South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley said before her team's NCAA Tournament championship game that transgender athletes should be allowed to participate in women's sports.
Staley made the comments during a press conference on Saturday. When asked by OutKick reporter Dan Zaksheske if he thought “biological males” should be “included” in women's sports, he replied:
“I think women should play,” Staley said. “If you consider yourself a woman and want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play. That's my opinion.”
Staley spoke to reporters ahead of Sunday's championship game between the University of South Carolina and the University of Iowa.
Iowa State coach Lisa Bruder later declined to answer the same question.
“I understand it's a topic that people are interested in, but today we're focused on tomorrow's game, our players,” Bruder said. “This is an important game tomorrow and that's what I want to talk about here, but I know it's an important issue for another time.”
The topic of transgender athletes in sports has become a hot topic in recent years, despite the fact that there will only be 34 transgender athletes openly competing in college sports as of 2023, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. It has become. This comprises a tiny fraction of his more than 500,000 participants in NCAA track and field competitions.
Opponents argue that transgender athletes, assigned male at birth, have an advantage over cisgender women. Last month, college swimmers and volleyball players sued the NCAA for violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Leah 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 have approved blanket bans on trans athletes playing on K-12 and college sports teams. The Biden administration's proposal would prohibit such blanket bans.
South Carolina's Republican-led General Assembly last year banned instruction on gender identity and sexuality from kindergarten through fourth grade, and banned transgender girls from playing on girls' sports teams from middle school, high school to college. approved a law to In 2022, Iowa approved its own similar law.
Staley suggested he was prepared for any backlash his comments might provoke.
“So now there's going to be a barrage of people flooding my timeline and distracting me on the biggest day of our game,” she said. “And I'm okay with that. I really am.”
