Thursday afternoon, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) plans to honor 30 exceptional college female athletes and award one with the title of “Woman of the Year” at its annual conference— but these days, being female isn’t a requirement to be nominated for the award.
Charlie Baker, who took the reigns as NCAA President nearly a full year ago, has had ample opportunity to decry inexcusable athletic policies, which in 2022, allowed a lackluster male swimmer turned-transgender-identifying athlete Lia Thomas to dominate the female field in his final year at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), earning him a nomination for “Woman of the Year.” Baker, however, has sidestepped the national debate regarding women’s sports in favor of a moderate approach.
During a United States Senate Judiciary Committee in November 2023, Baker testified that he wouldn’t “defend” transgender locker room policies, but subsequently sidestepped direct questioning on whether or not he would implement policy change regarding fair competition. Baker claimed that “the rules around transgender athletes generally are more restrictive today than they were in ‘22.”
Though some individual states have enacted policies preventing males from competing against female athletes at the elementary, middle, and high school level — NCAA policy still allows transgender-identifying athletes to compete on women’s teams, given the males meet specific testosterone level requirements.
As a result of Baker’s inaction, several conservative women’s advocacy groups, including the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), Concerned Women for America, and Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), organized a protest outside of the organization’s annual conference, which this year is taking place at Phoenix, Arizona.
Approximately 50 protesters gathered outside of the Phoenix Convention Center on Thursday to call on NCAA President Baker to change the policies allowing males to dominate female athletics.
“We’re here in Phoenix to tell the NCAA to stop discriminating against women,” Gaines told TPUSA. “We have an incredible panel of athletes, former and current coaches, parents, [and] everything in between to tell the NCAA just that. The message is simple, we’re sending it loud and clear: we won’t be erased as women and we do not want men in our sports or our locker rooms.”
Paula Scanlan, who competed on the same team as Thomas at UPenn, also spoke at the protest alongside Gaines, Coach Kim Russell, Macy Petty, Kylee Alons, Linnea Saltz, Megan Burke, and other women in the athletics field.
In a video shared by IWF, one mother attending the rally whose daughter was forced to compete against a male athlete at Roanoke College told protesters that her daughter “knew that the NCAA would do absolutely nothing to protect her and her teammates,” adding, “This was a defeated young lady who had something stolen from her. Her passion for a sport that she loved was eviscerated.”
Gaines, who gave a speech at the protest, also said, “We, as women, will NOT continue to sit back, sit idly by, & smile as we are being discriminated against on the basis of our sex.”
