Outside of his immediate circle of classmates, friends, and fellow swimmers on the University of Pennsylvania Swim Team, very few people had ever heard of Will Thomas.  During his first three years of competitive college swimming, Will’s best performances were during freestyle competition. In the course of the 2018-19 season, he was named Second-team All-Ivy in the 500 free, 1,000 free, and 1,650 free after reaching the ‘A’ final of the Ivy League Championships and finishing second overall in each of the events. While not a dominating male swimmer, Thomas was an above-average competitor for the UPENN swim men’s team.  On November 15, 2019, during a meet with Villanova University, Will won the 500-yard freestyle event.

After his junior year at the University of Pennsylvania, Will Thomas decided to take a year off from swimming competition so that he could commence hormone therapy to transition into a woman. Thomas is no longer Will. Her name is now Lia Thomas, with a popularity, some people would say notoriety, that Will most likely would have never achieved. Now the 22-year-old transgender swimmer has returned to the pool for the University of Pennsylvania as a female swimmer. She’s smashing women’s records, and in some instances, shattering the hopes and dreams of her fellow competitors. Young women that were in the pool at age 5, just like Will was, training their entire lives to touch that wall first, now look to the block next to them and see Lia. They dare not say anything though. The blowback could get them kicked off the team and possibly out of school.

Free is short for a freestyle race in which swimmers can choose which stroke they prefer to use. During freestyle events, the front crawl stroke is the overwhelming choice of all competitive swimmers. According to Swim Swam, a highly informative website dedicated to the world of competitive swimming, during a November 20, 2021 swim meet between Penn, Princeton, and Cornell, Lia Thomas “blasted the number one 200 free time and the second-fastest 500 free time in the nation – breaking Penn program records in both events.” The report continued, “Thomas swept the free individual events and helped earn first-place in the 400 free relay”. 

It didn’t take long for reports of Lia’s record-breaking NCAA times in women’s swimming to trend across social media, and be picked up by corporate and independent news outlets alike. The questions of fairness were immediate. The majority of quotes and comments suggest most people are opposed to Lia Thomas being allowed to compete as a female swimmer. As Chip said during the groundbreaking “Saying Grace” scene in that American classic movie, Talladega Nights, “He was a man. He had a beard!”. You can’t argue with that. Lia was a man, and had the ability to grow a beard. So how is she now a female swimmer?      

Can a man be fully defined by X levels of testosterone and Y levels of estrogen? Is a woman a woman because of an estrogen / testosterone ratio alone? The NCAA’s transgender policy states: “A trans female treated with testosterone suppression medication may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment.” Thomas has been receiving hormone replacement therapy for two and a half years now, so according to the NCAA, she is eligible to compete on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team.

To most observers, whatever guidelines are in place for transgender athletes to compete in a fair environment for all competitors is woefully inadequate. There are millions of men with low testosterone that still maintain a muscle strength that surpasses a significant majority of the female population. Then there’s the fact that with all the stories surrounding the fairness of transgender athletes competing in sports today, the examples used to make a point are always about men that have transitioned to females.  Stories of a female athlete who has transitioned into a man, and continues to compete in the same sport as he did prior to the transition, shattering NCAA records, simply do not exist. There is a reason for this that cannot be ignored.

As previously mentioned, Lia’s competitors, to include other female swimmers on her team, must be very cautious about how they comment on Lia’s journey in this odd environment of diluting the rights of the majority of people to ensure the rights of a few. I have yet to find any article arguing against Will’s right to transition into Lia. Even people that think such a decision is wrong, or even a sin, recognize and respect the rights of Lia Thomas to be or become whomever or whatever she wants to be here in the United States. We have lost a lot of this respect in the last few years, but once upon a time in America, the rights of others were respected and defended, until the exercise of those rights interfered with another person’s rights and pursuit of happiness. 

And there’s the rub, is it not? Some female swimmers who are now competing against Lia don’t think it’s fair. They know Lia was a man, that trained as a man, and competed against men with some success just a couple of years back, and now she’s having record breaking success as a female swimmer. In a recent interview with Penn Today, the University of Pennsylvania’s news website, Lia Thomas said, “Being trans has not affected my ability to do this sport, and being able to continue is very rewarding.” 

Joe Kinsey, writing for Outkick, reports his source on the UPENN female swim team isn’t feeling as comfortable with Lia’s “ability to do this sport”.  According to Kinsey, a second female Penn swimmer to speak out, who was granted anonymity due to what is viewed as threats from the university, activists, and the political climate, wants people to know that Penn swimmers are “angry” over the lack of fairness in the sport as Lia Thomas destroys the record books and brings fellow teammates to tears.

Regarding the other female swimmers, Kinsey’s source is reported to have also said, “They feel so discouraged because no matter how much work they put in it, they’re going to lose. Usually, they can get behind the blocks and know they out-trained all their competitors and they’re going to win and give it all they’ve got.” It must be hard to muster the will and strength to win when feeling defeated while standing on the starter’s box.

It is concerning that Lia Thomas sees nothing unfair about her competing against female swimmers at this point.  She has been told that she has met the NCAA transgender guidelines.  In a recent twenty-seven-minute interview with Coleman Hodges, production manager at Swim Swam, the mild-mannered Hodges peppered around the topic of fairness, but never really went for it.  After watching the interview, I was left with the impression that Lia believes she is a female swimmer now because the NCAA says so, and she wants and needs it to be true to further validate her decision to transition from a male to a female.

A defensiveness against the naysayers, while claiming she doesn’t read or listen to those types of comments, that’s what everyone says when the spot light is creating a long shadow, along with a naive selfishness required to not recognize, or even consider the pain she is causing some of her teammates and competitors, along with their families, in the name of acceptance and inclusion, is such a disappointment.

Lia Thomas is evidence that pharmaceutical hormone therapies alone do not guarantee a fair and level competitive environment.  At this stage of her transition journey, her past maleness is giving her an undeniable competitive edge.  She should be able to swim and compete, but her records might need an asterisk, or be assigned to a new category of competitors. It’s a conversation that must be had, respecting also the rights and pursuits of Lia’s opponents in the pool.