The South Carolina women’s basketball coach on Saturday said that transgender-identifying male athletes should be allowed “to play,” suggesting she supports their inclusion in the female division.
Ahead of her team’s NCAA Tournament championship game, Dawn Staley said, “I’m on the opinion of if you’re a woman you should play. If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion.”
She was responding to a question from OutKick reporter Dan Zaksheske about whether she believes “biological males” should be permitted to participate in women’s sports.
On Friday, the South Carolina Gamecocks defeated North Carolina State, advancing to the women’s National Championship against the Iowa Hawkeyes and their prodigy Caitlin Clark.
“That’s the question you want to ask, I’ll give you that. Yes, yes,” Staley said. “So now the barnstormer people are going to flood my timeline and be a distraction to me on one of the biggest days of our game, and I’m OK with that. I really am.”
Staley has been a vocal advocate for racial and social justice. In 2021, ten players on her team protested during the season by sitting during the national anthem to “shine a light on” racism, she told the Athletic in an interview.
Asked the same question at the Saturday press conference about male inclusion into the women’s athletic category, Iowa coach Lisa Bluder dodged, saying the issue should be discussed at a different date.
“I understand it’s a topic that people are interested in,” she said. “But today my focus is on the game tomorrow, my players. It’s an important game we have tomorrow, and that’s what I want to be here to talk about. But I know it’s an important issue for another time.”
NCAA policy defers to the rules of each individual sport regarding transgender competition.
“NCAA policy calls for transgender student-athlete participation for each sport to be determined by the policy for the national governing body of that sport,” the NCAA’s 2022 policy states. “If there is no NGB policy for a sport, it would then be determined by the policy for that sport’s international federation. If there is no international federation policy, it would be determined by policy criteria previously established by the International Olympic Committee.”
Last month, a group of female athletes sued the NCAA for allowing male intrusion into their sex-specific sports and private spaces. Spearheaded by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, the lawsuit accuses the NCAA and Georgia Tech — the site of the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships, where male University Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas won the 500 meter freestyle — of knowingly violating Title IX. That federal statute prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding, serving as the basis for sex-segregated school athletics.
The lawsuit, first reported by the Free Press, demands that males be disqualified from participating in women’s sports. It asks the NCAA to rescind awards given to trans athletes in women’s competitions and to “reassign” them to the female players who lost trophies and titles to the men. The lawsuit also asks for damages “for pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, suffering and anxiety, expense costs and other damages due to defendants’ wrongful conduct.”