Mass. law allowed male field hockey player to get MVP award for girls’ league
A boy using a Massachusetts legal loophole to play on the girls’ field hockey team has been awarded the 2024 Most Valuable Player honor for the girls’ conference.
But unlike many…

A boy using a Massachusetts legal loophole to play on the girls’ field hockey team has been awarded the 2024 Most Valuable Player honor for the girls’ conference.
But unlike many other gender controversies rocking high school and collegiate athletics, this latest shocker doesn’t involve a transgender player who thinks he’s a girl.
This high school player is biologically male and does not identify as female.
Under a Massachusetts law known as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a player may play for the team designated for members of the opposite sex if their school doesn’t offer that option for their sex. In other words, since there’s no male field hockey team offered, a boy can play on the girls’ team.
Ryan Crook, a sophomore at Somerset Berkley High School outside Boston, received the MVP award this year after coaches from the conference voted him the award.
Last month Somerset Berkley defeated rival Norwood 2-1 to claim the division II title, with Crook scoring both goals for his team, the Blue Raiders, in the match.
Last year, Norwood defeated Somerset Berkley 2-1, with Crook, then a freshman, scoring the only goal for the Blue Raiders.
Like a lot of other male players who are stealing honors from girls in athletics, the field hockey player is the son of a coach.
His mother, Jen Crook, who is the school’s field hockey coach, bragged that her son is in advance of where she thought he’d be at this point in his career.
“I’m excited for him,” Jen Crook told the Somerset Sentinel. “I didn’t expect it as a sophomore and I felt there could have been a few players on our team who could have been the MVP of the league.”
Ryan isn’t the first son of Coach Crook who has taken the top player honors for the Raiders in conference play.
Previously, Lucas Crook, Ryan’s older brother, was awarded the Player of the Year trophy in the state’s South Coast Conference in 2019 after he led the Blue Raiders to two straight state girls’ field hockey championships.
Tragically, to some, his field hockey dominance was cut short in 2020, his senior year, by COVID-19 cancelations, “robbing” him of another triumphant season.
Lucas has a Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) page for the NCAA Providence Friars field hockey team, but he’s not listed on the roster. His sister, Cami Crook, with whom he played at Somerset Berkley does appear as a senior, 5’4’’ midfielder on the Catholic university’s team.
Lucas’ exclusion from the team may be because the NCAA does not allow men to compete on women’s teams. If teams allowed men to play field hockey, those college teams would not be allowed to compete for the NCAA championship, said a fact sheet by Smith College.
Field hockey has typically been considered a women’s sport that under Title IX of the Civil Rights act, tries to balance out for women the large numbers of men’s football scholarships awarded at U.S. universities.
There are no field hockey scholarships available for men in NCAA programs, according to U.S. Sports Scholarships.
From 2016 to fall 2022, the number of boys playing on girls’ field hockey teams in Massachusetts has gone from 28 to 66 players using the Massachusetts ERA loophole.
The state’s ERA law was originally passed in 1976 during an attempt at a nationwide Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which flailed.
That nationwide amendment was supposed to protect women’s rights, not degrade those rights, said supporters.
Opponents of ERA, such as Phylis Schlafly, a constitutional attorney and conservative activist, predicted with amazing foresight as far back as the 1970s that the ERA “would not only lead to more women in the workplace, but to same-sex marriage, women in combat, government-funded abortion, and even unisex toilets,” according to the Museum of the City of New York.
Today, the front in the fight for equality has moved to the athletic playing fields, where boys are seeking to dominate girls again under the agency of supposed equal rights.
“Ryan is not a dangerous player,” Jen Crook told the Herald News. “He keeps everything simple and plays the right way. He just has a good eye.”
And male chromosomes.