The fallout continues from last year’s viral field hockey shot from a boy that seriously injured a girl, as a local school district recently passed a policy that will allow players to sit out games without any repercussions.

The Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School Committee has approved a policy that lets student-athletes not play in games against teams with players of the opposite sex.

Also, coaches won’t be penalized for forfeiting games against such teams.

This new “Interscholastic Athletics” policy recently passed in the wake of the infamous field hockey injury last fall. The Swampscott High School boy player’s shot struck a Dighton-Rehoboth High School player in the face, sending her to the hospital with significant facial and dental injuries, according to officials.

The “traumatic” incident led to shrieks and tears all over the field hockey pitch. The viral shot from the male player sparked calls for gender rule changes for high school sports, especially when it comes to girls’ field hockey.

Now in response to that incident, the Dighton-Rehoboth school committee won’t punish girl athletes who don’t want to compete against boy athletes — and vice versa.

“No student athlete on a single-sex team shall be penalized by the District in any manner for refusing to play in a match or any part thereof against an opposing team because that team includes a member of the opposite sex,” the policy reads. “For the purposes of this paragraph, a ‘penalty’ includes but is not limited to loss of playing time or loss of starting status.”

“No coach of a single-sex team shall be penalized by the District for forfeiting a match against an opposing team because such team includes athletes of the opposite sex,” the policy states.

In Massachusetts, a boy can play on a girls’ team if that sport is not offered in the school for the boy.

“We are grateful for the commonsense policy update in the Dighton-Rehoboth School District that will now offer coaches and athletes a choice when facing an opposing team that includes players of the opposite sex,” the Massachusetts Family Institute wrote on its website.

“We hope that other Massachusetts school districts will be inspired by Dighton-Rehoboth and implement the same policy,” the institute added.

The MIAA did not immediately respond to comment about the new policy on Wednesday. The MIAA after last year’s incident said the athletic association and member schools must follow all federal and state gender equity laws.

“We respect and understand the complexity and concerns that exist regarding student safety,” the MIAA said at the time. “However, student safety has not been a successful defense to excluding students of one gender from participating on teams of the opposite gender. The arguments generally fail due to the lack of correlation between injuries and mixed-gender teams.”