Rice Swim Coach on Transgender Debate: ‘Compete as What You Were Biologically Born’
Rice University swim coach Seth Huston recently blasted the NCAA over its failure to craft policies to ensure fairness in women’s sports amid outcry over Lia Thomas, a transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer who keeps besting female opponents.
Huston, a four-time Conference USA Coach of the Year, told Swimswam.com last week that while he respects Thomas and the swimmer’s transition and he is “completely OK” with allowing Thomas to compete, that the sport should be “given time to accommodate” Thomas and other transgender swimmers under Title IX, whether it be via creating a third division specifically for transgender swimmers or otherwise.
“In the meantime, Lia has every right to compete,” he said. “But I think, black and white right now, you compete as what you were biologically born until we get to a point where we’ve expanded opportunities, you know for instance, in transgender.”
He added: “I get Title IX, I understand it, Lia is completely within the law to do so. But there are other ways I think we can be accommodating and making opportunities for Lia without hurting a whole of others.”
Huston went on to say he feels the sport is bowing to one person “to the detriment of thousands of other athletes potentially.”
The Rice University swim coach is the first active Division 1 coach to speak out on the issue, according to Swimswam.com
The National Collegiate Athletic Association announced earlier this week that it had updated its transgender-participation policy to reflect the practices of the U.S. and International Olympic Committees. Under the new policy, transgender participation in a particular sport will be determined by that sport’s national governing body. If no such governing body exists, participation will be determined by the sport’s international federation rules. In the event that an international federation has no transgender policy, the American branch of a particular sport will follow the IOC policy.
Huston, who has been a head coach at Rice for 19 seasons, criticized the NCAA’s change, as well as a statement from the College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America that supported Thomas competing at the Women’s NCAA Championships in March.
“The NCAA once again has proven that it is not leading. It is not really even following,” Huston said. “The NCAA governance has become a bystander waiting for other organizations to make tough decisions. They hoped NIL would continue to be suppressed and now they are scrambling to make it fit their construct. Now they sit on the sidelines with Transgender issues.”
“The CSCAA is right in being frustrated with NCAA Leadership or lack thereof, but wrong to suggest Lia compete at NCAAs,” added Huston, who was named one of the CSCAA’s “100 Greatest Coaches” last year.
Huston reiterated that he is not saying Thomas should not compete, but that the transgender swimmer competing on the women’s team is “patently unfair to all the other competitors.”
Last week, the father of a University of Pennsylvania swimmer said his daughter and many of her teammates do not feel they can compete fairly with teammate Lia Thomas, a record-setting transgender swimmer on the team, and that there has been a lot of “crying on the pool deck” over the situation.
“They don’t agree with what Lia’s doing and they’re really unhappy with the situation,” the anonymous parent told Fox News. “Morale is bad.”
The UPenn parent called the NCAA’s change a “cop-out.”
“The onus is now on USA Swimming to do something, and it’s my hope they have the courage to do the right thing and put stricter limits than what the current IOC policy states,” he said.
The parent said his daughter is “angry that she’s in the situation” and has “lost opportunities as a result of it,” including having lost spots on relay competitions.
“She has given this sport everything she has, and she feels like some of it’s been taken away,” he said of his daughter who has been swimming since she was five years old, adding that many of the girls on the UPenn swim team are scared to speak out because “any kind of opposition is immediately called transphobic.”
“Nobody wants to be labeled that way and have their future threatened,” he said.
