PHOENIX, Arizona – Some of the top female athletes in the country, including swimmer Riley Gaines, attended and spoke at a protest Thursday outside the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) convention in downtown Phoenix. Organized by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and numerous other groups, the athletes demanded that the NCAA stop allowing transgender females to compete against women in collegiate sports, and each one spoke about their own experiences.
Gaines opened the event, which took place at the Marvin A. Andrews Plaza outside Phoenix City Hall. Gaines is a 12-time All-American swimmer and IWF ambassador. She said allowing men who identify as women to compete against women “is not progressive, it is regressive. It’s taking us back in time at least half a century. … Title 9 was enacted and enforced to protect women and girls, not men who want to be like us.” She repeated a line featured on the signs the women held, “We have come too far to be erased.”
Gaines told of being spit on, having drinks thrown at her, and punched. In April 2023, protesters at San Francisco State University assaulted Gaines after speaking at a Turning Point USA event.
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a 3-time Olympics gold medalist in swimming, spoke next. She runs Champion Women, which “is dedicated to advocating gender equality in sports for girls and women.” She said that science has now revealed that merely reducing testosterone levels isn’t enough to make it a “lateral move” from men’s to women’s sports.
Hogshead-Makar said the only reason she is an Olympic champion is because the East Germans and the rest of the communist Eastern Bloc boycotted the 1984 Olympics. The other years she competed against them, those athletes “were taking steroids.”
Hogshead-Makar said she was tired of hearing “just work harder” and the claim that women are just not as competitive. She explained how hard female athletes work and said if they work any harder, they will be injured or get sick.
Marshie Smith, former NCAA and PAC-10 champion swimmer from the University of Arizona and co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, said she sent a letter to the NCAA two years ago objecting and has never received a response.
“The NCAA is devoted to discriminating against its female athletes, as more and more men are quietly placed on women’s teams across the country,” Smith said.
Kim Russell, former head women’s lacrosse coach at Oberlin College and IWF Forum ambassador, said her “entire life” was affected by Title 9 being implemented, providing her with scholarships and opportunities that women before her did not have. She scolded other coaches who have not spoken up, stating they are “complicit.” “I am no longer a women’s coach because there aren’t women’s teams anymore.” She said the Lacrosse Association in the U.S. Virgin Islands is fighting back and not allowing transgender females on women’s teams.
Two mothers of rowers spoke next. One said her daughter told her she hated her experience rowing in college due to the conflict. She dreaded people assuming she supported having a transgender on her team because she was part of the team. The mother said her daughter became physically ill due to throwing up so hard that it came out of her nose and hit the wall. The mother wondered why there is so much concern about the mental well-being of transgender females but not for the young women affected. “For every male athlete competing against women, there are countless women that are being affected,” she said.
The second mother said, “By allowing a male to compete on a women’s team, completely devalues women and takes their confidence and opportunities away.”
Kylee Alons, an NCAA 31-time All-American swimmer, 2-time NCAA National Champion, 5-time ACC Champion at North Carolina State University, and Young Women for America (YWA) ambassador, said she lost a match to Lia Thomas, the transgender who made national headlines for competing on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team. Alons talked about how changing in the locker rooms with transgender females was unpleasant since putting on a competition swimsuit can take up to half an hour, and so she would either try to shield herself with a towel or change in a storage closet.
Barbara Ehardt, former 15-year career NCAA Division I women’s basketball coach turned Idaho state representative, said Thomas ranked 462nd nationally when competing against men, yet now he’s been nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year.
Paula Scanlan, former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and IWF ambassador, discussed how she shared many locker rooms with Thomas and swam on the same team. She called the policy of allowing transgender females to compete against women “outdated.” She noted that Thomas had swim times faster than women’s world records as soon as he started swimming with them and became the first NCAA champion for the university. She said the other women had to change in the same locker room as the 6-foot-4-inch Thomas 18 times a week. The women would change in bathroom stalls or the family bathroom to avoid him.
