ABOVE: Lia Thomas, photo via University of Pennsylvania athletics/Facebook.
A member of the University of Pennsylvania Women’s swim team spoke to OutKick, the right-wing sports website owned by Fox News last week, where she anonymously attacked her teammate, trans swimmer Lia Thomas.
The swimmer said she feared for her ability to find employment after graduating from college for sharing her honest opinion about her trans teammate, so she was given anonymity according to OutKick.
In the OutKick article the unnamed female swimmer alleges that most members of the team have expressed displeasure over having Thomas on the team to their coach, Mike Schnur.
“Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this. Our coach just really likes winning. He’s like most coaches. I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do,” the swimmer said during a phone interview.
“When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake,” she added.
Thomas has been shattering previously set records at the school. According to Swim Swam, the Austin, Texas based swimming news and lifestyle website, at a meet including Princeton and Cornell universities’ last month on November 20, Thomas had a 1:43:47 time in the 200-meter freestyle and 4:35:06 in the 500-meter freestyle. These times were records for Penn and would have placed Thomas second and third, respectively, in the NCAA Women’s Championships.
The women are in second place after day one of the Zippy Invitational.
Lia Thomas set a pool and meet record in the 500 free!
📰 https://t.co/8ECO8Dts6b#FightOnPenn pic.twitter.com/4V4wjhnkOf
— Penn Swimming & Diving (@PennSwimDive) December 4, 2021
According to OutKick the coronavirus pandemic played a role in the ongoing controversy as the 2020 season had been shut-down.
“Members of the team were first alerted to the forthcoming change in 2019 when Thomas, who was second-team All-Ivy League as a male during the 2018-19 season, announced that he would be going through the transition that would allow him to compete as a woman under the NCAA’s transgender policy.”
The policy defined by NCAA:
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which organizes competition in 23 sports at over 1,000 colleges and universities, does not require gender confirming surgery or legal recognition of a player’s transitioned sex in order for transgender players to participate on a team which matches their identity. However, things become a bit more complicated when hormones are used. The recommended NCAA policy requires one year of hormone treatment as a condition prior to competing on a female team. Conversely, athletes assigned female at birth remain eligible to compete in women’s sports unless or until that athlete begins a physical transition using hormones (testosterone).
NCAA Policy on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation
The following policies clarify participation of transgender student-athletes undergoing hormonal treatment for gender transition:
1. A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who has received a medical exception for treatment with testosterone for diagnosed Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for purposes of NCAA competition may compete on a men’s team, but is no longer eligible to compete on a women’s team without changing that team status to a mixed team.
2. A trans female (MTF) student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for the purposes of NCAA competition may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.
Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender.
• A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who is not taking testosterone related to gender transition may participate on a men’s or women’s team.
• A trans female (MTF) transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete on a women’s team.
“Can Lia Thomas duplicate the times put up by [Lia] after at least a year of testosterone suppression?” OutKick asked. “The teammate who spoke to OutKick doesn’t think it’s out of the question, based on what she saw from Thomas in November and early December.”
“One year doesn’t mean anything. What about the years of puberty as a male, the male growth you went through as a man?” the teammate asked.
According to OutKick, in a study published in the December 2020 edition of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers found that the one-year waiting period used by the NCAA and other athletic organizations is inadequate.
The website then went to ask, “So if Thomas has such an advantage in the pool, as suggested by the 2020 study, why don’t Penn swimmers organize some sort of protest and scream from the rooftops that this is unfair?”
“There are a bunch of comments on the Internet about how, ‘Oh, these girls are just letting this happen. They should just boycott or protest.’ At the end of the day, it’s an individual sport,” Thomas’ teammate said. “If we protest it, we’re only hurting ourselves because we’re going to miss out on all that we’ve been working for … something needs to be done to protect biological women who’ve fought for an equal playing field in collegiate athletics.”
Fox News has also been reporting on the story:
Here’s this morning’s hit with Fox News talking UPenn’s transgender swimming crushing all the women swimmers. pic.twitter.com/8y0dFsMDtt
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 8, 2021
