surrounded by female athletes and advocates including former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines.
The sweeping order will direct federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as prohibiting the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports categories. Schools that don’t comply risk losing federal funding entirely.
Female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to men competing against them in women’s sporting categories,” according to a White House fact sheet on the order.
‘Taking away opportunities from hardworking women’
Anderson didn’t mince words about why she felt compelled to take a stand, even if it meant being excluded from her own championship photos.
It’s unfair because biological males and biological females compete at such different levels that letting a biological male into our competition is taking up space and opportunities from all these hardworking women, the girl in ninth who should have came in eighth and had that podium spot taken away from her, as well as many others,” she explained.
The Oregon School Activities Association has not yet responded to requests for comment about the officials’ handling of the protest.
Growing trend of athletic activism
Anderson and Eckard aren’t alone in their stance. Girls and women making symbolic gestures to protest trans inclusion in sports has become a growing trend in 2025.
Just weeks earlier in California, Reese Hogan of Crean Lutheran High School stepped from the second-place spot onto the first-place medal podium after her trans opponent, AB Hernandez stepped down from it.
And in April, footage of women’s fencer Stephanie Turner kneeling to protest a trans opponent at a competition in Maryland, and subsequently getting punished for it, went viral.
‘Every girl deserves a fair shot’
Legal advocates are now rallying behind the Oregon teens. Every girl deserves a fair shot – on the field, on the podium, and in life,” said Jessica Hart Steinmann, executive general counsel of the America First Policy Institute.
When state institutions knowingly force young women to compete against biological males, they’re violating federal law and sending a devastating message to female athletes across the country.
The Department of Justice has already launched lawsuits against states defying Trump’s executive order, with Maine being the first target. The president has suggested federal funding could be paused for states that continue to allow biological males in female sports.
The bottom line
What started as two teenagers’ silent protest has exploded into a national debate about fairness, opportunity, and who gets to define women’s sports.
For Anderson and Eckard, being erased from their own championship photos was apparently a price worth paying to make their point.
As Anderson put it: Someone has to say this isn’t right.
And increasingly, female athletes across America are doing just that – even if it means standing alone, off the podium, out of the picture frame entirely.
