A transgender athlete's 'pursuit of happiness'

On a weeknight like any other, he sits in the Cherry Hill Mall food court. In a black T-shirt, blue jeans and tattered Vans sneakers, the 17-year-old fits in.

Dozens of teenagers bustle by in the rush for spring styles. He's no different as he waits for a haircut appointment.

Cherokee High School junior Matt Dawkins feels comfortable. He's at ease with his surroundings, family, girlfriend and classmates. His time on the Chiefs' track team goes smoothly.

The only tension comes when he remembers last year, when he couldn't stomach the thought of running a 400-meter race.

The reasons for his reluctance are as simple as they are complex.

He's now a teenager who's found answers in his search for peace. That serenity was elusive in his sophomore year, when he was known as someone else.

In 12 months, Matt has gone from distress to awakening to action. He openly tells his story with honesty, at a mile-a-minute pace.

Student. Athlete. Son. Sibling. Social butterfly. Boyfriend. Transgender male.

He's all of them.

'How someone feels in their own skin'

Tammi Grovatt-Dawkins remembers one of her son's first Christmas wishes.

"He said, 'I want a penis,' " she says.

When Matt — who was then known as Maya — couldn't get what he wanted, he shrugged it off.

The child's holiday request wasn't the first sign for Grovatt-Dawkins that her child was different.

The behaviors of Matt and his fraternal twin sister, Jada, contrasted as early as their toddler years.

"Jada gravitated toward girly things," Grovatt-Dawkins recalls. "With (Matt), (he) was either a really sporty girl, lesbian or a boy. It was present in my mind."

Matt wore boy clothing and underwear to school as early as first grade. When strangers assumed Grovatt-Dawkins had a boy and girl of the same age, Matt preferred she go along with it.

Grovatt-Dawkins' understanding helped keep her children comfortable.

A therapist for 25 years who now runs a private practice in Haddonfield, the mother of two had lifelong ties to the LGBT community through friends and acquaintances.

Different was always OK in the household.

"As long as you're a nice person and polite, it's fine to be in our family," Grovatt-Dawkins says.

Matt came out as a lesbian when he realized an attraction to a female classmate as a freshman at Cherokee.

The announcement lifted a weight off Matt's back. With little blowback from his classmates, the teenager felt free.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's co-director of the Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic and adolescent psychotherapist Dr. Linda A. Hawkins says self-identification as homosexual can be a normal first step for transgender people.

"Individuals would (possibly) come out as feeling different rather than trans," Hawkins states. "They feel like they haven't been themselves.

"The primary difference is with gender, you really look at how someone feels in their own skin."

That difference brought the weight back to the shoulders of the then-16-year-old.

He didn't feel right as a girl.

"The more we started dating," Matt says of his lesbian relationship, "she called me her girlfriend and it weirded me out.

"I wanted to be seen as a guy figure."

'Digging my own grave'

"Dis-tress," Grovatt-Dawkins says as she forcefully mouths the syllables.

She emphasizes the word as she speeds through a memory of her son's identity crisis in 2014.

"He's crying on the way out the door on the way to school," Grovatt-Dawkins says. "He's crying and he couldn't stop crying.

"I remember thinking, 'This is not stress. We've crossed into dis-tress now. You can't bear being in that body.' "

In February of his sophomore year, Matt felt miserable. His inner self battled with the responsibilities of a high school girl.

As a member of the Chiefs' girls' track team, discomfort manifested into unhealthy behavior.

"Every race, I felt like I was running deeper into my future, digging my own grave," he says. "I made myself throw up so I couldn't run."

Matt held a prominent role on the squad. He placed third in the 2014 Olympic Conference Championships at Washington Township in the 100-meter dash with a time of 12.51 seconds.

In 200 meters, he finished third at the Burlington County Open at 26.13 seconds. His long jump of 15 feet, 3 inches was good for 10th in the Olympic Conference finals.

Matt succeeded in competition. But the struggle between girlhood and boyhood weighed him down.

Enough was enough.

"I came out to my mom because I wanted to tell her why I was so upset in track," Matt says.

Grovatt-Dawkins remembers the phone call as if it came yesterday. The two sobbed on the phone as Matt explained he was a boy.

"I knew something was happening here; this is not my kid," Grovatt-Dawkins says. "For me, it was a very normal parent thing.

"There's some level of fear and anxiety with that. You just want your kids to be safe."

Grovatt-Dawkins' background as a therapist helped her spring into what she calls "solution mode."

