A new policy adopted by the NCAA for trans and gender diverse athletes aims to align college sports with the rules of the International Olympic Committee, but critics say the new regulations are a confusing, clumsy approach that creates compliance headaches and could harm athletes.
The policy, announced last week, will go into effect starting with the imminent Winter season championships, and dictates that each sport’s national governing body must set its own rules for transgender inclusion based on testosterone levels. That means that individual governing bodies, such as USA Swimming and USA Track & Field, would set their own guidelines for the measured testosterone levels and other factors that would determine whether a transgender athlete can compete in a men’s or women’s division.
Previously, NCAA rules held that trans athletes must complete at least a year of testosterone suppressing hormone therapy before competing in a women’s division. Under the new rules, guidelines could vary widely, if they exist at all; the NCAA has dictated that governing bodies without rules must defer to international bodies.
The NCAA announcement comes amid a frenzy of media attention and conservative criticism surrounding Lia Thomas, a transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer currently having a successful winter season. Thomas began her transition in May 2019 and debuted for Penn’s women’s swim team last year, satisfying the NCAA’s previous one year requirement. She has since gone on to break program records in the 200m freestyle, and was in contention to compete for a national championship in the 200m, 500m, and 1650m freestyle events.
Her success has led a number of media outlets to devote outsized attention to her performance; the New York Post has run over 20 stories about her over the last six weeks alone. On Tuesday, USA Swimming announced updated rules requiring 36 months of recorded hormone therapy, which could disqualify Thomas from the NCAA swimming championships in March. Penn officials have previously stated they were considering legal action if Thomas were disqualified from competing.
Kristen Worley, a former high performance cyclist who now consults international sports federations on their human rights frameworks, says that the NCAA is essentially forcing athletes to medically transition in a way that could harm their health.
“These are institutional problems. These are not athlete problems,” said Kristen Worley.
Worley was part of the consultation process that established the IOC’s framework for transgender and intersex athletes, which was introduced in November and upon which the NCAA says they based their own policies.
The IOC framework also places the onus upon individual sports’ governing bodies to set guidelines for trans inclusion — but unlike the NCAA framework, the IOC policies come as part of a comprehensive package of 10 principles, which are "grounded on the respect for internationally recognised human rights” that sports should uphold. The principles prioritize the “physical, psychological, and mental well-being of athletes,” compel restrictions to be evidence-based, and say that athletes should never feel pressured to undergo medically unnecessary procedures or treatments in order to compete.
Worley says that the IOC's framework is a first step towards creating a new sport landscape that accepts all people. Rather than focusing on which bodies deserve to compete at the elite level, she says the goal must be to build competitions that everyone can thrive in from day one.
By contrast, Worley points out that the new NCAA rules uphold the status quo of collegiate sports, and ultimately aim to preserve their business model, even if they could make athletes feel pressured to take on unnecessary medical burdens.
Scientists and officials have cited a lack of definitive research on how hormone replacement therapy affects athletic performance, and policies that are being introduced may be influenced more by politics than by science. States across the country have introduced legislation that would ban transgender athletes from competing in middle school and high school sports, despite the lack of scientific basis.
“It is clear [the NCAA] policy is a direct response to pressure surrounding a current athlete competing in the NCAA,” Chris Mosier, who runs the advocacy group Transathlete and was the first transgender athlete to compete for Team USA, said in a statement.
“It is disappointing that after years of discussions and calls for more research, a new policy could be quickly assembled under pressure from people who don’t want to see a great athlete who is transgender succeed,” Mosier continued.
Anne Lieberman, director of policy and programs for Athlete Ally, an advocacy group that works to further LGBTQ+ inclusion in sports, said that the new NCAA policy had been so quickly adopted that it has left “more questions than answers” about how it will be enforced and what it means for student athletes.
In its announcement, NCAA president Mark Emmert cited that 80% of Olympians were at one point NCAA athletes, and its new policy “provides consistency and further strengthens the relationship between college sports and the U.S. Olympics.”
However, what that statement leaves out is the sheer number of NCAA athletes who have competed without ever attempting to become Olympians. “If the NCAA is serious about balancing fairness and inclusion, the latest guidelines on trans inclusion should consider all of the athletes who participate within the NCAA, not just those who might potentially become Olympians,” said Lieberman.
“What works on an Olympic level does not automatically translate to college athletics,” Lieberman continued. “Particularly, applying aspects of the IOC guidelines while omitting critical focuses on inclusion and non-discrimination is especially problematic.”
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