Members of the women’s swim team at Roanoke College spoke out against a transgender athlete who attempted to join their team in September.
Three women’s swim team captains, identified as Kate Pearson, Lily Mullens and Bailey Gallagher, believe their university and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCCA) are avoiding responsibility by leaving it up to the team to confront the transgender swimmer, who participated on the men’s swim team two seasons ago, according to DailyMail.
🚨MUST READ! Another Lia Thomas story but at Roanoke Collegee
Mediocre man joins the womens team -> girls are gaslit by their university into thinking theyre the problem. But they’re not staying quiet
I’m so proud of these girls for being so unified.https://t.co/f3O4j9sNJO
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) October 5, 2023
“I guess the best way to put it is that everybody was stepping on eggshells,” Mullens said.
Gallagher and Mullens knew the transgender swimmer personally as a former force on the men’s team. The transgender swimmer previously finished ninth in the 500 freestyle and eighth in the 100 fly as a male competitor in Division 3 of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference.
Gallagher described her and her fellow females’ concern of not standing a chance against their new teammate as “a pretty big elephant in the room” at the first squad meeting, the outlet reported. After their coach supportively confirmed that the transgender would join the women’s team, Pearson, Mullens and Gallagher initiated a meeting with all seventeen female swimmers who agreed that they did not endorse their new addition. (RELATED: Riley Gaines Spins Circles Around Harvard For Apparent Lia Thomas Letter)
The women on the team thought the idea of swimming against a male was “scary” and “demoralizing.” The Roanoke racers feared that other colleges would refuse to compete with them due to similar feelings about a transgender teammate, according to the outlet.
“We almost felt like a sense of relief that we weren’t the only people like feeling this way, and that our teammates were also feeling this way,” Gallagher said.
The three captains wrote a letter of concern to the transgender swimmer, who felt “sad” and “betrayed.” Another meeting was held, this time including the transgender, who claimed to be “suicidal” with a desire to “jump off the building of Trexler.” A second letter was sent following the meeting.
The transgender swimmer withdrew from the team after attending a few meetings. The coach told the captains that they “got what [they] wanted.” However, Pearson said that they “wanted everyone to have a fair shot at swimming and competing” and that “none of us want a person to quit the sport that they love.”