Transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley said ahead of her team’s NCAA tournament championship game.
Staley made the comments at a news conference Saturday. when asked by OutKick reporter Dan Zaksheske if she thought “biological males” should be “included” in women’s sports.
“I think if you’re a woman, you should play,” Staley said. “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.”
Staley was speaking to reporters before South Carolina’s championship game against Iowa on Sunday.
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Iowa coach Lisa Bluder declined to answer the same question later.
“I understand it’s a topic that people are interested in, but today I’m focused on tomorrow’s game, my players,” Bluder said. “It’s an important game that we have tomorrow and that’s what I want to be here to talk about, but I know that’s an important topic for another time.”
The topic of transgender athletes in sports has become a hot topic in recent years, although in 2023, only 34 trans According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, athletes have participated openly in college athletic competitions. That’s an infinitesimal number of more than 500,000 participants in NCAA sports.
Opponents argue that transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth have an advantage over cisgender women. Last month, college swimmers and volleyball players Players sued NCAAaccusing her of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete in the 2022 national swimming championships. Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA swimming championship.
At least 20 states The United States has approved a version of a blanket ban on transgender athletes playing on elementary, high school and college sports teams. A proposal from the Biden administration would prohibit such outright bans.
The Republican-controlled South Carolina General Assembly last year approved laws banning teaching about gender identity and sexuality from kindergarten through fourth grade, as well as banning transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams from middle and high school through college. In 2022, Iowa has approved its own similar law.
Staley said she was prepared to deal with any backlash her comments may provoke.
“So now I’m going to have an avalanche of people flooding my schedule and distracting me on one of the biggest days in our sport,” she said, “and I’m totally fine with that. I really am.”
