Roanoke College Tried to Gaslight This Women’s Swim Team After a ‘Mediocre Man’ Joined Their Team

Members of the women’s swim team at Roanoke College in Virginia did the right thing and stood up to their school to protect their safe spaces for themselves and for all women.

The Independent Women’s Forum and Riley Gaines are supporting with these women. And so should we.

Gaines knows firsthand. This University of Kentucky graduate competed against a man calling himself Lia Thomas at the NCAA swimming championship in 2022. He won the women’s swimming championship, and the NCAA subsequently nominated him for “woman” of the year.

Gaines said some of the women changed in the janitor’s closet to avoid changing in front of Thomas, who exposed himself.

Gaines said she’s proud of the women at Roanoke College for being unified.

If you oppose men joining women’s teams, you must openly support women who publicly push back. I suspect many of them don’t because they’re concerned about their place on these teams and within their social groups, afraid for their future academic and employment prospects, and for their safety.

One of the women at a press conference (see video below) said that when they returned to school this year, motivated to improve, they were told that a man was joining the team. The administration was not responsive to their concerns. These women were demoralized, wondering why swim at all if they had to race against a man.

The first speaker said that not a single administrator asked them how they felt.

What a shame. The school prioritized one destructive and “mediocre” man over all of these women. One swim team member said they needed adults and leaders to advocate for them to be treated fairly.

The other women expressed similar sentiments and spoke about the advantages men have competing against women.

“We are fighting today not just for ourselves but for generations of women now and in the future who will face this unfairness if we don’t win,” one of the women said.

I applaud the swim team for speaking out. The next step is for all female athletes to refuse to compete against men.

No women in the women’s race = no race.

Forfeiting a competition would be a huge sacrifice for the athletes, who trained hard for these competitions, but extreme problems require extreme solutions.

Watch the press conference below to hear what these women and their supporters had to say about protecting fair competition in women’s sports.