She didn’t wear a dress to the game — so she didn’t dress for the game, either.

An 11-year-old girl was benched from her junior high school basketball game on Tuesday after she decided not to wear a dress to the team’s home game, in accordance with a longstanding tradition at West Cottonwood School, KRCR reports.

“I wasn’t trying to be defiant or anything,” Rachel Manfredini told the station. “I don’t feel comfortable wearing dresses and stuff.”

Manfredini said the northern California school’s customary practice of boys and girls wearing formal attire to home games simply made her feel self-conscious, so she decided to buck the trend.

“And they were saying it was like a tradition for 40 years and how we represent our school,” Manfredini continued, adding that she felt singled out by her coaches.

The girl’s mother, Rachel Schaal, said she wrote a letter to the school’s principal asking if the policy could be reconsidered.

“I received a phone call from the athletics director and he informed me if she does not wear a dress or a skirt, she cannot play,” Schaal said.

Manfredini sat out Tuesday’s game and the Chieftains lost. She felt guilty that she couldn’t be alongside her teammates, she said.

“I felt like it was my fault kind of, you know?” she said. “I felt like self-conscious. … And I wasn’t able to play not because I had a bad attitude or because I was not having a good day in class, but because I didn’t wear a dress or a skirt to school.”

Hours after the game, Schaal complained about the tradition and her daughter’s punishment at a Cottonwood Union School board meeting.

“I don’t want it be OK,” she said. “Rachel can wear pants, and that’s the end of it. I want it to be that no girl at any school is going to be told she cannot participate in a sport because she won’t wear a dress to school and I want that just to be their new rule.”

After discussions with the district superintendent and the school’s principal, Schaal said the policy has been altered from requiring female athletes to wear skirts or dresses on the day of home games to them being asked to dress nicely. District superintendent Doug Geren apologized for the incident, Schaal said.

A message seeking further clarification of the new policy from Geren was not immediately returned early Friday.