By Emily Tarinelli ’25
Sports Editor
Photo Courtesy of Gay Times and Ted Eytan
Content warning: this article discusses transphobia.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association no longer determines eligibility criteria for transgender student-athletes in college varsity sports. Now, athletes must look to requirements set by their sport’s national governing body, the NCAA announced in a press release on Jan. 19.
According to the press release, the policy is effective immediately. Starting with the 2022 winter championships, transgender athletes must report “sport-specific testosterone levels” four weeks before their sports’ championship selections. Once the policy is fully implemented in the 2023-2024 academic year, athletes will need to provide testosterone levels three times throughout the season: at the season’s start, six months into the season and four weeks in advance of championship selections.
If the athlete’s sport’s national governing body has no eligibility policy for transgender athletes, then the sport’s international federation rules will be applied. However, if the sport’s international federation has no policy, athletes should follow the International Olympic Committee rules.
NBC News reported that the previous NCAA policy, established in 2010 and implemented uniformly across all collegiate sports, required that transgender female athletes undergo one year of testosterone suppression in order to compete on a women’s team. Given that many Olympic athletes were former NCAA athletes, the updated rule is meant to further align the NCAA with the IOC’s sport-specific standards, the press release stated.
The policy update arrives at a time rife with controversy surrounding transgender inclusion in women’s sports. U.S. News & World Report noted that since the inception of the original NCAA policy, 10 states have passed laws that ban transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams that match their gender identity.
In an email to the Mount Holyoke News, Mount Holyoke College alumnus Emet Marwell ’18 spoke of the NCAA’s failure to ensure transgender inclusion in sports. Marwell, who is transgender, competed on the field hockey team at Mount Holyoke and is currently a member of Athlete Ally, a nonprofit, sports-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
Marwell stated that the NCAA’s new transgender inclusion policy was in “stark contrast” with the NCAA’s mission statement, which spoke of its commitment to fairness and well-being for student-athletes.
“The NCAA claims to be a leader in diversity and inclusion, but by deferring to national sport governing bodies with regards to trans and non-binary inclusion, they are refusing the opportunity to create a truly inclusive policy,” Marwell said.
Marwell said that the policy is “informed only by uneducated and transphobic rhetoric that targets trans women under the guise of protecting women’s sports.” He described that the original policy, while flawed, at least managed to work for over 10 years. The new policy, however, is “a huge step backwards.”
Marwell also compared the new NCAA policy to the IOC policy. “[The NCAA] did not include the protections and safeguards that the IOC included,” he said. “In fact, the new NCAA constitution eliminates previous non-discrimination language.”
According to NBC News, critics on both sides of the issue agree that the NCAA’s policy change will lead to confusion, especially since it was introduced amid the recent controversy regarding transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’s place on the University of Pennsylvania Women’s Swimming and Diving team.
“‘This update complicates the NCAA policy in a way that I don’t believe they are equipped to handle,” Chris Mosier, a transgender activist, triathlete and duathlete, said in an interview with ESPN. “Given that many [national governing bodies] have not created policies for transgender athletes, and that polices vary from sport NGB to NGB, tracking compliance is going to be a nightmare for the NCAA.’”
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a former Olympic swimmer and the founder of Champion Women, a group that seeks to elevate women and girls in sport, also voiced her thoughts.
“The new NCAA policy sounds a lot like the old one. The board hasn’t resolved the intractable balancing between fairness, playing safety and inclusion,” Hogshead-Makar told ESPN.
When Thomas posted the fastest times in the country this season in the 200-yard freestyle and 500-yard freestyle at the Zippy Invitational in Dec. 2021, NBC reported, several debates began among the public regarding her right to participate in the sport.
Hogshead-Makar published an op-ed in Swimming World Magazine that argued against Lia Thomas’ inclusion on the women’s team on the grounds of “fair” competition.
Joanna Harper, a transgender runner who published the first performance analysis of transgender athletes in 2015, offered a different perspective. Her 2021 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine acknowledged that even with three years of hormone therapy, transgender women are on average stronger than cisgender women — though the review studied non-athletes. However, Harper maintained that this finding should not hinder the participation of transgender women in athletics.
“We allow advantage in sports,” Harper said in a report by NBC News. “But just saying that trans women have advantages, while true, doesn’t mean that trans women shouldn’t be competing with cis women. Advantage is part of why we have winners and losers in sport, right?”
Some cisgender swimmers maintain high levels of advantage over their transgender competitors. While Thomas won the 1650-yard freestyle by 38 seconds at the Zippy Invitational, as reported by NBC News, seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky won the equivalent 1500-meter freestyle by 36 seconds at the U.S. Open that same month, NBC Sports reported.
Furthermore, decorated Olympian Michael Phelps has genetic features that give him advantages over his rivals, according to Biography. Researchers found that Phelps produces half as much lactic acid as his competitors, allowing him to recover quickly from soreness and exhaustion, among other physical characteristics that favor him as a swimmer.
ESPN reported that USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, established its first formal eligibility criteria for transgender women on Feb. 1, 2022. The policy requires that elite athletes “maintain a testosterone level below 5 nanomoles per liter continuously for at least 36 months before competition.”
A spokesperson for Penn Athletics told NBC News that the department is committed to supporting Thomas. “In support of our student-athlete, Lia Thomas, we will work with the NCAA regarding her participation under the newly adopted standards for the 2022 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship,” the spokesperson said.
“I truly believe sport has the power to change the world,” Marwell said, reflecting on his time on Mount Holyoke’s field hockey team. “I learned more life lessons than I can count from my participation in athletics. A sports team is a place for individuals to grow and become kind, hardworking, empowered world citizens,” he said.
“At the start of each academic year, the MHC field hockey team sits down and defines what ‘Hockey Strong’ means to us. In my seven years with the team, family has always been part of that definition. I would not be the person I am today with my teammates and coaches,” Marwell continued. “I don’t remember my stats from my days as a player. I remember the unwavering support I had that allowed me to become my true self. Everyone deserves a space like that.”
He also spoke about the steps that the NCAA should take in order to ensure a welcoming environment for transgender athletes.
“If the NCAA wants to be a leader in trans and nonbinary inclusion, it needs to take action based on what its trans and nonbinary stakeholders recommend, rather than using us as a pawn to prove their allyship,” he said.
“The NCAA has failed me and every single one of its trans and non-binary constituents,” Marwell said. “They have refused to listen to the thousands of voices begging them to do right by their trans athletes. And people, real human lives, are suffering because of it.”