Despite Hate on Social Media, These Female Athletes Are Continuing the Fight to Protect Fairness in Women’s Sports

Athletes Alanna Smith and Selina Soule recently appeared on Fox News to discuss protecting fairness in women’s sports. These women lost track competitions in high school to males pretending to be females after the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference created a “transgender” policy.

Smith and Soule, along with two others, filed a lawsuit against Connecticut and a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The federal agency under President Donald Trump said the policy violated Title IX and threatened to withhold funds unless the state rescinded the rule, but a judge dismissed it on procedural grounds. The agency under President Joe Biden said it will not support the lawsuit.

For more information about this important issue, browse the Save Women’s Sports category.

Smith said that in her freshman year of high school, competing against two males “was just really demoralizing to know that all of my hard work and all the other female athletes’ hard work wasn’t paying off.” They were racing for second and third place and wouldn’t get the placements they deserved.

Soule said she was forced to compete against males throughout all four years of high school. Among the opportunities lost: qualifying to compete in the New England championships and the 55-meter dash. If she hadn’t had to run against the two males, she would have qualified. She competed against them over a dozen times and lost.

Soule, now a sophomore at Florida Atlantic University, seeks to intervene in a lawsuit to defend Florida’s law. She witnessed Governor Ron DeSantis signing the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act into law.

The women talked about support among their family friends and backlash on social media. Watch the brief clip.

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