On a June afternoon, my daughter or one of her teammates may confront a choice no student should ever face: compete in the Michigan state tennis finals – an achievement earned through years of discipline and sacrifice – or attend graduation, the ritual that marks the culmination of high school education.
A few years ago, an East Lansing High School varsity girls tennis player faced this very dilemma. Torn between her allegiance to her doubles partner and to her classmates as their chosen graduation speaker, she defaulted the match and raced to make it into her cap and gown. Her cheeks stung from tears and sweat as she walked across the stage to receive her diploma.
ELHS has scheduled graduation on a day that conflicts with the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s (“MHSAA”) girls tennis state finals every year but one since 2019, if not longer. This is not a one-off scheduling glitch. It is an intentional decision, one that denies student-athletes equal opportunity because they are girls. As one ELHS graduation organizer admitted: “Even though our school may not qualify for the state event, we can’t really book a date where there’s an MHSAA activity if it limits our students from participating in graduation.”
The girls tennis team regularly qualifies for MHSAA finals. And every year they are recognized as all-academic for their high overall team GPA.
The conflict is as predictable as it is indefensible: girls are forced to choose between competing at the highest level of their sport and participating in one of the most meaningful milestones of their academic lives. No boys team faces this repeated choice.
As both a parent and a legal scholar who has spent my career analyzing professional responsibility and institutional accountability, I recognize this for what it is: not an oversight, but a structural inequity hiding in plain sight.
We often think of discrimination as something explicit – rules that exclude, policies that deny rights in violation of federal or state law. But modern inequality is often more subtle. It shows up in schedules, decisions, and systems that appear neutral until you ask a simple question: who bears the burden?
Here, the answer is clear: girls do.
Title IX and Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act were enacted to eliminate precisely this kind of inequality. They require schools to ensure students can fully participate without being forced to trade one opportunity for another based on sex.
Graduation is not optional pageantry. It is a core capstone event. Interscholastic athletics are not simply recreation. They are a fundamental part of how many students experience education, build confidence, and earn recognition.
When a school schedules these two pillars of student life in direct conflict year after year, in a way that affects only female student-athlete, it is not neutral. It is discriminatory in effect. And it is entirely avoidable.
School officials have known about this conflict for years. They have acknowledged it publicly. They have heard from students, parents, and coaches. We’ve written letters, stood on tennis courts for endless conversations, and comforted distraught players.
There is an obvious fix. Numerous alternative venues exist, including locations used in prior years like the high school football stadium. Different dates are possible. The administration has been ambivalent about these proposals.
Instead, the burden is shifted onto female student-athletes. Onto 17- and 18-year-olds who are told, implicitly, to absorb the cost of institutional convenience. To forfeit a match they know they can win. To arrive late and rushed to a ceremony or miss it entirely. To fracture once-in-a-lifetime moments that should be whole.
Here is the uncomfortable truth. If a boys team was repeatedly forced to choose between a state championship and graduation, the conflict would not persist for years. Indeed, when the boys basketball team made the state finals a few weeks ago, the entire school was dismissed early to participate.
Our daughters should not have to choose between who they are as students and who they are as athletes. They are both.
Renee Knake Jefferson is the parent of an East Lansing varsity girls tennis player, author of the book Shortlisted: Women in the Shadows of the Supreme Court and a trustee for Michigan State University.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Viewpoint: Girls shouldn’t have to choose between a state title and graduation
Reporting by Renee Knake Jefferson, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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