The NCAA doesn’t make many decisions for itself much anymore. That thankfully means that the organization is finally willing to protect women’s sports now that it has been told to do so.
President Donald Trump’s executive order banning men from women’s sports has been fully embraced by the NCAA. The organization has changed its rules to prevent transgender women, biological males who identify as female, from participating in women’s sports, going back on its previous hodgepodge of rules that allowed each sport to set its own standards for female athletes.
Under those previous rules, the NCAA infamously allowed Lia Thomas to swim against women, win multiple competitions, and set women’s records in the Ivy League. Thomas had previously swam for the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team and was ranked as the 554th-best male swimmer in the 200-meter freestyle. Thomas became the fifth-ranked competitor in the same event against women. Thomas’s time swimming against women was most notable for the fact that female swimmers were forced to change in the same locker room as Thomas.
When the NCAA wasn’t forcing women to change next to a man in a locker room, the organization was putting the health of female athletes at risk. Male volleyball players hit substantially harder than their female counterparts, and yet San Jose State University had a man on its women’s volleyball team. Blair Fleming was one of the team leaders in kills, and SJSU hid the fact that Fleming was born male from competitors and even from members of its own team. Multiple San Jose State opponents this year took forfeits rather than risking injury playing against Fleming.
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The NCAA will no longer perpetuate this farce, at least for the next four years. It wasn’t that long ago that NCAA President Charlie Baker suggested women who don’t feel comfortable changing next to men should go change somewhere other than the women’s locker room. Baker and the NCAA didn’t make the choice because it was right — they made it because it was easy because Trump had already made the decision for them.
Still, this is a welcome change that will protect the integrity of women’s college athletics and prevent female collegiate athletes from being forced to compete against or get changed next to men. Keeping Democrats out of the White House secured the biggest win female athletes could get after years of being treated as afterthoughts to the delusions of men who think they are women.