Maybe being the BTOC (Big Transgender On Campus) wasn’t such a hot idea after all for Will "Lia" Thomas. She’s growing more and more unpopular with her teammates. Also, Caitlyn Jenner said biological boys should not be allowed on girls' teams, and, in a controversial move, the NCAA is changing its rules because of Thomas.
An anonymous team member’s dad told Fox News Digital “a good number” of the Penn women’s swim team members believe they can’t compete fairly with Thomas, a former member of the men’s team. There’s been a lot of “crying on the pool deck,” the parent said, adding, "They don’t agree with what Lia’s doing and they’re really unhappy with the situation. Morale is bad."
Also, the dad said his daughter is "angry that she’s in this situation" and has "lost opportunities as a result of it," including positions on relay teams. "She has given this sport everything she has, and she feels like some of it’s been taken away," he said.
PennU women’s swimmers and their parents are speaking anonymously for fear of university officials and LGBT activists doxing them and branding them as hateful bigots.
One anonymous teammate said the transgender swimmer colluded with Yale transgender rival, Iszac Henig, who’s transitioning from female to male, to throw a 100-meter freestyle race January 8. Thomas lost that relatively short race by a wide, 3-second margin.
"Looking at [Lia’s] time, I don’t think she was trying," the anonymous Penn swimmer alleges. "I know they’re friends and I know they were talking before the meet. I think she let her win to prove the point that, ‘Oh see, a female-to-male beat me.'"
Thomas is self-centered, boastful and also compares herself to the late baseball great Jackie Robinson, further angering teammates.
Jenner, herself a transgender who won the gold medal in the 1976 Olympic men’s decathlon, said:
“[Lia Thomas] is also not good for women’s sports. It’s unfortunate that this is happening. I don’t know why she’s doing it. She knows when she’s swimming, she’s beating the competition by two laps. She was born as a biological boy. She was raised as a biological boy. Her cardiovascular system is bigger. Her respiratory system is bigger.
“We need to protect women’s sports. The ‘we’ here is such a small group.”
On Wednesday, the NCAA Board of Governors gave permission to the governing bodies of each sport to determine policies pertaining to transgender athletes. “Trans females were previously allowed to compete in women’s events after undergoing one year of hormone-suppression therapy.
The new policy will bring U.S. collegiate sports in line with national and international governing bodies and with the international Olympic movement,” Dave Rieder wrote on Swimming World.
NCAA President Mark Emmert said, “This policy alignment provides consistency and further strengthens the relationship between college sports and the U.S. Olympics.”
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a three-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer and chief executive of the advocacy group Champion Women, criticized the NCAA’s cop-out.
"The new NCAA policy sounds a lot like the old one," Hogshead-Makar told ESPN. "The board hasn't resolved the intractable balancing between fairness, playing safety and inclusion. They failed women by not prioritizing fairness."
Thomas is making a lot of people unhappy, but she’s not the only one. The idiotic people in control of sports are ultimately allowing this nonsense to spin out of control and deserve the lion’s share of blame.
