Ruling: NY boy can play on girls field hockey team

SMITHTOWN, New York: The biggest goal of Keeling Pilaro’s field hockey career happened far from an athletic field.
An athletics committee determined the 13-year-old boy can keep playing on the girls’ team at Southampton High School, at least for one more season. The decision at an appeals hearing on Tuesday reverses earlier rulings that claimed Keeling’s skills as a field hockey player, which he developed growing up in Dublin, had become superior to those of girls.
“I was jumping up and down; I was so excited when I heard,” the youngster said in a telephone interview about an hour after the decision was announced. “I can play!“
Kevin Seaman, the attorney for the committee that oversees public school athletics in Suffolk County, said panelists determined that Keeling’s continued participation on the team ultimately would not have “a significant adverse effect” on girls’ opportunity to participate in interschool competition. That was the same criteria used this year when officials for the committee said Keeling’s skills had exceeded those of his female teammates and opponents.
Seaman said the vote to allow Keeling to play was not unanimous, but he declined to break it down. About two dozen officials deliberated for about 40 minutes after the youngster and his mother and their attorneys presented arguments for allowing him to continue. The boy’s high school field hockey coach also attended.
Keeling is believed to be the first boy to play alongside girls on Long Island.
The United States is one of the rare places in the world where boys do not regularly play field hockey.