California girls track star opens up on viral podium protest of trans opponent and if she'll do it again
· Fox News
Crean Lutheran High School girls' track and field star Reese Hogan went viral one year ago after stepping up from second place to the top spot on a medal podium to protest a trans athlete who beat her in the triple jump.
Now, she is set to face off against that same trans athlete in the very same round of the postseason this weekend. Hogan came in second to that athlete last Saturday in the sectional preliminary round.
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Will Hogan make another demonstration if she ends up on the podium with the trans athlete again this weekend?
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"If the opportunity presents itself, we'll see, yeah," Hogan told Fox News Digital if she would do something similar this weekend on the podium.
Hogan will face Jurupa Valley High School's AB Hernandez in long jump, high jump and triple jump, just as she has in each of her last three track and field postseasons.
Her viral podium stunt last year came just days after an interview with Fox News Digital. The interview with her and other girls in the state tournament ultimately prompted a response from the U.S. Department of Education that preceded a public feud between President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
And Hogan says that when the time came to do the podium protest, she thought of the whole thing on the spot.
"It wasn't planned. It was kind of just something that I did in the moment, that felt right," Hogan said. "I was standing on the second-place podium and I just felt called to the first-place podium. I didn't want to disrespect anyone, so I made sure that the athlete stepped off the podium first before I stepped on."
As soon as she stepped up to the first-place spot, a nearby crowd roared in applause for Hogan.
"I felt validated in how I felt. I felt people saw me. I felt there was more support than I thought there would be, and more people who were backing our side of protecting girls' sports," Hogan said.
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The stunt was caught on camera and posted to social media, catching the attention of countless "Save Women's Sports" activists, including Riley Gaines. The stunt became the latest flashpoint in the culture war over girls' sports, garnering millions of views across the internet.
Hogan wasn't expecting that kind of attention, she just did it for herself and some of the people in the crowd.
"I got sent a couple of the X posts and the ones on Instagram, and it only had a few likes when I first saw it, and then I checked back up on it, and it started getting more and more likes," Hogan said. "Now that I took a stand in this people do recognize who I am a little bit more, and they're like 'Oh, you're the girl who stepped up on the first-place podium.'"
But as there is for all girls and women who go viral for standing up in the movement, a healthy amount of pro-trans critics came after Hogan after the stunt.
"Yeah," Hogan said when asked if she got mean comments. "When you do stuff like that, you have to expect that there's going to be people who don't agree with you. But I mean that's how life works. The mean comments are mean comments, I don't let it affect me."
Hogan and her Crean Lutheran teammate Olivia Viola have taken center stage in the Save Girls Sports movement for this season's California track and field tournament. They spoke at a rally during the first round last weekend before competing against Hernandez, and did a live TV interview on Fox News at Night on Tuesday.
It is their last chance to win a sectional and state title in their high school careers, and with males still allowed to compete in girls' sports in California, a trans competitor still stands in their way of that goal.
The situation has been so difficult for Hogan and her family the last three years, that she turned down every college offer she received from a school at home in California, and is going all the way to Texas for college at Texas Christian University.
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