:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55103051/457120592.0.jpg)
Reports emerged on Monday that an 8-year-old girl in Nebraska was caught in the crossfire at a local youth tournament. Mili Hernandez had helped take her team to the final of the tournament, and she is so good at soccer that she’s playing with a team of 11 year olds.
Except the team set to face hers at the tournament decided to go for some major league baloney, and asked Hernandez’s team to be disqualified because they believed she was a boy.
The girl, who has short hair, was left in tears as the tournament organizers sided with the bullies, even though Hernandez’s parents showed them their daughter’s health insurance card as proof.
It’s a straight-up shocking story, and while the tournament organizers and team that pulled this deserve to be shamed, it’s got to be tough for Hernandez to get all this publicity and have to relive the humiliation simply because her hair is short.
But out of this comes support from perhaps the best women’s soccer player of all time, Los Angeles Football Club co-owner Mia Hamm, who tweeted this on Monday afternoon in response to the story:
Hey Mili, we would love to host you at one of our camps @TeamFirstSA . Be you!
— Mia Hamm (@MiaHamm) June 5, 2017
It’s a great gesture that might ultimately turn a bad incident into an awesome memory — here’s hoping.
You can’t really take back what’s already happened, but hopefully Hernandez gets to hook up with some USWNT legends and she won’t have to go through such a horrible incident ever again.
What do you think? Leave a comment below!