SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED
SI.COM
APRIL 2022
65to this moment, to know what it felt like to be in a body
but not be of that body. She wanted people to know what
it was like to finally live an authentic life and what it
meant for her to finish a race, to look up at a timing
board and see the name lia thomas next to the names
of other women. What it meant to her to stand on a
podium with other women and be counted as an equal.
She wondered whether anyone would hear her words.
Even if they did, would they listen?T
HOUGH THOMAS HAD been an elite distance swimmer
t hroughout high school a nd cou ld have joined much
more prominent swim programs, Penn was the only
place she wanted to go. Her brother Wes swam for the
Quakers for four years; as a teenager Thomas often
traveled to Philadelphia to watch him. She liked Schnur,
Penn’s longtime coach, and the two quickly developed
a bond after Thomas arrived on campus late in the
summer of 2017.
Thomas became quick friends with many of her
new teammates, connecting over a mutual love of
niche anime and video games and through the close-
ness that can be achieved only through taxing swimpractices. The hours back and forth in the pool created
a kinship, and the work paid off. During her freshman
year on the men’s team Thomas established several
personal records. In her first Ivy League champion-
ships, in February 2018, she had top-eight finishes in
the 500-yard freestyle, the 1,000-yard freestyle and
the 1,650-yard freestyle.
Thomas says she began questioning her identity near
the end of her time at Austin’s Westlake High School.
“I felt off,” she remembers, “disconnected with my body.”
She finds it hard to explain the feelings creeping into
her mind at that time, only that she began to have con-
cerns about how she viewed herself—feelings that would
emerge more and more often as she competed in her
first college season.
She Googled those feelings and read the personal
stories of trans women. She was paired with a trans
mentor through a group on Penn’s campus. That was
the first time Thomas talked to someone who’d expe-
rienced what she was feeling. Those were light-bulb
moments. “Like, Wow, this is such a close mirror of what
I’m feeling,” she remembers. “It started to make more
sense.” Though she’d found slivers of clarity, the joy
of discovery began to feel like a psychological yoke toThomas. How would her parents and friends feel about
this? What would her coaches say?
She told her brother the summer between her fresh-
man and sophomore years, and he was immediately
accepting. She called her parents. Bob and Carrie Thomas
could feel that something was off that first year of col-
lege, that their child was hurting. Bob says what was
discussed on that call is personal, but that he and Carrie
told their daughter they loved and supported her. “We
will do everything and anything we need to do to have
Lia be part of this family,” Bob says. “We were not going
to lose her.”
The 2018–19 season proved to be Thomas’s best yet.
She earned second-place f inishes in the same trio of Iv y
championship races in which she’d excelled the pre-
vious year, earning her multiple spots on the All-Ivy
team. Thomas got closer to her goal of swimming at the
NCAA championships and perhaps qualifying for the ’20
Olympic trials. In just two years she’d proved to be a quiet
leader—a no-complaints workhorse who kept a steady
pace in practice and f lipped the switch in competition.
She had never felt more miserable.
Though she’d come out to herself and to her family,her feelings of dysphoria heightened that second year in
school, particularly after the swim season. With fewer
demands on her time, she sank into her thoughts. “I was
very depressed,” Thomas says. She trained less often and
felt disengaged from her life. “I got to the point where I
couldn’t go to school. I was missing classes,” she says.
“My sleep schedule was super messed up. Some days I
couldn’t get out of bed. I knew at that moment I needed
to do something to address this.”H
ER FRIENDS IN the program could see her struggling,
but they didn’t know why. Thomas was still months
from coming out to her team and coaches. She’d
do her best to smile a nd ma ke it seem li ke life was O.K.
The others noticed. “It’s scary seeing someone you love
hurting and not being able to help,” says Andie Myers,
who joined the program at the same time as Thomas
and is one of her closest friends. “She wasn’t talking
about what was going on in her life, but it seemed
like she wanted to say something. It was a completely
helpless feeling.”
Thomas would wake up and think about the people
who might reject her. At the pool, she’d stare at the
WI black line and absorb herself in self-doubt. “I tried my
NS
LO
W^ T
OW
NS
ON
THOMAS ASKED FAMILY AND FRIENDS NOT TO ENGAGE WITH
THE VITRIOL SHE FACED. “I DON’T LOOK INTO THENEGATIVITY AND THE HATE,” SHE SAYS. “I AM HERE TO SWIM.”