The controversy and debate over Penn’s transgender swimmer haven’t ended. The heated argument between the two sides hasn’t calmed down, not even a little bit. The NCAA allows a male transitioning to female to compete in the women’s swimming competition – NCAA rules state that compete in collegiate competitions as a member of the women’s program you have to undergo required one-year of testosterone suppressant use.
Previously Lia Thomas won two races in the women’s Ivy League. Before the race even started, Thomas had gained a lot of attention and online critics. The 22-year-old did not mind the attention and reportedly compared the plight of biological men competing in women’s division to that of MLB’s first black player Jackie Robinson.
Dailymail reported:
‘She compares herself to Jackie Robinson,’ the teammate added, referencing the fact that Robinson broke the race barrier to become the first black man to play Major League Baseball.
‘She said she is like the Jackie Robinson of trans sports.’
Thomas won her first two races easily against her competitors from Yale and Dartmouth and won the women’s 200 and 500 yards freestyle events. She also holds the NCAA’s best times record this year for both distances. Previously Thomas competed in the men’s division for three years.
Rice University swim coach Seth Huston, a four-time Conference USA Coach of the Year, called out the organization, saying:
‘The NCAA once again has proven that it is not leading. It is not really even following.’
‘The NCAA governance has become a bystander waiting for other organizations to make tough decisions,’ Huston told swimming news outlet SwimSwam.com last week.
‘They hoped NIL would continue to be suppressed and now they are scrambling to make it fit their construct. Now they sit on the sidelines with Transgender issues.’
‘Lia has every right to compete,’ he said. ‘But I think, black and white right now, you compete as what you were biologically born until we get to a point where we’ve expanded opportunities, you know for instance, in transgender.’
“Once you say you’re trans and everybody says okay I’ll fight her –
Fine. I’m fine with that. And in fact MMA is one of the best places for that
Because you know exactly who your opponent is. Unlike like this swimmer. Was it UPenn? Is that what it is? The swimmer that’s like lapping all these biological women, that’s f—-d because they don’t have a choice – they have to compete. “