A Christian high school’s moral crisis over a transgender basketball star

As Steve Miner scanned the California girls basketball playoff bracket, looking for his high school, a moment traditionally packed with nervous anticipation quickly turned to dread. 

Dread for Cornerstone Christian, an Antioch private school with 600 kids from preschool to 12th grade; for its girls basketball team, which had worked hard to build a dominant 21-7 record; and for himself, as the school’s superintendent and the pastor of its affiliated church, who would have to deal with the fallout that was sure to come.

Awaiting the Cornerstone Christian Cougars in the CIF’s North Coast Section Division 6 playoffs was San Francisco Waldorf School. Miner was well aware that Waldorf’s best player was a trangender female who’d been starring for the Wolverines in girls volleyball, basketball, and soccer.

Miner also knew that Merced’s Stone Ridge Christian School, when facing Waldorf during the volleyball playoffs last fall, had opted to forfeit rather than play against the transgender athlete, whose name The Standard is omitting because she has not come out publicly. 

Minor feared a forfeiture would be expected of his school, especially as the issue has become more politically charged following President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in girls sports.

The morning after the bracket release, Miner braced himself as he opened his email. “My inbox is flooded,” he recalled in an interview, “with everything from just ‘Wanting to know what are you going to do’ to giving us advice of ‘Let’s fight this all the way to the top’ or ‘This is how you should do the protest.’ ”

Some people offered to fund an anti-trans boycott or legal battle. The messages came “from around the world,” Miner said. “We’re talking about Division 6 girls basketball, so I’m like, what in the world? This is going to be ugly, because when you make this decision, nobody wins.”

Stone Ridge Christian may have forfeited that volleyball match against Waldorf, sacrificing its team’s season, but it won applause from anti-trans crusaders vying to “protect women’s sports” across the U.S. Riley Gaines, a former NCAA All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky who has been a vocal critic of transgender females competing in girls sports, visited Stone Ridge Christian in December to celebrate the team.

“How can you expect someone to stand up for you,” Gaines asked the audience, “if you are not willing to stand up for you?”

Miner felt that pressure as he spoke with Cornerstone Christian’s principal, Logan Heyer, who also had a full inbox. “It would be so easy” to just opt out of the match, the superintendent said. “So many want us to, you know, ‘stick it to them’ and all this. But who are we?”

That became Miner’s and Heyer’s central question as they pondered what to do. The last thing they wanted was to take their Cougars out of playoff contention. After all, sports have been a big part of the school’s popularity since it was founded in 2000 on the outer edge of the East Bay.

Miner recalled how the school built its gym in 2006, thinking it would boost enrollment. Fast-forward to 2023, and Cornerstone Christian won the girls basketball CIF North Coast Section state title; the boys basketball team did the same in 2024. “It’s funny. Nobody cares what our math is doing, nobody cares about our science,” Miner said, “but when you start winning, it’s a great front porch for us.”

But this was about more than winning a state crown. To Miner and Heyer, it was about making a statement that reflects the type of faith practiced at Cornerstone Christian. 

Two days after seeing their inboxes flooded, Miner and Heyer drafted a statement announcing their decision. Cornerstone Christian would not forfeit the game against San Francisco Waldorf. The girls would compete against a trans player. In their minds, it answered their highest question: Who are we?

“As a school, we are committed to upholding biblical principles in all of our decisions and actions,” Heyer’s statement began. “While we may not agree with or support the transgender movement, we firmly believe in the biblical call to love our neighbors as ourselves, as instructed in Matthew 22:39. This principle guides us to extend compassion, respect and grace to all individuals, regardless of their beliefs or identities.”

Miner later expanded on this idea in an interview: “We believe and we teach and we hope to … live the gospel of Jesus. Then that kind of frees us to say, alright, well, we can disagree with people and still love them. While we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us. This is who we are.”

But Miner would soon be confronted by his own churchgoers who did not approve of what they considered a validation of transgender people.

The school had already held a Zoom meeting with the players and their parents, and all but one family was on board with the decision to play. “It’s not right that our girls would be cheated out of the opportunity that they have worked for all year,” they said, according to Minor.

Security was an issue. The game — set for the evening of Feb. 22, a Saturday — would be a potential lightning rod for protest. The school considered limiting the number of tickets to keep control of the atmosphere in the gym but decided against closing the doors to the public. 

Miner spent the week leading up to the game having “heart-to-heart” conversations and “great prayer” with congregants. He felt good about the Cornerstone community’s readiness for whatever the outside world would bring.

From her home an hour away, in Davis, Beth Bourne had been monitoring the situation. Bourne, a vigilant anti-trans crusader, became aware of the SF Waldorf player last year and viewed Stone Ridge Christian’s decision as courageous. Bourne’s X account, which has 15,000 followers, is dedicated to the anti-trans movement, and she has routinely posted videos of transgender girls competing against biological girls.

In January, she traveled to San Francisco to record video of SF Waldorf playing basketball against Jewish Community High School of the Bay. In a 59-33 Waldorf victory, the transgender player scored 29 points.

With Cornerstone Christian deciding to play, Bourne and six others from a group they call “Women Are Real” made plans to attend the game with protest signs.

Then, about an hour before tipoff, as the Cornerstone gym’s seats began to fill up, Miner revealed that he had just been told that SF Waldorf’s transgender star would not be playing.

Miner said he had gotten a call from the North Coast Section tipping him off that this was a possibility, but nothing was certain until Waldorf arrived at the gym without its best player.

Waldorf administrators turned down interview requests, and attempts to reach the transgender athlete’s family were unsuccessful. A California Interscholastic Federation spokesman declined to comment due to the U.S. Department of Education’s ongoing Title IX investigation into CIF’s adherence to state law on the inclusion of transgender athletes in high school sports.

Miner said he had no knowledge of why the player suddenly chose not to play after three and a half years of doing so. “My guess is, if we got [the pressure] we got, I think they got it too,” he said. “And they probably had a different end of it than we did.”

Miner had no doubt about how the absence would affect the game. Waldorf, he said, is “going to get crushed.”

Cornerstone’s side of the bleachers was packed with a couple of hundred fans, decked out in the Cougars’ navy and gold, while only a dozen Waldorf supporters made the trip. Waldorf had just seven players to Cornerstone’s 11. 

From the opening tip, Waldorf’s girls, faced with stifling full-court pressure, struggled to move the ball across half-court. The Cougars led 16-4 after one quarter and won the game 56-30. 

Bourne and her group of protestors posed in front of the gym for a photograph that circulated on social media.

The contingent from Women Are Real didn’t witness any drama to match their signage, but they did get to see what amounted to an average, poorly contested high school girls basketball game.

As for Miner, it had been a week of stressful soul-searching. But it wasn’t for nothing.

“I’m glad we made the decision we did,” he said.