Editor's Note: Reporter Mary Pilon and photographer Polina Yamshchikov profiled transgender high school athlete Matt Dawkins. Not all photos made it onto the original story. Here are several more we feel are worth sharing. All photos by Polina Yamshchikov.
Matt measures out the dose of his testosterone shot as his brother, Micah, watches. The non-squeamish members of Matt's family rotate administering the weekly shot as Matt can't tolerate doing it himself.
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Matt and his girlfriend Liani Ortiz laugh after she asks him to be less serious in the photo she's taking to mark his progress on four months of using testosterone. Ortiz has been documenting Dawkins' transition since the beginning.
Liani holds up Matt and his twin sister Jada's joint picture while examining their sets of senior pictures with Matt's family. "They were night and day," said their father Nigel. "From an early age, Jada was into dressing up, putting up makeup, wearing mom's high heels. Matt wasn't into that at all."
Matt and Liani take the Dawkins family pet dogs for a walk around their Marlton, N.J. neighborhood. "When he finally told me what it was, I wasn't sad. I wasn't happy. I was okay with it. I said, 'You can be yourself."
The medals that Matt won while competing in girls track meets as Maya still hang on his bedroom wall alongside plaques and certificates of achievement. Dawkins, a rising senior, just finished his first full year competing as a boy.