Four months after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a Division I swimming title, University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas is in the running for the NCAA’s “Woman of the Year” award, according to multiple news reports. Penn nominated both her and tennis player Iuliia Bryzgalova for the award, which is given out at the NCAA’s annual convention.
Thomas’ athletic career has been in the spotlight as school districts and state legislatures across the country debate whether transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Multiple states, including Utah, have recently passed laws banning trans girls from competing on the girls’ teams at their schools. The Utah High School Activities Association is facing a lawsuit over the state’s new policy.
A survey released in June by Pew Research Center showed that a majority of Americans favor policies like Utah’s. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. adults support rules requiring trans athletes “to compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth,” while just 17% oppose them, Pew reported.
Support for barring transgender women from playing women’s sports is especially strong among Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party. Eighty-five percent of those Americans favor laws that require trans athletes to compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, compared to 37% of Democrats and those who lean toward the Democratic Party, according to Pew.
The NCAA currently allows transgender female athletes to play on women’s teams if they document and report their testosterone levels and if their levels fall under the threshold set for their sport.
“Starting with the 2022-23 academic year, transgender student-athletes will need documented levels at the beginning of their season and a second documentation six months after the first. They will also need documented testosterone levels four weeks before championship selections,” the NCAA reported in January.
Thomas, who originally competed on Penn’s men’s swimming team, transitioned between her sophomore and junior year of college in 2019. “She began hormone replacement therapy and took a year off swimming, in line with NCAA protocols, before joining the women’s team,” Axios reported.
Although Thomas, who graduated this spring, was able to switch to the women’s team at Penn, her future options are limited. The sport of swimming’s international governing body, FINA, voted in June “to stop transgender athletes from competing in women’s elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty,” the BBC reported.
The International Olympic Committee leaves it up to individual governing bodies like FINA to set their own policies, the article noted.
In a May interview on “Good Morning America,” Thomas said the possibility of having an athletic edge does not factor into transgender athletes’ decision to transition and that she opposes policies keeping them from participating in women’s sports.
“Trans people don’t transition for athletics,” she said. “We transition to be happy and authentic and our true selves.”