BAR HARBOR — In the end, there were no protests at the Class B track and field championship meet at Mount Desert Island High School. No mob showed up with torches and pitchforks, wound up to vilify a teenager for her simple desire to compete.

The mob didn’t need to make the trip Downeast. Its dirty job was already done.

The transgender Greely sophomore, an indoor state champion and the top seed in the girls pole vault, chose to not even attend the meet. David Dowling, Greely’s coach, confirmed her absence about an hour before the scheduled 5 p.m. start of the girls pole vault. Dowling declined to go into specifics regarding the athlete’s decision, only saying that it wasn’t injury related.

There is a healthy debate to be had regarding the role of transgender athletes in sports, particularly high school sports. Bullying a teenager online into quitting is not the way to begin that debate. It’s bad performance art disguised as taking up a cause. It’s the most unrighteous indignation.

Since Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican from Auburn, created a Facebook post in February in which she named the athlete, setting off the internet goon squad that’s always at the ready to denounce and attack somebody, the state’s attention has been on this issue. And that’s a lot for a teenager to handle, on top of everything else thrown at teens daily. On Tuesday afternoon, Dowling empathized with his athlete’s decision, noting it’s hard being a teenager in even the best of circumstances.

That’s a sentiment Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, put eloquently in his written statement criticizing Libby’s social media post in February.

“All kids, including transgender students, deserve better than to be used as political fodder for internet bullies. Kids should be able to focus on being kids. They shouldn’t have to worry about a politician sharing images of them online without their consent,” he said.

At Messalonskee High in Oakland, where a transgender girl competed in the Class C meet, there was no organized protest, but a few fans used their wardrobe to make a point. Three spectators leaned against the fence surrounding the track wearing pink T-shirts that read “Protect girls sports. This is her race.” Those words surrounded the silhouette of a female runner. The back of the shirt had the same silhouette, with “Facts over feelings. XX ≠ XY.” They quietly watched the meet unfold, said Kennebec Journal reporter Dave Dyer, who was there to cover the event.

Let’s take a minute to remember why high school athletics is important. It’s not these days when we hand out trophies and ribbons, no matter how much we make a big deal of them. Chasing championships is a perk, not a promise. The same goes for the possibility of college scholarships and advancing to a higher level. Taking part in high school sports is about building relationships with your teammates. That’s what you remember years later. If you’re lucky, teammates become lifelong friends. When you tell stories over the years, hopefully they become tales about the experiences of a fulfilling adult life.

Participation is the thing. Every kid who wishes should be afforded that basic human courtesy. To cavalierly want to deny that from a student-athlete on the basis of gender identity is just cruel.

Participation in high school sports is the dry run for life. You win. You lose. You get knocked down. You get up. You experience emotions of every kind. You exist. It might not always seem fair.

That brings us to why this is really such a thorny issue. There never seems to be enough empathy to extend in every direction, and there should be. You can have empathy for transgender athletes and at the same time understand where Kessa Benner, a Freeport senior, is coming from. Benner was runner-up in the pole vault at the Class B indoor championship in February. Benner’s joy in pole vaulting was obvious early Tuesday evening, hugging her coach when she clinched the state title.

Benner wrote an op-ed piece for the Press Herald in March, in which she succinctly wrote about how she felt the participation of a transgender athlete at the indoor state meet adversely affected her, how she felt her dream of a state title was taken away. You don’t have to agree with Benner to sympathize with her frustration. We’ve all been in situations we’ve felt we had no control over. Benner stated her position honestly and fairly, never demeaning or insulting her competitor.

If only the adults who think being a keyboard bully toward a teenager did the same. Then maybe we could have that healthy debate.