Political ‘Battle of the Sexes’

Watching all the political ads on TV these days, you can tell which candidates are getting desperate. They’re the ones who are still freaked out about girls and boys playing on the same sports teams.

They’re out of touch by at least 100 years.

Men and women have been playing golf together for at least that long. Mixed leagues and tournaments have been staples at both the municipal course and Lake Creek Country Club for as long as golf has been played in Storm Lake. No one ever fretted about girls competing with the guys, they just enjoyed their highballs on the 19th hole.

Volleyball has long been a coed sport, on beaches and gyms around the world. No problems there either.

Soccer too. Both our son and daughter played on coed teams when they were in grade school. They survived it better than their father, who had to watch little kids running around like headless chickens. The kids avoided any psychological damage.

In tennis 53 years ago, men’s champion Bobby Riggs famously challenged women’s star Billie Jean King to a match to prove that men are superior athletes. In the internationally televised “Battle of the Sexes” watched by 90 million people on Sept. 20, 1973, from the Houston Astrodome, King beat Riggs in three sets and made the bigmouth chauvinist a believer. Today’s top women tennis players like Serena Williams can still give men all they can handle.

In Iowa, girls have played on boys teams for years, including Storm Lake High School. A few years back two girls played on the Tornadoes football team, one as a kicker and the other as a wide receiver. The coaches figured out the locker room logistics and everything worked out fine. No protests outside the stadium.

Girls who prefer baseball to softball have long played with boys on Little League teams in Iowa, including Storm Lake, and members of the “weaker sex” have wrestled — and beaten — Iowa boys too, including in the state tournament. Egos still intact.

In the Olympics, women gymnasts and figure skaters frequently outshine their male counterparts. Mixed pair skaters generate some of the highest TV ratings from the Winter Olympics. The guys grab the gals, toss them above their heads, and swirl them around while everyone applauds wildly.

And despite all of this mixed competition between the sexes for decades, nobody fretted about a decline in civilization.

Until politicians entered the fray over the past election cycle.

The hullabaloo about women and men playing sports together has been generated in recent years as a red herring over hatred of transgender people. Nobody cared about the opposite sexes playing the same sports until creepy politicians fixated on sex used it to gin up votes. It’s really a non-issue despite it receiving a little publicity a couple years ago when a transgender man wanted to play on a women’s college volleyball team in California. But it’s not really an issue in Iowa. Or Nebraska. Or Kansas. Or just about anywhere else.

Politicians should just keep out of it, because they can’t resolve this any better than any other issues they face. The state and national athletic associations can figure it out. In Iowa, girls can play on boys teams, but boys can’t play on girls teams. That seems to be working.

As for questions about trans athletes playing in the WNBA — well, that hasn’t happened and isn’t likely because Iowa’s own Caitlin Clark can outshoot any guy who tries to take her position.