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Kendall Kotzmacher will never forget the day she entered the batter’s box against Marissa Rothenberger.
It was a semi -final in Minnesota State Tournament. Kotzmacher and her White Bear Lake High School teammates were looking to run for the state championship game. Kotzmacher had just transferred to White Bear Lake for her last year with the goal of winning a championship with his little sister and teammate.
But Rothenberger, a trans athlete, was on the haug that day for their opponent, Champlin Park High School.
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Marissa Rothenberger threw a Complete shutout in the quarterfinals of the Minnesota Girls’ Softball State Tournament. (Amber Harding/Outkick)
“They move ten times more,” Kotzmacher Pakinomist told Digital about Rothenberger’s seats.
“I’ve seen movement spaces, so when your hands are bigger than a biological woman of that age, especially in Minnesota, you spin the ball ten times more. And I would actually say this athlete wasn’t on their best game that day, but even at half their best they still blow past us, and spin the ball more, which does so we can’t beat.”
Kotzmacher locked in enough to get in touch with Rothenberger that day. But Rothenberger held White Bear Lake for only two races on seven hits. It was the most number of races that scored Rothenberger throughout the mail season. But that wasn’t enough, because in the last lap Rothenberger also came up to hit.
After hitting a double to trigger a two-run-rally earlier that day, Rothenberger hit a double to lead the last lap and created a clamp runner to win the game for Champlin Park.
“It was a half-swing. This athlete did not swing to their full potential and the ball was still hit extremely hard,” said Kotzmacher, who played Catcher behind Rothenberger that day. “It was hard to call seats because it looked like any pitch I called, this athlete could hit.”
Kotzmacer’s high school career ended right there. She never gets another chance to fulfill her childhood dream of winning a high school state championship. She fell into her arms of her little sister and began to cry.
“I honestly just wanted to leave right away. I didn’t want to do anything else,” Kotzmacher said. “I couldn’t even treat what just happened.
“How do you recognize that you lost against a biological man? How do you treat the events that happened? And it was something all night I still couldn’t do it … We lost to a biological man in a female state tournament.”
President Donald Trump’s administration has dealt with the incident and decided that the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) violated title IX by letting it happen. The institution has until October 10 to change its policy to only allow women in girls’ sports or risk referral to the Ministry of Justice.
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Champlin Park celebrates winning the state championship while Bloomington Jefferson looks at. (Amber Harding)
A press release in the Education Department, which announced, cited the pitcher’s performance in the 2025 season of the recent crash, saying “The male pitcher over -labeled female athletes during five consecutive matches, giving up only an earned race over 35 laps and knocking out 27 female batters.”
Kotzmacher is in his first year in college now playing Softball for Western Michigan University. But she hopes, for the sake of her younger sister, that Minnesota’s agencies will comply with the president’s executive order to keep biological men out of girls and women’s sports. Rothenberger still has a high school season left.
Minnesota became one of the first states in the country to advertise that it will not comply with the executive order back in February. Minnesota’s Democratic Leadership, led by Government Head of Government Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and a democratic majority state legislator, have taken some of the hardest attitudes to commit to enabling biological men to compete in girls’ sports during Trump’s tenure.
Ellison brought a lawsuit against Trump and DOJ and boasted to “sue them first” over the question. Ellison is also on the accused side of a trial of three other Minnesota Girls’ Softball Pitchers, which has been anonymous, claiming their title IX rights were also violating this last season.
And still Ellison’s office has defended the concept of letting men play in girls sports.
“In addition to getting training and the fun of competition, sports come with so many benefits for young people. You build friendships that can last life, you learn to work as part of a team and you feel you belong,” Ellison said in response to the girls’ trial in May. “I think it’s wrong to appoint a group of students who are already facing higher levels of bullying and harassment, and telling these children that they can’t be on the team because of who they are. I will continue to defend all students’ rights to play sports with their friends and peers.”
The state legislator failed to pass a bill that would have banned trans athletes from girls’ sports, “Conservative Girls Sports Act”, back in March. It fell a voice shy to move on to Walz’s desk. Meanwhile, the state legislator called rep. Liish Kozlowski, who identifies himself as “non-binary”, the bill “Another version of state-sanctioned bullying and genocide.”
Kotzmacher was in the state’s capital that day. She was at a rally outside the capital building and saw Riley Gaines and former Minnesota Viking Captain Jack Brewer leads a protest in support of the bill.
“That’s how what triggered, as’ I won’t return from this question and I will speak for other girls just as [Gaines] Have spoken to me, ‘”Kotzmacher said.
In addition to admiring Gaines, Kotmzacher has also become close to XX-Xy Athletic’s founder Jennifer Sey through the recent increase in activism during the question of “saving women’s sports.”
But for Kotzmacher, only one of the many questions has turned her and her Minnesota Teen-telling against the state’s long-standing democratic authorities.
“Right now Minnesota is undergoing a lot of turmoil. And there’s a lot that is wrong with what’s going on. It’s not the same state I grew up in,” she said. “It’s not safe to be there anymore, if we want to be honest, I’m not even allowed to go to St. Paul or Minneapolis anymore, my parents won’t let me because it’s too dangerous.”
Meanwhile, Kotzmacher hopes that the Trump administration will take steps to at least treat girls’ sports questions as she hopes her younger sister will have a fair and safe softball season in 2026.
“Knowing that it is recognized at a higher level is huge … to see that people finally do something about it and acknowledge that they were doing something wrong and they took this away from us, it means a lot and I am excited to see what is happening and what plays out.”
