NCAA president says there are 'less than 10' transgender athletes in college sports

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba/ncaa-president-says-there-are-less-than-10-transgender-athletes-in-college-sports/ar-AA1w6Zfo?ocid=windirect&cvid=5c696d51dc77480bbba358385330119f&ei=36

Story by Brooke Migdon (18 Dec 2024)

(The Hill) — NCAA President Charlie Baker told a Senate panel that there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes he is aware of who currently compete in college sports, pouring cold water on an issue Republicans have said is a nationwide problem and one that is increasingly fraught territory for Democrats.

"How many athletes are there in the U.S. in NCAA schools?" Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Baker during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on federal regulations around sports gambling.

"Five hundred and ten thousand," said Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts who has served as president of the NCAA, which governs intercollegiate athletics at more than 1,000 colleges and universities across the country, since 2023.

"How many transgender athletes are you aware of?" Durbin asked.

"Less than 10," Baker said. He did not say whether that number includes transgender men.

Transgender inclusion in women's sports has become a political lightning rod, dividing the nation and playing an increasingly central role in political campaigns.

A recent cross-sectional study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that transgender women who completed more than one year of hormone replacement therapy performed worse than cisgender women in tests measuring lower-body strength and lung functioning.

Here in South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem (soon to be Trump's Director of Homeland Security) issued an Executive Order banning transgender athletes from women's sports.

At the time when she did this, the total number of transgender athletes in South Dakota was exactly ONE.

She changed her mind when the NCAA said they would no longer hold tournaments or any other competitions in this state because her policy violates the NCAA's inclusion policy. Noem realized that the state could lose millions of dollars in tourism sales tax dollars, (the main source of income for the state). She withdrew her EO and the legislature passed a law.