A transgender teen was awarded with the title of homecoming queen during her high school’s football game Friday night.
16-year-old Cassidy Lynn Campbell, a senior at Marina High School in Huntington Beach, became her school’s first transgender student to win the title of homecoming queen. She was also the school’s first transgender teen nominated to the court.
Campbell was up against four other teens for the title of homecoming queen.
As she walked out onto the football field during the homecoming game Friday night, Campbell told ABC News just how she was feeling as everything led up to the big reveal.
“Nervous… anxious… every feeling in the world!” she told the station.
Her fellow students cheered her on, chanting her name in support. When she heard her name called for the title of homecoming queen, Campbell fell to her knees and wept with joy.
However, when she returned home, Campbell was met with hateful attacks on her social media platforms, reports the LA Times. For the rest of the night, she was very angry and upset by the hate.
"They were voicing their opinion about something they don't even know the full story about,” she said. “I got really emotional. But when morning came, I was a lot better."
Although she was born a male, Campbell told the LA Times in a previous article that she always felt like a female when she was growing up.
"I felt like I was already a girl, so I was confused as to why my mom would cut my hair," Campbell said. "I didn't understand why she would make me wear shorts and shirts when I wanted to wear dresses and skirts."
Campbell did not fully identify as a transgender until earlier this year, when she began going by Cassidy instead of her birth name Lance. It was then that she decided that she would run for homecoming queen.
"I wasn't doing this for me," she shortly after being proclaimed the winner, reports ABC,"I was doing this for so many others, so many others around the nation."