From injury to activist: Why this NC athlete doesn’t want to compete against trans women

Payton McNabb says she’s failed only one class in her life — public speaking.

But at some point before McNabb appeared on a Fox News interview and then “The Ingraham Angle,” before she talked with Megyn Kelly and then spoke in front of the North Carolina legislature, the 18-year-old decided this was going to be her life, no matter what that grade on her report card once told her.

“It’s definitely out of the norm for me and I still don’t really know what I’m doing,” McNabb told The Charlotte Observer recently. “But I feel like I get a little better each time. So I’m trying to get better and I just want to help as much as I can.”

McNabb wants to draw attention to what she has made her singular and controversial cause in the last few months: preventing transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

The debate over the participation of transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports has become a political flashpoint in the past year, with 19 states passing laws in 2023 preventing transgender athletes, primarily girls and women, from competing in high school sports. But the laws are aimed at a small number of athletes: the North Carolina High School Athletics Association said that just two transgender females have been approved to compete in high school sports since 2019. Still, it has turned into a political mechanism that uses athletes like McNabb as spokespeople for a conservative cause.

READ MORE: NC’s high school sports leader wants to find ways to include transgender athletes

McNabb says she’s speaking out because she wants to help people like her little sister and younger high school teammates from experiencing the same kind of injury she suffered last fall.

In September 2022, McNabb was struck in the head by a spike from an opponent in her varsity high school volleyball match. McNabb, playing for Hiwassee Dam High School, was knocked unconscious and suffered a concussion and a neck injury, she said. She spent months recovering from headaches and concentration problems and missed the remainder of her volleyball season, she said.

The powerful spike came from a player on Highlands High School’s team, one of two known transgender female high school athletes in North Carolina.

The transgender player has not spoken publicly about the incident with McNabb, but she replied to a comment on her TikTok account in May. “i literally hit her because she pulled (off) the net when she was supposed to be blocking and she gave me an easy shot down the line,” she wrote. “and i OBVIOUSLY didn’t mean to hit her in the face. like, i’m not actually evil in the way that you think i am, believe it or not.”

Never thought this would be an issue

McNabb’s mailing address is Murphy, North Carolina, but she says it’s not so easy to summarize her hometown in the far western corner of the state.

“My town is … I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s all on one road,” she said. “It’s a really long road, but yeah, our whole town is on that road, as well as our school and our fire department and stuff.”

McNabb’s graduating class had 32 students. Her dad was her high school principal. A cousin was her high school athletic director.

Both her father and cousin were on a short list of administrators who would have been told that an opponent on a competing team was transgender.

“Obviously we knew,” McNabb said, “because they told us.”

North Carolina’s High School Athletics Association gender identity policy says it “will respect and promote the student’s privacy and confidentiality rights,” and only share a student’s gender identity with other schools “as necessary, to ensure appropriate accommodations and safety when competing at another school.” The written policy specifies that “athletic department personnel, coaches, and players should never disclose a student’s gender status without express consent from the student and parents to share that information.”

McNabb played four years against the player, who did not respond to Observer attempts to speak with her.

“We never thought we would ever run into this issue where we live,” McNabb said. “It’s very sheltered, and a very small and rural community. So we never thought this would ever be an issue that we would have to face. And when we found out, it was just crazy.”

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McNabb said the Highlands player is a dominant outside hitter; 5-feet-11 and rail-thin with a powerful spike. McNabb, a 5-3 setter, said she often worried about how her team would defend against the player whenever the two teams faced each other. She said she’s known the player was transgender for their entire high school careers.

“I had kind of gotten used to it by then,” McNabb added. “I feel like that’s what everyone’s doing — is getting used to this idea of this is OK.”

Que Tucker, the North Carolina High School Athletics Association commissioner, said there’s a risk of injury for anyone who plays a sport — regardless of gender.

