NEWNow you can listen to Pak Gazette articles!
Kendall Kotzmacher will never forget the day he entered the batter box against Marissa Rothenberger.
It was a semifinal of the Minnesota State Tournament. Kotzmacher and his teammates for White Bear Lake High School sought to run to the state championship game. Kotzmacher had just transferred to White Bear Lake for his last year with the aim of winning a championship, along with his little sister and teammate.
But Rothenberger, a trans athlete, was on the mound that day for his opponent, Champlin Park High School.
CLICK HERE for more sports coverage at Foxnews.com
Marissa Rothenberger launched a full -game bleaching in the quarter -final round of the Minnesota Girls Softball Tournament. (Amber Harding/Outkick)
“They move ten times more,” Kotzmacher told Fox Digital Fox of Rothenberger’s releases.
“I have seen movement releases, so when your hands are larger than a biological woman at that age, in Minnesota, especially, you are turning the ball ten more. And in reality I would say that this athlete was not in his best game that day, but even in the middle of the best of them, they are still blowing us beyond us, turning the ball more, so we cannot hit.”
Kotzmacher locked himself enough to make some contact with Rothenberger that day. But Rothenberger kept White Bear Lake just two races in seven hits. It was the largest amount of races scored in Rothenberger throughout the postseason. But it was not enough, because in the last post, Rothenberger also hit.
After hitting a double to cause a two -run rally that day, Rothenberger reached a double to carry out the final entry, and prepared a pinch corridor to win the game for Champlin Park.
“It was a half blow. This athlete was not swinging to its maximum potential, and the ball was still hit extremely strong,” said Kotzmacher, who played the receiver behind Rothenberger that day. “It was difficult to call releases, because it seemed that every release I called, this athlete could hit.”
Kotzmacher’s high school race ended right there. You will never have another chance to fulfill your childhood dream of winning a state high school championship. She fell into her little sister’s arms and began to sob.
“Honestly, I just wanted to go immediately. I didn’t want to do anything else,” said Kotzmacher. “I couldn’t even process what just happened.
“How do you recognize that you lost to a biological man? How do you process those events that happened? And that was something that all night could not do it … we lost to a biological man in a female state tournament.”
The administration of President Donald Trump has prosecuted the incident and determined that the Minnesota (MDE) Department of Education and the Secondary School League of the State of Minnesota (MSHSL) violated title IX by allowing it to happen. The institution has until October 10 to change their policies to allow women in girls in girls, or the derivation of risk to the Department of Justice.
Within the transgender volleyball crisis of Gavin Newsom
Champlin Park celebrates winning the state championship while Bloomington Jefferson Mira. (Amber Harding)
A press release from the Department of Education announced cited the launch of the pitcher in the 2025 season for the recent repression, stating that “the male pitcher surpassed the female athletes for five consecutive games, only ceded a race won over the course of 35 tickets and hit 27 female batters.”
Kotzmacher is in his first year of university now, playing softball for the Western Michigan University. But he hopes, for the sake of his younger sister, that the Minnesota agencies will comply with the president’s executive order to keep biological men out of girls and women’s sports. Rothenberger still has a secondary season.
Minnesota became one of the first states of the country to announce that he will not comply with the executive order in February. The Democratic Leadership of Minnesota, led by Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and a State Democratic majority legislature, has taken some of the most difficult positions to commit to allowing biological men to compete in girls’ sports during Trump’s mandate.
Ellison filed a lawsuit against Trump and the Department of Justice, and boasted to “sue them first” on the subject. Ellison is also on the sued side of a demand for three softball pitchers from Minnesota, who have remained in anonymity, claiming that their rights of title IX were also violated last season.
And yet, Ellison’s office has defended the concept of letting men play in girls’ sports.
“In addition to exercising and the fun of competition, sports comes with so many benefits for young people. Building friendships that can last a lifetime, learn to work as part of a team and you can feel that you belong,” Ellison said in response to the demand for girls, in May. “I think it is wrong with a group of students, who already face higher levels of harassment and harassment, and tell these children that they cannot be in the team who they are. I will continue to defend the rights of all students to practice sports with their friends and classmates.”
The state legislature failed to approve a bill that would have prohibited trans athletes from girls from girls, the “Sports Law of preservation girls”, in March. A vote fell to advance to Walz’s desk. Meanwhile, the state legislator, representative Liish Kozlowski, who identifies as “non -binary”, called the bill “another version of intimidation and genocide sanctioned by the State.”
Kotzmacher was in the state capital that day. He was in a demonstration outside the capital, seeing Riley Gaines and the former captain of the Vakings of the Minnesota, Jack Brewer, lead a protest in support of the bill.
“That is what caused, as’ I will not go back about this problem and I will speak for other girls like [Gaines] He told me, “Kotzmacher said.
In addition to admiring Gaines, Kotmzacher has also approached with the founder of Athletics XX-XY, Jennifer Sey, during the recent increase in activism on the subject of “Saving Women’s Sports.”
But for Kotzmacher, that is just one of the many problems that have made her already her adolescents in Minnesota against the state’s democratic authorities.
“At this time, Minnesota is going through a lot of agitation. And there is much that is wrong with what is happening. It is not the same state in which I grew up,” he said. “It is no longer safe to be there, if we are going to be honest, I am not even allowed to go to St. Paul or Minneapolis, my parents will not leave me, because it is too dangerous.”
Meanwhile, Kotzmacher expects the Trump administration to take measures to at least address the sporting problem of girls, since he expects his younger sister to have a fair and safe softball season in 2026.
“Knowing that it is recognized at a higher level is huge … seeing that people are finally doing something about it and recognizing that they did something wrong and that they took it away, it means a lot and I am excited to see what happens and what develops.”
