High School Sports

While the players and coaches may take center stage, it’s the volunteers, made up of family members, friends, school staff and people from the community who form the backbone of the operation, ensuring that every game runs smoothly.

The family of a transgender volleyball player has added a South Florida school district as a defendant in a federal lawsuit that challenges a 2021 state law banning transgender girls from playing on female sports teams.

Florida's state athletic board fined Monarch High School on Tuesday, placing the Coconut Creek school on probation after a transgender student played on the girls volleyball team, a violation of a controversial law enacted by DeSantis and the Republican-majority Legislature.

Sparks outrage throughout Florida over who can and cannot play in school athletics.

A Florida Department of Education spokesperson has said that allowing a transgender student to play on a girls' volleyball team in Broward County is against the law, and those responsible should face "serious consequences.”

The Florida High School Athletic Association revealed its plans.

The law gives the state more power over a group that governs high school sports. Gov. DeSantis signed the bill at Cambridge Christian School in Tampa, which is involved in a legal battle over praying before games.

The Tampa school went to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year after a federal judge backed a decision by the FHSAA to prevent a prayer over the loudspeaker.

The bill would require K-12 and college sports teams to divide athletes by their "biological sex."

Polk County Schools have temporarily suspended winter sports after more than 50 student-athletes tested positive for coronavirus.

Under a normal schedule, fall sports practices would have started last month, with the regular season beginning August 20.

The statewide high school athletic association decided Thursday to postpone the start of the fall sports by one month, until Aug. 24, after initially…