“If you are going to participate in athletics, injuries are inherent,” Tucker said. “So sustaining a concussion — if I participate in athletics, there is the likelihood that I could sustain a concussion, even if I play basketball. Even if I run track; if I fall incorrectly and I hit my head on the ground. Or I play soccer and I head the ball, I can sustain a concussion. There are a lot of things that you could do in any sport, so we understand that side of it.”

‘I knew I had to speak out’

When McNabb turned 18 in March, she said her parents told her she was an adult who could make her own decisions. One of her first moves was to begin speaking out against transgender athletes competing against girls and women.

NC Values Coalition and Independent Women’s Forum, two conservative nonprofits, reached out to McNabb, she said, and asked if she would partner with them. North Carolina lawmakers had recently proposed House Bill 574. Dubbed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” the bill prohibits transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports in middle and high school, as well as in colleges and universities; transgender boys still would be permitted to participate.

When the bill first was passed by the state Senate in June, Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Wake County Democrat, said on the Senate floor that it was “designed to tap into a human impulse toward dehumanizing people we don’t understand, or when we need to view some other group as less than or somehow dangerous. We’ll always use that impulse that people have to score political points. And until it’s no longer useful, they’ll keep doing it or until there’s a new target.”

Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed the bill, but the Republican supermajority in the legislature is poised to override it.

“I knew I had to speak out,” McNabb said. “I first spoke out in April because that’s when it was trying to pass through in North Carolina. And I had to speak right then to help it; I couldn’t wait any longer.”

Tucker, the NCHSAA commissioner, said her organization was in the midst of reevaluating its gender identity policy to potentially require evaluations after initial approval to determine “if a student-athlete has a competitive advantage” when H.B. 574 was passed. Those plans are now on hold.

McNabb said when she was contemplating how vocal she wanted to be in opposing transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, she considered the bracelet that she wears that says “What Would Jesus Do?”

“I’ve just been wearing it and I remember looking at my bracelet and I was like, well, obviously Jesus, he gave his whole life for everyone else,” she said. “I’m giving a year of my high school (career) to help some people who need it because I have the experience to be able to do so.

“So I think that is what also has pushed me.”

Seeking sports opportunities for transgender athletes

Since then, McNabb has appeared on national television and flown on a plane for the first time to travel to New York. She’s spoken to lawmakers and been approached about talking to other state legislatures that are considering similar bills banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. She’s listed as a spokeswoman for the Independent Women’s Forum, though it’s unclear whether she receives payment or a salary. And she says she’s happy to help.

“I don’t think any girl or woman should have to even deal with this in any other state,” she said. “I’ve had so many people reach out to me from different states and even my own state thanking me for this and I wouldn’t want to just stop what I’m doing if I can make a difference in any way.”

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Tucker has said she wants to explore ways for transgender athletes to still participate in high school sports, even if H.B. 574 becomes law. That might include adding more sports of skill, such as bowling.

“I’m always wanting us to try to find those ways to provide opportunities for all student-athletes to be included,” Tucker said. “If the bill passes, I don’t know what direction our Board of Directors would go, but as the commissioner, I’m trying to see are there some other ways that we can provide opportunities for transgender students?

“...Maybe there are some other opportunities where we can have participation, and participating as a transgender student does not pose the same issues as we have listened to over the last few few months,” Tucker added.

McNabb, though, will continue speaking. She says she still needs learning accommodations because of lingering effects from her injury. She’s become friends with Riley Gaines, the former Kentucky swimmer who has been outspoken about transgender women competing in women’s sports.

But she says she wants to make clear that she’s not trying to prevent transgender women from being accepted; she just doesn’t want to compete against them in sports.

“That’s why I’ve been confused on why people think that the people that are fighting for this are trying to get rid of transgender people when that’s not the case at all,” McNabb said. “It’s just the safety of females. It’s completely unfair, it’s taking opportunities and privacy and things like that away from girls who did not sign up to play on a co-ed team.

“Nothing has said they can’t participate in sports. It’s just a matter of women and girls being safe in their spaces.”