Female high school hockey player taunted with gender reveal sign, chants she's 'a dude'
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A Pennsylvania high school hockey player was taunted last week by opposing fans with a sign prompting her to "reveal" her gender and chants calling her a "dude" during a championship game in Lehigh Valley.
Alyssa Wruble, the only girl on the Northampton Area High School varsity hockey team, was playing in a championship game against Parkland High School of Allentown on Feb. 26 when she heard the chants attacking her gender. In a post about the incident Saturday on Facebook, Donna Bloss, Alyssa's aunt, included photos of a sign that read "Alyssa gender reveal?" with the signs for male and female.
"The level of unsportsmanlike conduct during these several championship games was mind boggling," Bloss said in her post. "I've toyed with whether or not to even put this out there for fear of upsetting my niece even further but she knows this was done out of sheer jealousy."
Alyssa, 17, told Fox affiliate WTXF of Philadelphia on Tuesday that the chants were so loud that the entire student section must have been participating.
"When I skated over, all I heard was 'Wruble, you're a dude,' and apparently my uncle and aunt and also my father heard them say I have a penis," Alyssa told the station.
Alyssa, who scored two goals during the game, said she wants an apology from the people who were responsible for the sign.
"Any girl should be allowed to be as good as a guy," she said. "It shouldn't matter what gender they are. If they want to play a sport, you should let them, you shouldn't bring them down for wanting to go do something they love."
Parkland Ice Hockey President Mike Byelick stepped down from his position in the wake of the incident and said the team did not condone the sign, according to The Express-Times newspaper of Easton .
Rob Bilger, Parkland Ice Hockey's acting president, told NBC News he agreed with Byelick that the team does not condone bullying and that he has reached out to the Wruble family to personally apologize.
But the incident is also indicative of a larger problem of bullying in the Lehigh Valley Scholastic Hockey League over the years, Bilger said.
"There were so many hurtful things being said by both sides, it's sickening," Bilger said. "Bullying is out of control, but instead of working together to eliminate it, people on Facebook are using bullying to address bullying."
Bilger said two female players on the Parkland team were called an offensive and obscene word on the day of the game by Northampton fans while they left the locker room.
He acknowledged that Alyssa did take the brunt of the bullying because of the sign and the way it spread over social media after the game.
Parkland High School and the Parkland School District apologized to Alyssa for any pain the sign inflicted on her and her family in a statement posted to the high school's Facebook page Sunday.
"There is no place for unsportsmanlike conduct or personal harassment in our school, or any where, and anyone involved will be disciplined according to Parkland policy and procedures," the school said.
Alyssa and her family were not immediately available for comment to NBC News on Wednesday
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Good for Alyssa.
The Junior Flyers are a class organization and I hope that in the next Olympics ( or 2 or 3 )
Wruble is out there representing her college and America.
disgusting.
Alyssa has proved she is obviously a much better person than the idiots holding the signs and chanting. Good for Alyssa!
Good for Alyssa.
Keep scoring goals.
Meh, the more things change the more they stay the same. HS sports has always had this kind of dumbassery in fans or worse. I had the father of an opposing player threaten to stab me once . All it did was help make me want to play harder.
Alyssa certainly doesn't deserve stuff like this, no one does but it is a good lesson in life. Lots of dumbasses out there. Always will be. You have to learn to play/work past the stupidity. Good for her and i hope she stays the course
When I was in the Navy I coached Little League faseball for many years. I could not believe the ridiculous behavior I saw. The worst offenders were the parents of the players.I remember one USMC Gunnery Sergeant coming out on to the field to take me on because he did not like a umpire's call on a strikeout on his kid. He was half drunk and wanted to fight me for some reason. He got banned from showing up to games after that.
Lol, i ref'd HS basketball and baseball for a few years. More than once i had to stop games and ask parents to leave or forfeit the game. Never had to actually do it as they all reluctantly left but it got more than sporty after the game in parking lots once or twice.
It's unbelievable the crazy lengths some people will go to for their kids playing a game. I always felt sorry for the kids. Nine times out of ten you could see the embarrassment written all over their faces regarding their parents behavior.
Similar experience but one day the perfect storm presented itself. I think the Umpire was out too late the night before and he was not calling things very well in my opinion. The heckling from the parents was way over the top and he was getting to THAT point when I stopped the game and asked him if he needed 10 minutes off and if I could borrow his equipment and let someone else spell him. He agreed thinking I was going to take his place.
Instead I walked over to the parents/bleachers and told them he needed a break from the heat but the game could continue if I could get a volunteer. Well, there were a dozen volunteers but we did it by rank.
Like I said, a perfect storm. An officer I knew, clearly embarrassed by his wife's behavior was the highest ranked volunteer, but he declined with a twinkle in his eye ( because he had a pager and was on call) and we put her behind the plate for one painfully long inning. She was calling balls and strikes as the pitch left the pitchers hand, then balls regardless of the fact that the batter had swung at it.
At the end of the inning the woman ( drenched in sweat) took off everything, handed it to the real umpire and apologized. There was very little grousing about umpires for the rest of the year.