She knew the first step must be to provide safety. Her son needed a neutral party for guidance. Grovatt-Dawkins reached out to longtime friend, Dr. Joe O'Brien.

O'Brien works as a therapist at Inspira Health Center in Bridgeton and is a licensed clinical social worker. He agreed to meet with Matt.

"I've had plenty of experience in gay and lesbian clients but not a ton of experience with transgender," O'Brien says. "It seemed like Matt was in a pretty good place but there was micro stuff we had to work out. ... By the time Matt got to me, he had already decided on his end goal."

The "micro stuff" was an understanding of what it meant to change gender. Day-to-day concerns such as which bathroom Matt would use and the need for proper identification to take SATs were among the topics discussed.

Matt and O'Brien have met about every other week for the past 11 months.

Matt started strong with his sessions, the first step of a lengthy process that includes evaluations, name change, testosterone shots and surgical procedures.

'Another dilemma'

In his social circle, the rising junior had another dilemma.

He needed to tell the girl he liked.

Liani Ortiz came out as lesbian last year. A casual acquaintance with Matt became friendship and began to evolve into a relationship.

But before it could, Matt had to share his news.

He handled the call the same way many adolescents do with a crush — he was anxious, worried and scared.

When he explained, Ortiz gave Matt what he calls "the best response I got."

"He talked to me about a week before he asked me out," Ortiz recalls. "He knew I was interested in girls. It was a really stressed phone call. He told me he thought he was trans.

"It didn't matter at all. I didn't fall for him because he was a girl, just because we connected really well. ... You don't like people for their gender, you go by who they are."

After a trip to the guidance office at the start of the 2014-15 school year, Matt was Matt at Cherokee.

"(Guidance counselor Melanie Fourney) really showed me it was possible," Matt says. "My mom was freaking out. I said, 'I'll just tell my teachers what's going on.'

"Fourney was on the same page."

Teachers and staff members addressed him as Matt. Most of the other students did as well.

There were hiccups, of course. While most of the interactions were supportive, some struggled with proper pronoun usage.

They were in the minority.

"A lot of people might make fun of trans people when they are out as trans because they don't look like an average kid," Matt explains. "I was confident. I dressed boyish before. They didn't have a reason to look at me differently. I was always pretty nice, I just had to stay nice."

Still, the mistakes sometimes annoyed Matt.

"It's so completely frustrating," he says. "You look at it in your head and say, 'I'm male and that's it. And why can't people see me like that?' "

In 2011, the state passed The New Jersey Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act.

Andrea Bowen, a 28-year-old transgender woman, serves as the executive director of Garden State Equality. The group advocates for LGBT rights and helped craft the legislation.

Bowen joined the organization last May. She previously worked in Washington, D.C., on numerous LGBT issues and helped pass a law that allowed transgender people to change their birth certificate gender markers without surgery.

"New Jersey has really comprehensive legal protection," Bowen says. "Transgender students have the right to use any facilities and use whatever bathrooms or locker rooms they want. If a school has segregated health classes, they can take the class for their new gender."

"It's no coincidence more people are coming out after laws are passed," Hawkins, the CHOP doctor, says. "Acknowledging gender difference is the next wave our society is getting used to.

"We are at a place where gender differences are understood. They may not be praised, but understood."

Transgender athletes

Matt's ability to join the boys' track team was also protected, thanks to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association's transgender policy.

NJSIAA Assistant Director Larry White said in an email April 9 that while schools aren't required to disclose transgender student-athletes to the organization, he's talked to at least 10 schools or athletic directors in the last five years about how a transgender issue should be handled.

Many transgender athletes see competition and coming out as an either-or proposition.

"I've learned more about sports in the last year than I've ever known before," Hawkins says. "I'm seeing kids giving up the sports they love. They're saying, 'It's either I'm on the team or I get to feel better and be myself.' "

Chris Mosier can attest to the difficulty.

At 29, Mosier came out as a transgender man. His love for running complicated the situation.

"Being an athlete was a primary part of my identity," says the first transgender male to be elected to the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame in Chicago. "That's why I struggled so much in my transition and coming out because I didn't want to lose that part of me as an athlete.

The situation motivated Mosier — the first known openly transgender man to compete in the Ironman triathlon — to start transathlete.com and Go! Athletes, a network of collegiate and high school LGBT athletes.

"People are dying because they don't have the support to be themselves," Mosier says. "It's important we find a way for trans people to be involved in sports because we know how much character building sports and being a part of a team can be."

Legislation helped Matt on school grounds. Communication and explanation helped with his sister, whom he believes is integral to his transition.

