Guest column: Where should transgender athletes compete?

I could beat most other boys in my best swimming events. Very few girls could beat Vonnie in her best swimming events.

But I had an even greater advantage over her. I was able to swim competitively through high school, earning varsity letters and nearly qualifying for the state championships. Vonnie never had that opportunity.

Varsity sports were not open to girls in those days. If they had been, she would have placed near the top in the state.

As a kid, I also loved playing baseball, football and basketball, my favorite schoolyard sport.

I often wished that I were about a foot taller than my 5-foot-7 stature and been a high-school basketball star. But I wasn’t, never could be, although I eventually grew by 3 inches.

My love of sports later led me to become sports editor of the Chagrin Valley Times, my first full-time newspaper job, in 1977.

Title IX, the U.S. civil-rights law that mandated equal opportunity for girls in sports, was signed by then-President Richard M. Nixon in 1972.

But the Ohio High School Athletic Association didn’t get around to opening up state championships for girls until several years later. The first girls basketball championships were held for the 1975-76 season. One of the highlights of my sports-writing tenure was covering the Chagrin Falls High School girls team’s trip to the Class AA final four in 1979.

In the first girls state swimming championships held in 1977, Solon High School placed second, and Orange High School was third.

The Hawken School girls state swimming dynasty began with its first championship in 1984.

In the spring of 1979, I was able to write about Solon High School senior Julie Stibbe’s fourth straight Ohio Class AAA championship in the 880-yard run when she broke her own state record.

I also was fortunate to become a competitive swimming coach, including seven years at Kenston High School, where we had numerous qualifiers in both boys and girls state championships, and several years as an assistant with the Cleveland Lancers and Lake Erie Silver Dolphins age-group teams.

I think I know something about sports, especially swimming. So, when the NCAA women’s swimming championship by Lia Thomas, formerly known as William Thomas, became a controversial subject in the national news earlier this year, I thought about all the female athletes that I’ve known since my childhood.

Is it fair for a person who was born with a male body to compete in female athletics? And, if so, when?

Competing in the 2019 Ivy League men’s championships with the University of Pennsylvania, William Thomas placed second in three events, which was pretty impressive. Among male national collegiate swimmers, he was ranked 32nd, 65th and 554th in those events, nothing to be ashamed of.

As William made the physical transition to Lia over the next three years, his-her swimming times did slow significantly, including by 14.52 seconds in the 2022 championship 500-yard freestyle event.

Defenders of transgender athletes may point out the difference in those times as evidence that physical gender transition is successful.

I would suggest that the change from 65th fastest male to absolute fastest female raises significant questions about that. Lia Thomas is still 6-foot-1, as was William Thomas.

Defenders of her championship point out the rarity of transgender athletes competing as girls and women.

I believe that even one girl or woman deprived of her place on the podium is one too many. If and when a female-to-male transgender athlete wins a men’s national swimming championship, I could change my mind.

Lange is a former editor of the Chagrin Valley Times.