SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED
SI.COM
APRIL 2022
67On Dec. 5, two days after the Ohio meet, some Penn
swim parents sent a letter to the NCAA asking that
Thomas be ruled ineligible for women’s competitions.
The arguments would soon become familiar to Thomas.
Her puberty gave her an advantage over other female
competitors. Science allegedly showed trans women
had larger hands and feet, bigger hearts and greater
bone density and lung capacity. “At stake here is the
integrity of women’s sports,” read the parents’ letter,
which was sent to Penn and the Ivy League and later
made public. “The precedent being set—one in which
women do not have a protected and equitable space to
compete—is a direct threat to female athletes in every
sport. What are the boundaries? How is this in line with
the NCAA’s commitment to providing a fair environment
for student-athletes?”
The NCA A didn’t respond, but Penn athletic director
Alanna Shanahan sent an email to the team, obtained
by SI, saying that the school “fully support[s] all our
swimming student-athletes and want[s] to help our
community navigate Lia’s success in the pool this winter.
Penn [a]thletics is committed to being a welcoming and
inclusive environment for all student-athletes, coaches
and staff, and we hold true to the commitment today and
in the future.” If swimmers were upset about Thomas,
Shanahan added, the athletes could “utilize robust
resources available to them,” including the university’s
department of Counseling and Psychological Services.
It’s telling that the parents issued the letter anony-
mously. More than a half dozen people affiliated with
the Penn program spoke to SI under the condition that
their names not be used in this story. “I’m not about to
be labeled as transphobic,” says one swimmer
on the team.
“We support Lia as a trans woman and hope
she leads a happy and productive life, because
that’s what she deserves,” one parent of a Penn
swimmer says. “What we can’t do is stand by
while she rewrites records and eliminates
biological women from this sport. If we don’t
speak up here, it’s going to happen in college
after college. And then women’s sports, as we
know it, will no longer exist in this country.”
In a Daily Mail report that made its way
through conservative media, one swimmer
said the team members had been told not to
speak out or they might lose their place on the
team. Several parents of swimmers and some
swimmers themselves disputed that claim
when questioned about it by SI. Shanahan
and Schnur, through a university spokesman,
declined to be interviewed for this story.
Even as Thomas did her best to downplay
the drama unfolding on her team, it was
impossible to ignore the coolness that pervaded
the Penn pool deck. “You’re always looking
over your shoulder,” says Hadley DeBruyn,
a Penn sophomore swimmer and Thomas’s friend.
Several anonymously sourced reports surfaced in the
new year about Thomas’s attitude. Among the accusa-
tions: She joked about the ease with which she won races;
she purposely swam slowly at a January meet against
Iszac Henig, a trans man who swims on Yale’s women’s
team; she referred to herself as the “Jackie Robinson of
trans sports.” Thomas denies those claims. “It’s disgust-
ing and it’s cruel what’s being done to Lia,” DeBruyn
says. “Sometimes, this doesn’t even feel like a team.”
The Quakers’ women’s roster has 37 swimmers. Those
close to the team estimate that Thomas has six to eight
adamant supporters, maybe half the team opposes
her competing against other women and the rest have
steered clear of the debate. An unsigned letter, which the
university said represented “several” Penn swimmers
and was released through the school in early February,
said Thomas was “value[d] as a person, teammate and
friend” and took aim at the stories circulating about her.
“The sentiments put forward by an anonymous member
of our team are not representative of the feelings, values
and opinions of the entire Penn team.”
Two days later, 16 Penn teammates sent an unsigned
letter to Ivy League officials, requesting that Thomas
be held out of the conference championship meet. The
letter was organized by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an
Olympic gold medalist who heads Champion Women, a
women’s sports advocacy group that purportedly focuses
on Title IX issues. “If [Thomas] were to be eligible to
compete,” the letter read, “she could now break Penn, Ivy
and NCAA women’s swimming records; feats she could
never have done as a male athlete.” The Ivy League later