Sen. Jim Justice Defends Save Women’s Sports in Supreme Court Battle

Paul Riverbank, 1/11/2026A gripping look at girls’ sports as a battleground for fairness, identity, and societal values.

“Why don’t we really stand behind our girls and women in sports?” he asked, pausing, sounding less like a big-name senator and more like a dad with a stake in the fight. “If we don’t, what kind of message are we sending?” He kept his gaze fixed on the court, but it was obvious he was speaking to something larger—a swelling storm of national controversy.

This wasn’t just about basketball. Not even close. It was about a law Justice had signed—the Save Women’s Sports Act—which bars transgender girls from girls’ teams in West Virginia. The measure had already wound its way to the Supreme Court. Some frame it as a line drawn for fair play. Others, a civil rights standoff: Whose opportunity, exactly, gets protected? For girls like B.P.J., a high schooler who throws discus and shotput in the same state, it’s personal; her family’s challenge against the law has landed the issue squarely before the nation’s highest judges.

If only the debate lived and died in courtrooms. Eastward, beyond the swirl of American culture wars, the air on soccer fields in Pyongyang is cut through with a different kind of intensity. Here, girls practicing before daybreak are watched—literally—by government minders. Victory doesn’t just mean a medal. In North Korea, a win could mean extra rice, even an apartment, possibly a handshake from the regime’s leader. The cost of losing? Almost unimaginable.

Irune Dorado, a Spanish midfielder, remembers the pulse in her neck after facing North Korea’s under-17 women. “They never really let you breathe,” she said; every sprint was a clash of grit and orders drilled deep over months. “Their obsession with winning—it was wild,” Yoon Duk-yeo, who coached South Korea’s women’s national squad, once said. Each match in North Korea is a microcosm of something much larger: national honor, survival, pride, sometimes fear.

Scan back home, into parks and schoolyards scattered across New Jersey, Indiana, really anywhere, and the themes echo—competition, ambition, but also that old feeling that childhood sports are a playground for every adult’s dreams. The youth sports scene in the U.S. now looks vastly different from what parents remember. Clubs, traveling teams, year-round commitments and, more often, a financial arms race. Hopeful parents invested in their child’s shot at a scholarship, sometimes even a career.

Longtime sports scribe Harvey Araton has watched this arms race play out. Decades in, he still recognizes the edge that creeps into a parent’s voice, including his own. “I kept nudging my son to try out for travel soccer,” he’d admit. “I looked in the mirror and realized—I was pushing because of my ambitions, not his.” His son cared more about the post-game snacks and high-fives than any pipeline to the big leagues.

The endgame? Kids, sometimes confused by the expectations, get swept up in the fever dream, schlepping from state to state for one more tournament, while parents nurse caffeine and quiet anxiety in gymnasium bleachers. When does encouragement morph into projection? It’s a blurry line. And not exclusive to American suburbs or rural gym floors.

What connects all these gyms, courts, and training fields—whether it’s Jim Justice’s West Virginia, a secretive North Korean training camp, or a New Jersey rec league—is the realization that girls’ sports have become a site of something bigger. A public argument about fairness. A struggle around identity. A crucible for ambition. Even a window into what a society owes its next generation.

The shouting is loud these days and the lines are rarely clean. Rights rub against tradition; feelings push against facts. There are no perfect answers. Instead, every game—win or lose—presses a deeper question: What should we really want from youth sports, and are we brave enough to listen when the answers don’t fit our side of the stands?

A cold Thursday night in Lewisburg, West Virginia, wasn’t unlike most in early spring—except that the Greenbrier East High gym was humming with a little more energy than usual. Senator Jim Justice, tall and unmistakably hands-on, squeezed his frame onto the bench, a whistle swinging around his neck. His girls’ basketball squad just pulled off a tight win, fans stomping and clapping as the buzzer snapped. But Justice, who’s as much a coach as he is a politician, seemed preoccupied with more than just the scoreboard.“Why don’t we really stand behind our girls and women in sports?” he asked, pausing, sounding less like a big-name senator and more like a dad with a stake in the fight. “If we don’t, what kind of message are we sending?” He kept his gaze fixed on the court, but it was obvious he was speaking to something larger—a swelling storm of national controversy.This wasn’t just about basketball. Not even close. It was about a law Justice had signed—the Save Women’s Sports Act—which bars transgender girls from girls’ teams in West Virginia. The measure had already wound its way to the Supreme Court. Some frame it as a line drawn for fair play. Others, a civil rights standoff: Whose opportunity, exactly, gets protected? For girls like B.P.J., a high schooler who throws discus and shotput in the same state, it’s personal; her family’s challenge against the law has landed the issue squarely before the nation’s highest judges.If only the debate lived and died in courtrooms. Eastward, beyond the swirl of American culture wars, the air on soccer fields in Pyongyang is cut through with a different kind of intensity. Here, girls practicing before daybreak are watched—literally—by government minders. Victory doesn’t just mean a medal. In North Korea, a win could mean extra rice, even an apartment, possibly a handshake from the regime’s leader. The cost of losing? Almost unimaginable.Irune Dorado, a Spanish midfielder, remembers the pulse in her neck after facing North Korea’s under-17 women. “They never really let you breathe,” she said; every sprint was a clash of grit and orders drilled deep over months. “Their obsession with winning—it was wild,” Yoon Duk-yeo, who coached South Korea’s women’s national squad, once said. Each match in North Korea is a microcosm of something much larger: national honor, survival, pride, sometimes fear.Scan back home, into parks and schoolyards scattered across New Jersey, Indiana, really anywhere, and the themes echo—competition, ambition, but also that old feeling that childhood sports are a playground for every adult’s dreams. The youth sports scene in the U.S. now looks vastly different from what parents remember. Clubs, traveling teams, year-round commitments and, more often, a financial arms race. Hopeful parents invested in their child’s shot at a scholarship, sometimes even a career.Longtime sports scribe Harvey Araton has watched this arms race play out. Decades in, he still recognizes the edge that creeps into a parent’s voice, including his own. “I kept nudging my son to try out for travel soccer,” he’d admit. “I looked in the mirror and realized—I was pushing because of my ambitions, not his.” His son cared more about the post-game snacks and high-fives than any pipeline to the big leagues.The endgame? Kids, sometimes confused by the expectations, get swept up in the fever dream, schlepping from state to state for one more tournament, while parents nurse caffeine and quiet anxiety in gymnasium bleachers. When does encouragement morph into projection? It’s a blurry line. And not exclusive to American suburbs or rural gym floors.What connects all these gyms, courts, and training fields—whether it’s Jim Justice’s West Virginia, a secretive North Korean training camp, or a New Jersey rec league—is the realization that girls’ sports have become a site of something bigger. A public argument about fairness. A struggle around identity. A crucible for ambition. Even a window into what a society owes its next generation.The shouting is loud these days and the lines are rarely clean. Rights rub against tradition; feelings push against facts. There are no perfect answers. Instead, every game—win or lose—presses a deeper question: What should we really want from youth sports, and are we brave enough to listen when the answers don’t fit our side of the stands?