By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 10 years ago

Girls soccer team in Colorado wears hijabs in solidarity with Muslim teammate

girls soccer team wearing hijabs

How great is this? At a recent match, referees told Samah Aida, a high school soccer player in Colorado, that she wasn’t allowed to wear her hijab on the field. The refs claimed that it posed a safety risk — not actually true according to soccer’s governing body FIFA, which recently lifted their ban on religious head coverings. 

Aida’s team wasn’t having it though. For their next game, her teammates and coaches also donned headscarves in solidarity and tweeted a group shot: “the refs wouldn’t let Samah play with her hijab so today we all wore one for the game #lovemyteam#letsamahplay.” The refs relented and let them all play — impressing everyone, including the other team, with their show of support.

(h/t Colorlines)

Maya DusenberyThis story warms Maya‘s old, soccer-playing heart.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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