(Fox News) Two years after University of Pennsylvania trans athlete Lia Thomas won a national title in women’s swimming, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) continues to brazenly throw females athletes to the curb to make way for trans-identifying males to take their place on the podium, not to mention their scholarships and their opportunities. Champion swimmers like Riley Gaines who had to step aside for Thomas to appear on the winners podium or Kylee Alons who had to dress in a storage closet to protect her privacy and dignity from a biological male in the locker room have never received a hearing by NCAA executives about what they went through or what other female athletes face going forward.
At a time when the NCAA faces backlash for suppressing women’s achievements, NCAA President Charlie Baker made a blockbuster admission buried on page 18 of a recent letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee: “The NCAA has never studied the harm of its policy allowing males identifying as women to participate and compete on women’s teams.” Not ever.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) posed the question among a series in follow up to Baker’s appearance at a hearing entitled Name, Image, Likeness and the Future of College Sports:
That’s a bombshell. The NCAA’s “Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy” which sent male Lia Thomas into the women’s locker room and continues to promote males for national titles in women’s sports has never been researched for its (now evident) harm to female athletes.
In many federal courts of law, this fact alone would be grounds for a nationwide injunction.
And it’s a serious admission in black and white, especially as the NCAA faces the heat of its misogynistic history as Caitlin Clark continues her impressive record-breaking run in women’s basketball. The University of Iowa standout just shattered the NCAA Division I career scoring record, but achievements of previous record holders, most notably Lynette Woodard of the University of Kansas (1978-81) were never recorded because the NCAA erased female athletes in the annals of college women’s sports.
As Sally Jenkins, writing for The Washington Post, observes, “To sum up, the NCAA doesn’t regard women’s basketball records as records, because before 1982, the NCAA didn’t want women in their organization.”
Today, the NCAA doesn’t care if competitors in women’s sports are even women. It’s fully willing to allow trans-identifying men to break records in women’s sports, along with risking their safety, stealing their trophies, suppressing their athletic achievements, and even taking their scholarships.
