How transgender athlete AB Hernandez beat vitriol

CLOVIS, Calif. — Jurupa Valley senior AB Hernandez stood on a hillside overlooking Veterans Memorial Stadium, a booklet of encouraging letters tucked under one arm and two gold medals hanging from her neck.

She rolled the medals between her fingers.

“I still feel like I’m gonna be here next year,” she said. “I guess I’ll process it overnight maybe, then tomorrow, I’m going to Disneyland.”

For most high faculty seniors, a state championship marks the end of a season.

For Hernandez, it marks the end of three years spent competing as a transgender athlete under a highlight few youngsters may think about.

On Saturday, she gained state titles in the high soar and triple soar, capping her profession as a four-time state champion. Days earlier, she had graduated from high faculty.

Away from the highlight, Hernandez likes swimming, spending time with associates and working on her make-up routine. During the past two years, politicians and activists stoked by President Trump have turned her into a image in the national battle over transgender athletes’ proper to take part in ladies’ sports activities.

“I feel like I’m always going to be in the public eye,” Hernandez said. “It’s never going to go away and that’s weird. But maybe someday it’ll be for something else.”

At the state championships, that battle was seen in all places besides where Hernandez appeared most snug: among the athletes competing in the stadium.

At the end of Friday’s preliminary competitors, Hernandez and 5 other high soar contenders sprawled on their stomachs beneath the high soar tent, cheering on West Ranch junior Avery Prestridge and La Jolla junior Anastasia Volkov in a jump-off for the ultimate qualifying spot.

AB Hernandez, second from proper, laughs while standing on the first place podium alongside Monta Vista’s Leilani Laruelle after the CIF state monitor and discipline high-jump finals on Saturday.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

When Prestridge secured the berth, she and Hernandez exchanged a high-five and a smile.

“That’s what will stick with me,” Hernandez said. “Laying on the field, cheering for other girls, everyone being sweet.”

It was a stark distinction to the image detractors tried to paint earlier in the day.

While Hernandez warmed up on the monitor, anti-trans activists and politicians gathered across the road in an space marked by a CIF signal studying “free speech area.”

There, organizers who have protested ladies’s athletic occasions involving transgender individuals across California delivered speeches demanding that the CIF prohibit Hernandez and other transgender athletes from competing. They had been unmoved by CIF’s coverage requiring that any transgender athlete who advances in monitor and discipline playoffs or locations in competitors be joined by the next cisgender woman in the rankings, with both advancing or receiving the same medal.

“The message being sent to female athletes is clear — your opportunities, your records, your placement and your hard work comes second to males,” former NCAA soccer participant Sophia Lorey said during the rally.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton spoke alongside the protesters.

“The first thing we have to do is overturn the law that set all this in motion, AB 1266, that was passed in 2013, that’s why we’ve been living with this for so long,” Hilton said to Fox News. “That law violates the California state Constitution. … I will immediately suspend the law while we begin legal proceedings to overturn it.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton held a news convention outdoors the state monitor and discipline championships in Clovis denouncing CIF for permitting transgender athletes to compete alongside ladies.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Earlier in the day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer posted a video on X with Hernandez.

“I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing,” Steyer told Hernandez. “So proud of you for succeeding. So proud of you for competing. That’s really the point. … And I’m going to hope like heck that you don’t just make state but you do really well there. Deal?”

Last yr, Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, that, “As a Male, he was a less than average competitor. As a Female, this transitioned person is practically unbeatable.”

He also threatened to withhold federal funding from California if the CIF allowed Hernandez to compete. That got here after he enacted an government order in February 2025 barring transgender ladies and ladies from taking part in sports activities according to their gender identification.

Transgender participation in sports activities has grow to be a central Republican speaking level in latest years and it’s unimaginable to separate Hernandez’s story from that political context.

Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and California Family Council have invested years and hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into messaging, advocacy and legal efforts surrounding the issue. According to ProPublica and public filings, those organizations collectively reported a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in income in 2024.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez, heart, poses with other athletes at the CIF state monitor and discipline championships in Clovis on Saturday.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

As a outcome, a California athlete who confirmed her transgender standing grew to become the main target of a national political battle.

