March 09 2026, 08:15 
Trans activist Jazz Jennings shared an emotional 15-year-old clip of her father crying while expressing his devastation that Jennings had been banned from playing on the girls’ soccer team at only eight years old.
“Your decision has taken away a piece of her heart and her parents,” her father says through tears.
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Jennings posted the clip as part of a partnership with the ACLU to spread the message of how impactful sports can be on young people.
“This clip makes me emotional every single time I watch it,” Jennings said. “It’s the reality so many transgender kids are now facing, even fifteen years after this video was taken. My dad said it ripped a piece of his heart and the family’s, and he was right.”
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“I played soccer, flag football, lacrosse, and tennis growing up. It’s how I made my best friends, gained resilience, and learned how to be part of a team. I was only eight years old when I was denied the right to play travel soccer. I was told I had a competitive advantage being assigned male at birth, but the truth was this was before male puberty, and I was one of the smallest girls on the team.”
“No trans kid should be told you don’t belong,” Jennings emphasized, adding, “We don’t choose to be trans; it’s just who we are.” She then asked followers to share across social media what sports have taught them.
Jennings came out as trans at five years old and has devoted her life to visibility and activism, starting with starring in the TLC docu-series I Am Jazz. Her family has earned praise for decades for giving her their full support.
This is not the first time she has spoken up for trans athletes or talked about the impact the ban from soccer had on her.
“The ban made me feel excluded, had no merit, and negatively affected me and my family,” the star of I Am Jazz tweeted in 2021 as dozens of states considered anti-trans sports bills. She also shared the same video of her father.
Today, 27 states have laws on the books banning trans students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity, though a handful are currently blocked from enforcement by court order.
Additionally, the president issued an anti-trans executive order last February called Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, which commanded federal agencies to investigate school districts that allow trans athletes to compete in school sports.
The order said that the inclusion of trans female athletes in girls’ and women’s sports violates Title IX, a provision of a 1972 education law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any federally funded school.
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