The expression on the husband's face - priceless.
When my son played Little League, we travelled to another nearby town one Saturday. The opposing team's coach went on a rant over the fact that our boys didn't wear facemasks, stepped down as coach, and went on another obscenity-laced rant in the stands, to the point that one of our moms took her toddlers elsewhere so they wouldn't learn new words.
The players were still young enough that this was coach-pitch, so maybe 6 or so?
Who gets that upset over a 6-year-olds' baseball game?
I can remember BS from T ball, lol
watching the parents punch each other out after some umpire calls, while I played baseball as a kid in the 60's, happened at least once a week. my HS made the national news in the 70's after a girl sued the school district to be the kicker on the football team and won. unfortunately she only lasted a few games because the horndog jockstraps started taking a few liberties in the dog piles that had to be pulled apart by the refs.
we made the news again after a 1st amendment case, that I was involved in, after publishing an alternative school newspaper that carried ads for Planned Parenthood and local head-shops to pay for the publishing. we won.
Damn hippes ......
... that apparently knew more about the law than local school administrators...
thank you ACLU.
we got the military recruiters banned from campus on career day with a lawsuit threat to the school board soon after. seems as though they got weary of seeing local TV news crews hanging around and having their names in the paper.
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America! Fuck Yeah!
... a handful of 17 year olds taking conservative school board clowns to the woodshed.
is this a great country or what?
Yeah man ..... Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, etc ..... staying home, giving aid and comfort to the enemy while spitting on their fellow Americans when they got back from fighting a war ..... yep, absolute badasses if you like fuck ups.
Yep, those true American heroes you mentioned provided plenty of entertainment to us so called "baby killers" doing our jobs and trying to stay alive one more day in Vietnam till we came home to the world. We were laughing our asses off at them! We saved our anger at them till we got home.
false equivalency. I did none of those things. I know the difference between standing up for my Constitutional rights and being a willing or unwilling pawn for some politicians ego. I come from a family of military service and if my recruiter hadn't been a Nixon loving liar, my bones would probably still be in the rusting hull of a medivac helicopter in some godforsaken rice paddy. I lost friends in that BS war and watched others have their lives destroyed because of it. and for what? I was willing to join, tried to join, just to be with my drafted friends, but didn't want to be a participant in killing unamericans, ...then, hence my wanting to fly a medivac. oh well, tough shit, better luck at killing me next time.
Never said you did unless you happen to be Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda or etc.
So you carted wounded baby killers around in Nam. Must have been very fulfilling for you considering your past proclivities
seems as though reading comprehension is as blurry as that grasp of our Constitution. I didn't make it to SE asia. my last words to the recruiter when it came time to signing my induction form, after he told me I could "write my own ticket", was where does it say I'll be flying a medivac? his answer was evasive and I burned my draft card soon after.
Nah, my eyes just glaze over when i read your stuff .... sleep usually comes shortly thereafter.
But yeah, that does sounds more like it for you.
Saving the world one doobie at a time.
Good job!
it works great, especially when the urge strikes me to prepare some wasted space for a window installation or second story balcony. remodeling is my main business.
I enlisted to keep from getting drafted. I n fact my number came up while I was in basic training. Mine was one of the last to come up. I did not particularly want to do any killing myself so I went into the medical field, thinking that would keep me out of it. Big mistake on my part! I did not know the Navy provided all medical personnel for the Marines. I ultimately wound up flying as medical aircrew on USMC medevac and Search and Rescue UH-1 Huey helps flying from a amphibious assault ship off the coast of Vietnam. My primary station on the bird was to man a free floating M-60 machine gun in the rear of the helo until we went feet dry over the coast inbound. I saw more than my share of mayhem, death, and destruction in my 6 month tour. I came home with PTSD and still have the occasional nightmares to go with it. Incidentally, I did wind up in a wrecked Huey in a dry rice paddy outside DaNang. I and the patient I was caring for were the only survivors. Took two hours for a rescue bird to get us out. Had NVA on one side of us and friendlies on the other. Fired off all the ammo in that 60, then went to a M-16. I aimed over heads but have zero idea if I hit anyone. I was just trying to protect my mounded Marine! My apilogies I did not mean to digress off topic here.
Go see the movie ''The Last Full Measure'' a true story.
Thanks for the story Doc. It goes without saying we love our Corpsman. Wear that Eagle Globe and Anchor proudly. As the only personnel authorized to wear it without completing USMC boot-camp or commissioning program, you earned it. Big time.
Semper Fi!
I think many female athletes, especially if they play on mostly-male teams, end up being exposed to misogyny. I played baseball growing up, since there were no softball teams, and I know I caught a lot of flack.
This was really over the top, though.
What do you call those "Gals" that don't want "Semi-Males" playing in their Female sport ?
And some people think we're evolving!
Devo had it right
SOME of us are evolving . . . others, not so much
1. She doesn't need an apology. Sounds like she stuck it in their ear. Which is what the athletes do, and how you shut idiots up.