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Jurupa Valley's AB Hernandez, pictured center, talks with fellow competitors in the girls high jump prelims of the CIF State Track and Field Championships, May 2025.
But critics act like she's "this crazy danger to society," she says.
A Southern California transgender girl who was targeted by critics for competing in girls’ track and field in the spring is speaking out, saying she’s just an ordinary teen and not a threat to anyone.
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“They swear I’m like this crazy danger to society,” AB Hernandez recently told Los Angeles TV station KCAL. “I’m just a normal kid going to school, playing sports.”
Hernandez, a student at Jurupa Valley High School in Riverside County, about 60 miles east of L.A., won two gold medals and one silver at the state track and field finals, and she is on the Jurupa Valley girls’ volleyball team this fall. Donald Trump had singled her out in his attacks on trans people without naming her, threatening to withhold federal funding from California schools if a “transitioned person” were allowed to compete in the track and field finals, and the Department of Justice followed up with demands for a trans athlete ban. California responded by suing the Trump administration, which has now pulled funding from at least one youth program. The administration has sued the state over trans inclusion as well.
Anti-trans protesters appeared at the finals, and now in the fall, at least three volleyball teams have forfeited games against Jurupa Valley rather than compete against Hernandez’s team.
Last Thursday, however, Chaffey High School in nearby Ontario, California, became the second team to compete against Jurupa Valley in girls’ volleyball this season. Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, was relieved.
“I’m grateful, thankful,” Nereyda Hernandez told KCAL. “As a mom, it means a lot. Those girls mean a lot because I know it helps AB get through these hard times.”
Having been raised in a conservative Catholic family, Nereyda said she initially didn’t understand AB’s transition, and she was upset that AB’s junior high school didn’t notify her that the teen had come out as trans. But she came around.
“Shoot, they’re protecting the kids because of parents like me,” Nereyda said. “We don’t understand. We just get upset.”
“I did talk to her about how dangerous it is and how difficult it was going to be, but she’s brave,” the mom added. “When I saw her courage, I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to stand behind you.'”
Jurupa Valley won the game against Chaffey.
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