LITTLE ROCK, AR–Nikki Jackson, 9, of Springfield had been following the Mili Hernandez incident–where an 8 year old girl was accused of “being a boy” during a soccer tournament and removed from the game–when she had an idea. She decided she would use her parents’ and coach’s fear to win their soccer tournament. She said on Sunday, “We lost the opening round and we were all pretty bummed. We were at the place that sponsored us,” she pointed to her uniform, emblazoned with the logo of “Larry’s Pizza.” She went on. “And I just thought of it. I’d pick the girl on the other team that looked like a boy and complain.”
And that’s exactly what she did. She looked at her opponents and then went to a referee, a Mr Fred Bleacher, who asked to not be named, and complained. “‘That’s a boy,’ I told the ref. ‘I don’t feel comfortable playing with a boy.’ Which is a lie because I can beat Charlie when we do sprints in gym class. The ref asked how I knew and I told him that she had short hair like a boy.”
Witnesses say that, after a short discussion with the coach of the opposing team, the short haired girl was removed from the roster from the game, which caused them to not have enough players. Jackson’s team won by default.
“That’s when I realized I could do this every game. We could win and get toppings on the pizza instead of plain cheese ones,” she said.
The next week, her team advanced in the tournament’s second round, Nikki told the referee that a couple of the girls on the opposing team were too tall to be cisgendered girls. The other team could not provide notarized birth certificates and so the Jackson’s team won, again, by default.
When asked if this was the right thing to do, Jackson stated matter-of-factly, “This is really what the law wants us to do, isn’t it. I know this sounds rather self-aware for someone my age, but what are you going to do?”
In the semi-finals, when they started to loose Jackson said that the opposing team wore distracting uniforms and that it made her uncomfortable. Unable to find acceptable uniforms, the team sponsored by Larry’s Pizza advanced to the finals for the regional championship.
She did not know what she would do with the finals, if her ruse would finally have to come to an end, “It’s OK. I’ve seen the team we’ll be going against. I know that it’s from a poor urban neighborhood, so I’ll just accuse them of affirmative action. I mean, I really believe that skill should be the way other people win. But not me.”