Trans Swimmer Lia Thomas Loses NCAA Woman Of The Year Award

In spite of the University of Pennsylvania’s best efforts to get their transgender swimmer Lia Thomas crowned “Woman of the Year,” the NCAA gave the award to a biological woman. 

Unlike Thomas’ time on the women’s swim team, the athlete did not manage to lead the pack of 577 nominees, not even close. The transgender swimmer was put up for the honor by her alma mater in July, but was knocked out of contention on Monday, when the NCAA whittled the candidate pool down to 151 female athletes. 

Columbia University grad Sylvie Binder, who won the NCAA Women’s Foil championship in 2019 and took third this year, beat out Thomas and six other Ivy League athletes to become the division’s choice. 

The Woman of the Year Selection Committee will be tasked with picking 30 female NCAA athletes by October, and the winner will be selected in January.  

Thomas, who became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I championship this spring, has been a controversial figure in women’s sports since beginning to compete with females in her final year of college, despite swimming in the middle of the pack for three years on the university’s men’s team.

University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who swam against Thomas for a national title, told Tucker Carlson that fellow competitors felt “extreme discomfort” about changing in the same locker room with Thomas at the NCAA Championships, which they were not told about prior to the event. 

“That’s not something we were forewarned about, which I don’t think is right in any means, changing in a locker room with someone who has different parts,” Gaines said on “Tucker Carlson Today.”  

“So not only were we forced to race against a male, we were forced to change in the locker room with one,” she detailed. “And so then we’re sitting there not even knowing who to talk to, who to complain to, because this kind of all happened behind the scenes and very discreetly.”

Gaines believes that people have forgotten that women’s sports are “a protected group.” 

“The category was made because the playing field was not level by any means when you have them competing against men,” she said. “And so obviously it was created to ensure that fairness. And now that we are kind of completely flipping that, it devalues what it was created for.”

Marie Finn