Modern sports are not exempt from controversy — just consider the evolution of equipment and rules, race relations, and politics. But nothing has threatened the future of sports more than transgender integration. Allowing biological men to compete as women against women destroys the fundamental concept of what makes athletic competition, specifically women’s sports, fair. By allowing an unfair advantage to one class of participants is abhorrent and inexcusable, delegitimizing the integrity of the competition. It is no easy task to reach the collegiate level in any sport, man or woman. I know because I was an NCAA Division I swimmer at the University of Minnesota.
I consider swimming a gift. It offered a place where I learned many of life’s lessons: being a graceful winner — and a more graceful loser — the value of hard work, perseverance, working through adversity, and team cohesion. All of these qualities helped build my character and eventually led me to a commission as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. But if I knew the sport I loved was rigged against me in the form of obsequiousness to wokeism masquerading as fairness, I might never have participated.
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