Arizona sounds fun.The high school boys soccer team at Faith Christian—a "non-denominational, parent-controlled school founded…to provide a quality Christian education," according to its website—refused to play Foothills Academy College Prep last week because Foothills has two girls on the team. The players, two sisters named Colette and Alyssa Hocking, had sat out one of Foothills' previous games against another school that refused to play based on religious grounds. When Faith Christian made the same objection, however, Foothills' male players said they would only play the game if Colette and Alyssa could. As a result, Faith Christian forfeited instead. Then things got really wild.Faith Christian's administrative leader, Dick Buckingham (true story), released a truly inspired statement on the matter, somehow managing to play the victim while also voluntarily offering that he and his Faith Christian folks aren't so wild about kids these days and their desire for equality."I know it appears to fly in the face of what everyone is wanting to promote today, and that is equality," Buckingham told the Arizona Republic. "It is based on a religious perspective that God created guys and girls differently. The difference physically, there is a strength advantage that men have over women. We want to teach our men that honor of ladies is just not in sports. We struggle how to teach that if we're allowing them to play against young ladies in a competitive game."We're the ones harmed because we're giving up a game. We think it's better to do that than give a mixed message."According to Faith Christian's "Core Values and Beliefs," the Bible is "God's infallible Word, the only rule for faith and life… All teaching methods, philosophy of education, and administrative actions are rooted firmly in this view of the Bible." It's unclear whether Dick was going with the Old Testament on soccer rosters or the New Testament, but either way: ho-ly shit. And I don't even know what "We want to teach our men that honor of ladies is just not in sports" means, but I can promise you that whatever ol' Dicky Bucks is talking about here, it is antiquated and demeaning.Faith Christian had already played one game against a team fielding a female player this season because, weirdly enough, it is not against the league rules—something Bick Duckingham readily admits. When this previous game was pointed out to him, Buckingham said he had only heard about the female player after the fact by way of explanation. When the game against Foothills was clearly going to involve some "guys and girls," he was concerned about consistency in "training our young men." So, that's comforting.[Arizona Republic]
Advertisement