’I will fight back’: How trans student became a voice for access in SLO County
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Student Lily spoke out after being targeted in school board debate on trans rights
- Lucia Mar board meetings drew national attention amid push against inclusion policies
- Lily vows to advocate for trans student rights despite rising local and national tension
For the past two years, 16-year-old Lily has fought to have her identity as a transgender girl recognized by her peers and teachers.
And for the most part, even as she suffered daily insults and slurs from her classmates at Arroyo Grande High School, Lily has been able to live true to herself over the course of those two years, participating on the school’s girls track and field team and using the restrooms that correspond to her gender identity.
That all changed one day last month — in a surprise development that presented her with a choice: Shrink from the moment or seize your voice and speak out.
Though no stranger to controversy, Lily was blindsided when a teammate, several parents and other community members attended a school board meeting to call out trans students’ participation on sports teams and use of school locker rooms that align with their gender identity, singling out Lily in the process.
The track athlete, who runs on the team with Lily, cried during public comment when recounting her experience changing in the locker room while she said Lily “watched her undress.”
Since then, Lucia Mar school district board meetings have become a microcosm of the intense anti-transgender sentiment that parents Trevor and Hilary said has been enabled in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s second administration, which has been marked by a flurry of executive orders targeting trans students’ participation in athletic programs and declaring that only two genders exist.
Now, Lily said she wants to set the record straight on a controversy she had no intention of being a part of, much less a champion.
She and her parents met with The Tribune at the Arroyo Grande High School track on Saturday for an open conversation about what it has been like to become the center of unwanted attention for simply existing within her community. The Tribune is withholding their last name to protect Lily’s safety.
“I believe that a vast majority of the team is completely fine with me in there,” Lily said, while sitting in the stands at Doug Hitchen Stadium, where she competes as a runner. “Before the school board meeting, I had probably at least 20 kids on the track team coming up to me wishing me good luck, and almost all of them were girls that are in the locker room.”
Her father doesn’t want controversy or labels to reduce his child to one dimension.
“If you really get to know her, you realize that the least interesting thing about her is she’s transgender,” Trevor said. “She is whip-smart, really creative, very caring, very thoughtful, and that gets lost, because all people see about her is the surface that she’s transgender. And that’s the shame of all of this.”
Local controversy goes national under media scrutiny
The fight over trans students landed on the doorstep of the Lucia Mar Unified School District on April 15, when at least a dozen speakers turned out at the board meeting to oppose policies on transgender students.
Among them was Arroyo Grande High School student and track athlete Celeste Duyst.
Duyst became emotional as she recounted an experience changing in the girls’ locker room with Lily — whom she did not name but instead referred to as a “biological male” throughout her comments.
Duyst alleged Lily had already changed into her track clothes at the beginning of the day and was in the locker room for “absolutely no reason.”
Through tears, Duyst said the experience was a violation of her privacy.
“Recently, I went into the women’s locker room to change for track practice, where I saw at the end of my row a biological male watching not only myself but the other young women undress,” Duyst said. “This experience was beyond traumatizing.”
Duyst’s comments at the April 15 meeting made national headlines on Fox News, and she later appeared on Fox News for an interview.
Her comments echoed the positions of SLO County parent groups who demand that districts like Lucia Mar “follow federal laws” and roll back inclusion policies for trans students. One group is circulating a petition, and the issued spread to the Paso Robles school board meeting last week.
Duyst spoke again at the May 6 meeting, joined by members of the newly formed Save Girls Sports movement headed by Realtor and Harvest Church director of Culture Impact Shannon Kessler, The Tribune previously reported.
“Our focus is on protecting girls,” Kessler told The Tribune ahead of the May 6 meeting. “As a woman, I see this as a degradation in women’s rights. … This is not about hate. No one has ever asked anyone to exclude anyone from school. This is just a matter of no boys — no biological boys — in girls sports.”
Trans student speaks before school board
Lily was not in attendance on April 15, but she didn’t miss her next opportunity.
On May 6, she was the first to speak during public comment before a crowd of hundreds who showed up on both sides of the issue.
“As a trans student, I have been threatened and harassed on a ... daily basis. My safety has been compromised multiple times, and yet, the students responsible rarely face the consequences due to deeply flawed district policies,” she said.
“This is not just a policy issue. It’s matter of basic human rights,” the high school sophomore said.
She called out Kessler, former mayoral candidate and local organizer with the anti-LGBTQ+ parents group Moms for Liberty Gaea Powell, and school board Trustee Mike Fuller for “using their platform to spread harmful disinformation and hateful rhetoric.”
Lily said that, despite what anti-trans opponents have stated about their lack of hatred toward the transgender community, these statements cannot be taken at face value.
“To me, it means that they’re cowards,” Lily said simply.
“It means that they are trying to just follow popular opinion and attempt to gain clout and political popularity, but they are too scared and cowardly to actually say what they truly believe.”
Transition brought light back into Lily’s life
Coming out as transgender was not without challenge for Lily and her family, but the alternative of pushing down her identity was never an option, Lily’s mother Hilary told The Tribune during the sit-down at the Arroyo Grande High School track.
