Transgender wrestler defends state title
AUSTIN—Mack Beggs is back.
He’s still wrestling, still competing for a state championship and still undefeated.
And he’s still wrestling against the girls. It’s just been a lot quieter since last year when his march to a state championship was dogged by a last-minute lawsuit that tried to stop him and boos from the crowd when his hand was raised as the victor.
The senior from Euless Trinity High School near Dallas is transgender and in the process of transitioning from female to male. It was his steroid therapy treatments while wrestling girls that stirred a fierce debate about competitive fairness and transgender rights last season. He’s still taking steroids, which his mother said are just strong enough to create a wisp of facial hair and stop the menstrual cycle but not build muscle.
The 18-year-old Beggs wrestles in the girls’ division because the rules for Texas public high schools require athletes to compete under the gender on their birth certificate. Starting Friday, he’ll defend his title in the girls’ Class 6A 110-pound division at the state tournament in Cypress, near Houston.
“He has so much respect for all the girls he wrestles,” said Beggs’ mother, Angela McNew. “People think Mack has been beating up on girls … The girls he wrestles with, they are tough. It has more to do with skill and discipline than strength.”
Beggs went 56-0 on his way to the state championship last season, and he’s 32-0 this year after cruising through the regional finals last weekend.
“People don’t realize that what happened during state, that was really, honestly, nothing,” Beggs recently told the Dallas Morning News . “That didn’t stop me from competing. That didn’t stop me from being who I was.
“It sure as hell didn’t stop me from doing what I wanted to do in the past, and it won’t stop me from what I want to do in the future,” he said.
McNew would not make Beggs available for interviews this week ahead of the state meet. The solitude allows him to concentrate on the task ahead and perhaps shield him from attacks on social media and occasional insults from the stands—or even other wrestling mats— during meets.