A Pennsylvania School Will Retain a Trans Tennis Coach After an Outpouring of Support

A transgender tennis coach in Pennsylvania has been rehired after far-right activists failed to convince a school board she acted inappropriately around minors.

In a 6-2 vote Monday, the board of the Gettysburg Area School District voted to renew tennis coach Sasha Yates’ contract for the fall athletic season, as PennLive reported. The board was deadlocked in a vote last month and then postponed the decision again in a subsequent meeting, meaning that the district’s boys’ and girls’ teams both started the year without a coach.

“I have been very moved by the outpouring of support that I have received,” Yates told PennLive, saying she was “extremely delighted” by the outcome. “I am very much looking forward to continuing to support and guide both teams as they represent Gettysburg Area High School in the coming seasons.”

Yates has coached both of the district’s tennis teams since 2018, and began transitioning in 2021. According to the limited information provided publicly by the school board, it seems that Yates’ contract renewal was held up by allegations that she had behaved inappropriately in the girls’ locker room, which Yates disputed.

On one occasion last year, Yates was formally warned for changing her top in the locker room, and told to only change in private rooms per school policy — after which the board renewed her contract for the spring 2023 season. (Yates said she only changed her top in a corner of the room, as PennLive noted.) Tristan Smith, a rising senior and boys’ tennis captain who served as an interim coach in Yates’ absence, told the board this week that the incident was “promptly resolved” and that there was “no validity to the disgusting claims I’ve heard about my coach.”

Although board president Kenneth Hassinger denied that their investigation into Yates was motivated in any way by her gender, the parties behind the accusations paint a different picture. School board member Michelle Smyers, who was elected in 2021, is also the chairwoman of the Adams County chapter of Moms for Liberty, and as Penn Live reported, has given interviews to conservative outlets exaggerating the claims against Yates. Smyers is represented by America First Legal, the right-wing law firm founded by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller that blasted the U.S. with tens of millions of dollars in anti-trans campaign ads last year and, more recently, accused Kellogg’s of sexualizing Frosted Flakes. In a press release last month, AFL representatives demanded that Smyers be granted access to more of Yates’ records and claimed they would “protect students from the insidious transgender movement.”

At this week’s board meeting, several of Yates’ players took the microphone to advocate for her and call out Smyers’ anti-trans motivations. “I can say from experience that [Yates] fostered a positive culture,” said Molly Heaton, a first-year tennis player who went on to condemn Smyers for “specific attacks against Gettysburg high school students on Facebook and [who] has used her platform to attack the trans community even before there was any question” about Yates’ conduct. (Smyers denied ever having “discriminated against a child” as a board member, according to PennLive.)

“As someone who has been coached by her, it is clear to me that this matter is not a question of her character as much as an attack on her identity,” Heaton told the board.

Yates’ job may be safe for now, but Moms for Liberty will doubtlessly keep up the fight. The group is part of a larger conservative movement against LGBTQ+ people and topics in schools, one that’s seen some queer and trans teachers chased out of their homes and profession. A recent Human Rights Campaign survey found that nearly half of LGBTQ+ youth feel unsafe at school in the current political climate.

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