Stephanie Brown was filming from across the mat, the way she always did at her daughter Kallie’s wrestling matches. Then she saw Kallie’s face. Something was wrong, but she could not tell what. “I don’t know what she said or why her face looked like that,” Stephanie can be heard saying on the recording. What she did not know was that the opponent her 15-year-old daughter was facing was actually a male athlete—and that he was sexually assaulting Kallie in the middle of the match.
Be informed, not misled.
This wasn’t a wrestling move gone wrong. Kallie had been wrestling since she was four and had never experienced the violation she felt in the moment. It was sexual assault. And when she found the courage to report it, the adults in charge—her coaches, her school, and the officials who run girls' sports in Washington state—did nothing for nearly two months.
Kallie’s assault was not a fluke. It was the product of bad policy. The state of Washington requires schools to let males who identify as female compete in girls' sports, and it bars school staff from telling parents, so Stephanie had no warning and no way to keep her daughter off that mat.
Now, Kallie and her mother are asking a federal court to hold Washington officials accountable and to make girls' sports safe again.
Alliance Defending Freedom is now representing them.
Kallie Keeler is a sophomore at Rogers High School in the Puyallup School District in Washington. Wrestling runs in her family. Her three older brothers wrestled, and she fell in love with the sport, watching them compete. She began wrestling at age four and has stayed with it for more than a decade.
Heading into the 2025-2026 season, she ranked first on her junior varsity team in the 190-pound weight class, one spot away from varsity. She also plays soccer, but wrestling is her favorite. She was 15 at the time of the December tournament and has since turned 16. Her mother, Stephanie, has stood beside her throughout, recording her matches and, now, fighting to get the adults in charge to do their jobs.
What happened on the mat?
Alliance Defending Freedom explains it like this:
Kallie’s first tournament of the season was a girls-only event sponsored by the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) and the district. For her final match, coaches and a tournament official directed her to the mat against an opponent from another school. Kallie and her mother assumed her opponent was a girl.
During the match, the male athlete sexually assaulted her, doing what wrestlers call an “oil check,” an illegal move where a wrestler will use their fingers to penetrate an opponent’s private areas through their spandex.
This flagrant violation can result in penalties, disqualification, and criminal charges. Such an act has no place in any context, let alone wrestling, and Washington law treats this as a serious crime.
Visibly distressed, Kallie let herself be pinned so the match would end, then ran to her mother in tears. Only afterward did a coach from another team tell her that her opponent was male, adding to her feeling of being violated.
Since then, the mother has repeatedly reported the issue to Rogers High School in the Puyallup School District in Washington. With no response.
In fact, two days later, Kallie’s mother reported the assault in writing to the coaches and gave them the video of the match. A coach replied that she had not known the opponent was male and said she would follow up.
Days went by. Then weeks passed. They hadn’t heard anything. Under Washington law, school personnel must report assault complaints to law enforcement within 48 hours. As it turned out, the district did not notify law enforcement for nearly two months, and only after a journalist contacted the school for comment.
In other words, despite mandatory reporter laws, officials ignored the incident until it became a national news story weeks later. Even now, they refuse to take it seriously and deal with the assault, to reserve girls' sports for girls, or even to give parents the necessary notice so they can keep their daughters safe.
Here's the timeline of events:
- December 2025: Kallie unknowingly wrestles a male athlete at a WIAA-sponsored girls tournament and is sexually assaulted during the match. Within two days, her mother reports the assault in writing to coaches and provides video.
- January 2026: Kallie does not rejoin the team because the district will not ensure her safety. With still no action from the district, officials report the assault to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office for the first time at the end of January, nearly two months after the family’s report and only after a journalist sought comment.
- February 2026: Kallie’s story is made public and goes viral. The U.S. Department of Education opens a Title IX investigation into the school district.
- June 2026: Kallie and her mother file a federal lawsuit against Washington officials.
Takeaway
The district has told Brown and her daughter that the policy would remain unchanged regardless of the action they take.
If she returns to wrestling, they say, she can be matched against a male athlete again without notice and over her objection.
So she and her mother are asking the court to protect their rights and the rights of all girls in Washington not to be unknowingly forced to compete against a male athlete.
ADF attorneys filed the case, K.M.K. v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
I'll keep you posted as this case moves forward.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.