When the documentary Changing the Game went into production 4 years ago, the team behind it couldn’t have imagined our current cultural moment. As it premieres on Hulu this week, reaching a mainstream audience for the first time, the nationwide legislative attacks on young trans athletes are reaching their apex. This year alone, more than 30 states have considered legislation that would ban or restrict trans athletes from participating in school sports.
Changing The Game focuses on three such athletes as they compete in high school sports. Since filming wrapped, their stories have been catapulted into the national spotlight due to the barrage of anti-trans bills that have since been weighed in state legislatures across the country.
One of the documentary’s storylines centers on Andraya Yearwood, a 16-year-old from Connecticut, and her friend, Terry Miller, also 16. Both are Black trans girls who are running together on girls’ teams. They support each other: Miller credits Yearwood coming out with giving her the courage to do so, and we watch them deal with heckling and harassment, mostly from adults in the stands.
But what the documentary doesn’t show is the legal battle that was brewing behind-the-scenes at the time. The families of three white, cisgender girls who also ran in the state worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom, a notorious anti-trans hate group, to file a lawsuit against the Connecticut Association of Schools, claiming that the cis girls would never be able to beat Yearwood and Miller and, therefore, trans girls should be banned from competing in the girls’ division.
Yearwood, now 19, was blindsided when the lawsuit was filed. She saw these girls as her peers. “In particular, one of the plaintiffs, I thought we were friends,” Yearwood told them. “Like, we had talked and we were cool. And then all of a sudden to see that she stabbed me in the back was messed up to me. Overall, it was shocking and disheartening. It had been a few years since I’d been running, I kind of figured that it was done with. I didn't think they were still so upset about it.”
The emotional impact of the lawsuit almost caused Yearwood to stop running. “There was one point my junior year when I did want to quit track,” she said. “But a lot of my friends or family members gave a perspective of like, ‘If you were to quit now, like, you would only be letting them win and only be doing what they want.’ And obviously, that's not what I wanted to do.”
That lawsuit became the basis for the massive wave of anti-trans sports bills that have swept the nation this year. Effectively, that means two girls in Connecticut who just wanted to run track were the basis for at least 60 bills across the U.S., although counts on the exact number vary by organization.
Most lawmakers who introduced these bills to ban trans girls from competing in girls’ sports couldn’t cite a single trans athlete in their state who had an unfair advantage in competition, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Those who could often cited the two in Connecticut, using the mere fact that the lawsuit existed as fallacious “proof” that the cis girls were being pushed out of sports nationwide.
They ignored the fact that one of those cis girls, Chelsea Mitchell, regularly beat Miller, which her lawsuit claimed would be impossible. They ignored the fact that two of the three cis girls are running at the Division I level in college, while neither Yearwood nor Miller pursued track at the university level.
“In most states, they can't provide any examples of this happening and then they always use mine,” Yearwood said. “If you can't cite one that’s in your own state, then why are these bills coming out? But overall, it’s annoying to know that you're taking something that has done nothing really nothing to do with you and making it into a whole issue.”
Public opinion polling shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose anti-trans legislation, and yet three families in Connecticut partnering with a hate group have now led at least 8 states — including Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia — to pass bans that could restrict hundreds of school-age trans youth from playing sports at school. Even more states could follow, with legislation in Ohio still being debated.
Since Changing the Game wrapped, plaintiffs in the Connecticut lawsuit have continued their crusade against trans participation in sports.
Selina Soule, one of the cis plaintiffs, tesified in support of an anti-trans sports bill in South Carolina, where she now lives and competes for the College of Charleston. (The legislation ultimately did not pass.) Chelsea Mitchell, another cis plaintiff who is running for the College of William and Mary, wrote an op-ed for USA Today explaining why she wants to ban trans girls from competing against her. That op-ed was later updated after publication to remove the word “male” from a description of transfeminine athletes.
“Andraya and Terry, their stories were taken from them and exploited to justify excluding trans youth across the country — and that is unfair,” Alex Schmider, a producer on Changing the Game and the Director of Transgender Representation at GLADD, told them. “Just because Andraya and Terry wanted to be themselves and run as who they were, they had to endure this kind of scrutiny across the country – and we can't separate the sexist and racist undertones of that, either.”
“I want to commend Andraya and Terry for being as courageous and brave and graceful as they have been, and they shouldn't have had to do that,” Schmider added.
If we could clear away all the noise surrounding the issue of trans participation in athletics, we would find a simple truth: trans kids love to play. Changing The Game does its best to showcase that truth, while still acknowledging the cultural and legal battles that have been fomenting ever since. At its core, it is a film about love, about athletes pursuing the sports they are passionate about, and about the people who unconditionally support those brave kids.
At its most fascinating, Changing the Game tells the story of Mack Beggs, a then-17-year-old wrestler from Texas who was forced to compete against girls in high school, despite the fact that he is on testosterone and his own stated desire is to wrestle boys. His family members are conservative, lifelong Republicans and yet they wholeheartedly support Beggs.
“My grandmother is always like, ‘I love you, I love the trans community, I love the LGBT community,’ and I feel like that's enough for me,” Beggs, now 20 and living in Mobile, Alabama, told them. “She loves and supports me, and she takes care of me. My grandmother is an absolute blessing in my life.”
For Beggs and his family, the GOP’s endorsement of anti-trans bills is difficult to reconcile because the party they love is attacking the person they love. “It made me have to really reflect on political views, since my family is Republican, and I’m Democratic,” said Beggs. “Well, my mom recently told me that she’s Democratic now, but the majority of my family is Republican.”
Coaches have also shown incredible support to the rising generation of trans youth, which is visible in the film. Most of the subjects’ coaches had never met a trans athlete before, but they are steadfast in their commitment to supporting their students. They see them for who they are: athletes who want to be the best they can be, and who want to put in the work to improve.
It is affirming, but also deeply saddening, to see the contrast between the support trans athletes receive from their mentors and the hate they’re subjected to from parents in the stands at their matches and in state legislatures.
“It's interesting when you talk about how the voice of a few ends up seemingly becoming the voice of many,” said Michael Gordon, director of Changing the Game. “We see that with hatred kind of across the board. We see it with extremism, we see it with racism, we see it with transphobia. And it's an interesting thing for me to observe, especially over such a long course of time with four very specific stories in this film, because by and large, I would say their peers are supportive. And the large majority of people in their lives are supportive.”
In this way, Changing the Game cuts against prevailing media trends in the coverage of trans youth. The media loves controversy, even if it means hijacking stories to create false narratives and easily digestible conflicts. Every story needs a protagonist and an antagonist, and too often, trans people are cast as the villains in stories that are told through a cis lens.
The more we can highlight stories like those of Sarah, Mack, Terry, and Andraya, the more we can humanize the trans folks caught in the crosshairs of a culture war. Films like Changing the Game can give them the chance to be the heroes of their own stories.
“It’s just hatred, it's ignorance,” Beggs said of the current push to ban trans athletes from pursuing the sports they want to play. “It's them being afraid that the world's changing, the world is evolving. Us trans athletes, the trans, queer, non-binary community, we're not afraid anymore. And I think that's what they're afraid of.”
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