Jada initially struggled with the topic before many conversations with her twin.

She progressed past the idea that Matt "wanted to be a boy" into the realization he "was a boy."

A cheerleader at Cherokee, Jada fielded questions from classmates on her brother's change.

"We've always been best friends," she says, crossing her fingers to show the siblings' closeness. "Everyone at school was really, really supportive. I was kind of surprised because we go to a really big school. But Cherokee is really good with that stuff."

The Marlton school of more than 2,200 students has a Gay-Straight Alliance available for its students.

Ortiz and the twins each raved about the school's acceptance level.

"I was wondering, 'How's this gonna go at first?' " Cherokee boys' track coach John McMichael says of Matt joining the team. "Now it's like, 'What was I worried about?'

"There have been no blips on the radar."

Shot day

After his first boys' track meet April 8 against Eastern, the student-athlete goes home and rests.

Matt is unhappy with his times. He finished best in his heat in the 100 at 13.2 seconds. It was sixth-best among 19 Cherokee boys. The 200 offered a 27.6-second time, good for seventh on the team.

"So far, he's been great," McMichael says. "(Matt's times) look pretty good to me. So far, coaching Matt is like coaching any other guy. He shows up every day and works hard."

The meet represented the second most important part of the day.

Matt is in the process of an official name change. He's accepted at school as a boy. Now he opens up the red Nike shoebox and looks at the part of his transition he has looked forward to most.

Testosterone shots.

Matt's primary care physician prescribed the shots five weeks ago. As a family, they celebrated the date — March 11, 2015 — as Matt Dawkins' new birthday.

Grovatt-Dawkins hopes a meeting with a surgeon in May will set a timeline for surgery to remove her son's breasts. The family must also find a doctor who can help reconstruct the right side of his chest, which lacks pectoral muscles due to a rare birth defect known as Poland's Syndrome.

Any surgery on Matt's lower half will be "way down the road," according to Grovatt-Dawkins.

Her son researched the testosterone shots — especially how to administer them — for months leading up to the official prescription.

When the new birthday rolled around, Matt turned over his knowledge of the injection to the person he wanted to do it.

His sister.

"I was all for it," Jada says with a wide smile. "Liani is scared of needles. My mom doesn't like needles. I don't mind them. I don't get grossed out."

Her brother wipes the upper thigh with an alcohol swab. This week, the fifth week, goes in the right leg. They alternate the shots to help raise his baseline levels of hormones.

"Come here, watch!" Matt pleads with his mother until she nervously enters the far corner of the room.

"All done!" Jada exclaims.

"It makes you feel shaky a little bit," Matt says with a smile. "It doesn't hurt like that. This feels different than an actual shot."

For him, the fear of the needle is the same as his fear of the future. With a clear mind and conscience, he possesses neither.

"I'm not scared at all," he says. "I know it needs to be done. This is my pursuit of happiness."

'I'm just being myself'

Kyle Schickner, a bisexual who's been a film director for 15 years, has never made a movie for the transgender community, despite demands for one from his fan base.

Soon after his friend tipped him off to Matt's story, the 47-year-old connected with Grovatt-Dawkins and her son.

They met in a diner near Bordentown about a month ago to discuss a possible project. Schickner decided he'd create a 90-minute documentary without charge.

"What made me want to pull the trigger on this with Matt and do it for free is I didn't want to lose any time filming," Schickner explains. "We start filming (this week). I'll assume any costs ... It's not something I generally do."

Schickner estimates the film would need about 25 days of shooting from now to midsummer. The goal is to follow Matt's journey through the next year.

Matt hopes to spread awareness for those who feel different.

While celebrity transgender stories have certainly opened eyes to the American public, so too have horror stories of depression, isolation and suicide.

Hawkins believes part of the problem is missed diagnoses by physicians who are uneducated on the topic.

She visits with doctors across the country about twice a month to help spread the word.

"We do a series of evaluative discussions where young people can sum up their feelings," she says of CHOP's practices. "In extreme cases, significant distress can lead to hurting one's body. Somewhere along the line, maybe an amazing parent or provider asks the right question."

Matt knows his support system's unconditional love isn't the same for all youngsters.

He routinely admits his luck and hopes his story can help others summon the courage to talk to the right person.

"It's weird to think I'm changing history," Matt says of being the first Cherokee transgender athlete. "I'm just being myself. I like to be completely honest, sometimes painfully honest.

"That's just how I roll."

Mark Trible can be reached at mtrible@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @MTrible.