Sage LeVay was a cheerleader when he was younger. But when he began his transition to becoming a transgender boy in middle school, his opportunities for playing sports dwindled.

LeVay, 20, graduated from Medomak High School in Warren in 2023. Throughout his middle and high school years, he thought about trying other sports, including baseball and basketball.

But he feared that doing so would bring on even more bullying than he already faced as a trans person.

“You’re not allowed to be trans and compete and succeed,” LeVay said. “You’re only allowed to be trans, compete and fail.”

LeVay’s story isn’t unique. While 3.5 percent of high school students in Maine have reported that they are transgender, the portion who play sports is much smaller. Between 2013 and 2021, only 54 transgender students made requests to the Maine Principals’ Association to compete in the sport that aligned with their gender. That’s because trans people face many barriers to playing sports, from the general alienation they face as a marginalized group, to the complicated paperwork that they unlike their cisgender peers have to complete. Often, they don’t even try. The challenges can be even greater for trans girls, only four of whom requested to play in girls sports in Maine during those years, and just two of whom now do so. Feds come after Maine The reason for their reluctance has become abundantly clear over the last few weeks, ever since state Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, took to Facebook in mid-February to complain that a transgender girl from Greely High School had won an indoor track and field title. The viral post, which included a photo and the name of the girl, soon got the attention of President Donald Trump, whose administration has since threatened Maine’s federal funding over its policy that allows transgender students to compete in the sports divisions that align with their gender. Multiple federal agencies have since targeted Maine, alleging that those rules violate Title IX, the federal law that bars sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. On March 17, the feds gave Maine 10 days to change its rules for transgender athletes. The Maine Principals’ Association said the federal government has no authority to investigate it and has declined, along with Greely High School, to sign the proposed agreement. The debate over trans athletes in Maine is a complicated one. Recent polling by the University of New Hampshire has shown that a majority of Mainers oppose transgender athletes competing in the sports divisions that align with their gender, with a bigger portion — 64 percent — against transgender females competing in female sports. Some high school athletes have spoken out against Maine’s rules. Zoe Hutchins, a senior at Lawrence High School who competes in shot put, said in a recent Fox News interview that her teammates knew they wouldn’t be able to beat the transgender student who won the recent track and field event. But others have come to the defense of Maine’s rules. Lauren Bodwell, who held Maine’s state record in high school girls pole vaulting and competed in Division I for the University of New Hampshire until 2006, said the claim that trans women will automatically win against cisgender women promotes a narrative that women are inherently weak. She added that there’s more to being good at a sport than someone’s biology — Bodwell credited the support from her community as integral to her success. “I don’t think people realize that you could be physically strong, prepared, the peak athletic whatever, then you could have a really bad mental day and no height,” Bodwell said. “I’ve watched people break their poles. I’ve watched people get injured. I watched people quit because it’s too much pressure.” Barriers trans athletes face For young transgender Mainers, the raging debate has only reinforced many of the reasons why they’ve been reluctant to get involved in sports in the first place. The families of the two transgender girls who now compete in Maine high school sports have both declined to comment. But many trans students don’t even try to compete, or are pressured away from sports, according to Bre Danvers-Kidman, the executive director of Maine TransNet. Kidman said it’s rare for a trans person to have enough energy leftover for sports, since the harassment they can face is exhausting. In addition, trans children who don’t have familial or peer support often lack the resources to compete on a team that aligns with their gender. Trans youth must “have enough left in the tank after all that to be an athlete, which is itself a demanding thing on top of academics. That’s a lot of stuff to stack on one kid, right?” Danvers-Kidman said. They added that when word gets out that a transgender student is competing in a sport, the kid can expect exposure and harassment online, illustrated by Libby’s viral Facebook post. LeVay, the recent graduate of Medomak High School, said that when he expressed interest in playing baseball, teachers, coaches and parents would encourage him to play softball instead. He loved cheerleading, but knew he would face judgement if he tried to join the team. Instead, he turned to the arts, where discrimination is less likely and more people are accepting. “It’s not going to stop at, ‘Do we have the right to exist in sports?’ It’s going to start to veer towards, ‘Do we have the right to exist at all?’ And it has started to veer towards that,” LeVay said. Of course, some transgender people still do play sports. A junior in a southern Maine high school, who requested to be referred to only by his middle name, Lee, to protect himself from harassment, said he is out as a trans boy to everyone he knows, including at school. But when he plays soccer, he chooses to be misgendered and referred to by his deadname — the name he was given at birth. Lee, 17, plays soccer on the girls team for his high school for several reasons, he said. He has only socially transitioned at this time, meaning he is not on any medications for his transition. Because he’s a shorter player, he worries that he wouldn’t be able to make the boys team. And, he loves the team he’s playing on now. Despite not being out while playing soccer, Lee said people on the sidelines from other schools still harass him at games. He said at one point, he had decided to fill out the paperwork to adopt his chosen name at school. But at a game that night, the opposing team’s fans yelled at him, calling him names and singling him out. “That night, I just threw away the paper,” Lee said. The challenge of competing in sports is also familiar to Soren, a transgender man in his mid-20s who began his transition after graduating from a high school in Maine. Soren, who requested to be referred to only by his first name, spent hours each week playing on girls and co-ed teams in high school. He then went on to play on a girls sports team for two years in college. But, once he began transitioning, he took more than a year off from his sport, which he declined to publicly identify but noted that it involved racing. “I didn’t want to race in the women’s category because that didn’t feel right personally, but I wasn’t passing enough to be racing in the men’s category, so then I just stopped,” he said. When he finally did return to competition, it wasn’t easy either. He competed at the club level for a college that wasn’t in Maine, but said he had to file changes to all his athletics paperwork and request that he compete in a different gender category. He didn’t receive any pushback at the time, but noted that any administrator at any level could have said “no.” Soren now works for an organization that supports queer youth, and said the kids he works with are aware of the conversations regarding trans people in sports. He said they feel the pressure. And, if Maine were to ban trans people from participating in the sport division that aligns with their gender, he said trans students would likely just stop playing sports entirely, like he did for a time. LeVay, Lee and Soren all said that transgender students should be encouraged to be themselves. LeVay said if he had been treated better in high school if teachers had supported him, if students hadn’t bullied him and if their parents hadn’t encouraged them he would have felt safe enough to pursue his interests. Lee said that in an ideal world, he could both be himself and also play soccer.