Madisan DeBos, a Southern Utah University D1 cross country and track athlete whose relay team competed against a male athlete, told how during one match, the coach of the transgender female told the runner to “slow down.” That team ended up coming in second place.
Kristy Mitchell, the mother of track and field competitor Chelsea Mitchell, spoke about a lawsuit her daughter filed over losing several track competitions in Connecticut to a transgender female. She said, “As a mom and a former athlete myself, it was awful to bear witness as two males were allowed to take home 15 girls’ state championship titles. … And it was shocking to watch the media elevate and celebrate boys winning girls’ races.” She concluded, “Stop turning a blind eye to the mountains of scientific evidence confirming that male advantage can never be erased or undone.”
Macy Petty, an NCAA volleyball player and YWA ambassador, discussed playing against biological males. She said there is a reason why men’s sports and women’s sports are different, pointing out that men’s volleyball nets are over seven inches higher than women’s. She became concerned that she was going to lose her scholarship for volleyball in college and felt guilty for being a tacit part of the “discrimination,” so she became an activist on the issue during all four years of college.
Jamie Holmes, former head volleyball coach at the University of California Davis, said she might not have gone to college if she hadn’t received an athletic scholarship. She said the controversy has opened a “Pandora’s Box” that “needs to be closed.” It has made it difficult for coaches like herself, she said, since they recruit athletes to win, and so if one team has a male on it, it would make sense for other coaches to recruit males too.
Linnea Saltz, who ran track and field for Southern Utah University, discussed how demoralizing it was when she learned she would be competing against a transgender female who had times she knew she could not beat. Saltz made five records competing that are still records at the university, but she fears they will be erased in the future by a transgender female. She lamented that women are being run “out of the sports world which we already had to fight so hard to be a part of.”
Megan Burke, 2-time NCAA champion, track and cross country athlete from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Independent Women’s Network chapter leader, spoke with Jen Livsey, also a track and cross country athlete. Burke said it was a “clown world” that the women had to make arrangements to take care of their children at home while they came to the protest to challenge “the lie.” Livsey said “women are being replaced,” and cited the tragic incident where a female volleyball player was hit so hard in the face by a ball from a transgender that she can no longer compete.
Linda Blade, a women’s track and field coach who lives in Canada, said she has observed how Title 9 has a “hidden secret,” which is that it has been an “economic engine for this country,” creating all kinds of opportunities. She pointed out that 94 percent of female executives have sports backgrounds.
She said no other country had the equivalent of a Title 9 when it became law in 1972. When she lived briefly in Iran, she was required to wear a hijab, and people would tell her that even though she was all covered up, they knew she was an American because of the confident way she walked. She said the NCAA’s policy is “teaching these women and girls powerlessness.” Blade pointed out that the policy also results in “voyeurism” and “indecent exposure.”
Sophia Lorey, who played soccer in college, said she was kicked out of a library for a presentation she did on the subject. She is the plaintiff in a Moms for Liberty lawsuit against two Yolo County library district individuals. She said, “By allowing men in women’s sports, you are telling every girl that the feelings of boys is more important than the ability for her to be a college athlete to access the next level education and that her dream does not matter.” She said, “Biology is not bigotry.”
Lynn Hatcher, who played golf at Gettysburg College, expressed the irony of women now losing the gains they’d made in the sport. She said it was originally considered a man’s sport, with the acronym standing for “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden.”
Sami Keddington, a disc golfer, said the Professional Disc Golf Association surveyed its membership of over 35,000, and a majority did not want biological men competing against women. She ridiculed the question, “What is a woman?” The disc golfer stated, “Isn’t our reproductive system enough?” Keddington cited the incident where a transgender female fighter broke a female fighter’s skull during an MMA fight. She said she believes it is a “small group of people being exploited for political gain.”
The event ended with a march across downtown to the Phoenix Convention Center. NCAA President Charlie Baker came outside to accept a demand letter and petition signed by over 70,000 people.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