Hilary and Trevor’s support for their child never wavered when she wrote them a letter before her ninth-grade year coming out as transgender, though they had previously noticed her carrying more anxiety and depression as she got older, Hilary said.
“We had noticed a big change in her through middle school, that she was becoming less bright and less shiny and less alive. I mean, she really was kind of disappearing, is the word that comes to mind,” Hilary said.
“So when she told us, as confused as we were — because this was something that we really didn’t know a lot about — we just wanted to reassure her how much we loved her.”
After Lily’s transition, Hilary said her daughter got her shine back.
Now, Lily is a vibrant teenage girl who loves art, chess and video games, with a particular interest in a career in cartography down the line.
When she came out entering her freshman year and started using the girls locker room to change for gym class, her classmates at the time weren’t sure how to feel about it, she said.
One of the girls approached her, and they ended up having a conversation with all the girls in the class about her use of the locker room, she said. Lily, along with her classmates, walked away from the talk more comfortable and respectful of each other’s needs, and since then she’s participated in girls sports without issue, she said.
That’s often included avoiding the girls changing room entirely, changing in a restroom stall and keeping a significant distance from the other athletes in the locker room.
Meanwhile, Lily said she’s gone to great lengths to make her fellow female athletes as comfortable as possible with her presence on the team.
“I know that Lily kind of makes herself uncomfortable to make it less uncomfortable for others,” Hilary said. “That’s why I think I was surprised by this accusation.”
“She doesn’t want to dominate. She wants to be part of something,” Hilary said of Lily’s interest in sports. “She’s not trying to invade girls’ spaces, because she sees herself as one of them. ... She’s not a predator. She’s trying to find belonging and community.”
Specifically addressing Duyst’s complaint, Lily said she likely stopped by the locker room that day, said hello to a friend and reported to the coach’s office for physical therapy — an innocuous interaction like any other as she got ready for track practice.
The fact that Lily participates in the 400-meter sprint and Duyst runs longer races means they’ve had very few head-to-head matchups on the track.
“I think we had a track meet earlier that day, and I had actually been cheering her on when she was running her 800-meter,” Lily said, while wearing a “Sport Saves Lives” T-shirt. “For her to then go and say some crazy false accusations to me later that day, it was kind of surprising.”
Lily said she was disappointed Duyst did not come to her before airing her grievance at the board meeting. In the weeks following the April 15 meeting, Lily has twice offered to have a mediated conversation with Duyst and the school’s administration, but has received no response.
Following Duyst’s comments, the school enforced a two-way restraining order on Lily and Duyst, ordering the girls not to speak with one another, post about each other on social media or come within each other’s immediate space.
Hilary said her daughter is lucky to have the support of many of her teammates, friends and fellow students, but is sad to see a source of positivity and connection to her friends tainted by division.
“To us, it is a lifeline, and I think sometimes that gets forgotten in the whole argument of why you do sports,” Hilary said. “It’s not always about getting up on a podium, it’s being part of a group of people that care about something and have great friendships.”
Fight over trans students far from over
With the discussion of trans students taking over the past two meetings and the Lucia Mar board set to discuss a resolution that supports “ensuring fairness and equal opportunities in girls sports,” trans students like Lily could face the ire of groups such as Save Girls Sports and Moms for Liberty for the foreseeable future.
Trevor and Hilary said they are proud to support their daughter’s fight for inclusion, but they worry about the toll it will exact on her as anti-transgender sentiment grows in the United States.
Trevor said he was frustrated that his daughter’s existence is being used both as a wedge issue by right-wing groups and as a rallying point for supporters of trans rights.
“They’re doing it at the expense of kids. For the most part, the adults that are going to school board meetings don’t have kids in school,” Trevor said. “This isn’t about the school, and the fact that they’re willing to put a child in harm’s way to create a flashpoint is appalling.”
At the same time, he applauded his daughter’s fortitude and strength of spirit.
“We’ve got a pretty damn special child that’s willing to go through this,” Trevor said. “People sit there and say, ‘Well, it’s her choice.’ I can’t imagine anybody choosing to go through what she goes through on a daily basis.”
Ultimately, Lily doesn’t believe she’s asking for anything extraordinary, and she has some very basic hopes for trans people.
“I wish that all trans people could be treated equally and that everybody was able to understand us and that we are humans,” she told The Tribune. “... I wish that trans people were able to feel more comfortable and safe using the locker rooms and bathrooms and participating in sports ... and that we did not have to worry so much about every single thing that we do. And I wish that we had legal protection that would protect us greater from hate crimes and discrimination.”
For her part, she said she will stand up for her right under California law to participate in girls sports for however long others may be set on trying to take it from her.
“I view it as kind of annoying, but I also view it as an opportunity for me to be able to go out in public and be sort of an activist,” Lily said.
In that respect, raising her voice for access to sports has suddenly become just as meaningful as any wins she may ever earn on the track.
“I am planning on going to every single school board meeting as long as they keep going to it,” she said. “And I will fight back for the human rights of transgender people.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2025 at 12:52 PM.