“The voice of the kid who’s been targeted gets lost,” said activist Daisy Gardner, who spoke at a news convention supporting Hernandez before Saturday’s meet. “We’re up against a million[-dollar] machine on the other side who has launched the ‘Protect Girls’ Sports’ campaign, and we need to have a little ray of sunshine pushing through the darkness.”

The Trump administration’s Executive Order 14201, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” was issued on Feb. 5, 2025, and was adopted the next day by an NCAA ban on transgender athletes taking part in ladies’s sports activities.

AB just isn’t sure whether or not she’s going to discover a method to continue competing in faculty.

“I don’t think any child should have to go through this,” AB’s mom Nereyda Hernandez said. “These are adults willingly doing this to a minor child. This is a kid, a breathing human, a child. It’s not what people are making this out to be.”

For the first time during Friday’s preliminary competitors, the clouds broke and the Clovis solar beat down on the sphere.

AB, who had posted the top regional mark, needed only one soar to qualify for the next day’s finals. She went last in the second flight.

As she ready for her attempt, the public handle announcer’s voice echoed through the stadium.

“In girls’ long jump, here comes AB Hernandez.”

A ripple of applause unfold through the gang from those who acknowledged the identify. Nereyda and household buddy Trevor Norcross had been among the loudest.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez gained the high soar title during the state monitor and discipline championships in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Two hours later, after finishing her triple soar qualifying leaps, Hernandez headed to the high soar, where she again discovered herself among the ultimate rivals remaining.

During the long wait between occasions, Nereyda was interviewed by ABC30. At the same second, AB was making ready for a high soar attempt.

Gardner, the activist, hurried over, tapped Nereyda on the shoulder and pointed toward the pit.

Nereyda rapidly turned her telephone sideways and hit report.

“Let’s go AB!”

The night time before qualifying, AB, Nereyda and associates sat in a resort room making bracelets. At first, they strung rainbow-colored beads. AB shook her head. Her colours had been pink and gold.

“I know what looks good on me,” she said. “I want something that represents me. People see a flag, and that’s not me in my entirety. I want something that is me personally, me entirely.”

While Nereyda felt the acquainted butterflies about what the next day may deliver, AB centered on what mattered to her. She determined how she needed to put on her hair and ready the custom-made letterman jacket she bought last yr with money donated by supporters.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez wears a letterman jacket funded by her supporters and waves during the CIF state monitor and discipline championships in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

AB Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda, reveals a friendship bracelet she made alongside supporters of her daughter that reads “I stand with AB.”

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

“She said, ‘I want my letterman jacket,’ and I was like, OK,” Nereyda said. “And she said, ‘I want that to be a reminder every time I wear it, I want it to be a reminder of the people who supported me,’ and that’s what she did.

“It was a daily reminder that she wasn’t alone.”

Those are the reminiscences Nereyda says will keep with her more than the vitriol she and her daughter have confronted during the past two years. AB is a reluctant transgender athlete pioneer who prefers to be identified for so a lot more than just her gender identification, but the prospect of hiding because she was relentlessly attacked didn’t really feel proper, either.

“I’m always going to think about how hard she tried to be here,” she said. “She didn’t quit. Despite all the pressure, you can’t change my kid.”

The night time before AB’s last competitors, Nereyda felt sick. She suspected it was stress over what the next day may deliver.

But Saturday handed with minimal disruption.

AB’s long soar didn’t meet her typical customary. She completed third with a mark of 20 ft, 2 1/4 inches, a outcome she described as “bittersweet.”

“It was a little nerve-wracking,” Nereyda said. “I could see it was a different vibe when she got into the high jump and triple jump.”

In those occasions, Hernandez delivered the top performances of the day to repeat as a state champion.

She leaped 42-8 3/4 in the triple soar, comfortably forward of Los Altos senior Daniela Hughes, who completed at 41-1 before sharing the rostrum. Standing together atop the first-place place, the 2 posed for pictures with Hughes’ arm draped around Hernandez.

“I’m just happy with my performance,” Hughes said when requested about sharing a podium. “I wanted to win a championship.”

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez clinches her fists and reacts after finishing a high soar during the CIF state monitor and discipline meet in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

About half-hour after the high soar medal ceremony, AB walked toward her mom.

Nereyda noticed her and threw her arms into the air.

“My baby!”

The two embraced, away from the gang, the cameras and the ire.

“She did it,” Nereyda said. “With everything else, it didn’t matter, she did it.”