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Before the infamous equality of Lia Thomas with Riley Gaines at the NCAA 2022 championships, the female swimmers of the Ivy League and their families witnessed the impact that the former swimmer of the University of Pennsylvania had on sport – closely.
In a regular season tri-go against Yale and Dartmouth on January 8, 2022, Thomas won the 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle.
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Lia Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania participated in a free event against Yale and Dartmouth in Sheerr Pool on the Penn campus on January 8, 2022, in Philadelphia. (Hunter Martin / Getty Images)
It was the first time that Kim Jones, mother of the former Yale swimmer, Raime Jones, saw Thomas swim in person.
“Oh my God, I can’t, I mean, he was huge. It was like a joke,” Kim Jones told PK Press Club Digital. “It took everything I had inside, so as not to cry … You think someone will put an end to this nonsense, then watch it unfold, it was like the twilight zone.”
Jones and his daughter knew that Thomas would be in competition to go. But then, seeing him playing in real time sparked an emotional reaction from the whole family.
“My daughter, she was super upset. She spent days preparing to face a man,” said Jones. “My daughter was 6 feet high and wide shoulder, very athletic, and he completely overshadowed it, both in the width of her shoulders and at her height.”
“No one thought it was real, but no one could stop it. You just felt like you were looking at a fleeing train and I remember leaving the installation and simply taking tears.”
But for Kim Jones, seeing Thomas beat his daughter during this meeting was neither the end nor the beginning, of the emotional assessment that the situation took on her and her family.
“The girls had already been fired in compulsory meetings through the Ivy League and were really victims of intimidation and silently,” said Jones. “They had been trained in meetings and said,” Do not speak to the media. It is not your fight. May the men in charge of the NCAA decide what to do. There was a lot of gas lighting.
“They even said” it was your job to keep your families silent. “”
PK Press Club Digital contacted Yale, Upenn and Ivy League to comment.
Jones recalled an alleged futile telephone call with a representative of the civil American Liberties Union (ACLU), where she tried to plead her case, but it would have been said that if she “did not agree with” Thomas in competition against women, she could “always write a letter”. PK Press Club Digital contacted the aclu to comment.
“And I remember hanging up and thinking:” You have no idea what I could do “,” she said.
Jones therefore began a mission to cause consequences.
She started by writing anonymous publishers on the situation, while encouraging other parents of Ivy League to do the same. But she was not satisfied.
“I knew that an organization should exist,” said Jones.
This opportunity occurred for weeks after the controversial appearance of the Thomas NCAA championship, where the Trans athlete won the 500 free female and equally with the 200 free sheaths.
Then, sheaths herself helped to connect Jones to another person at the same idea, the former female swimmer of the University of Arizona Marshi Smith. Smith had looked at the controversy with Thomas playing from afar. But it still struck near his home as a former female swimmer herself.
The former UPENN swimmer is thinking about being teammates with Lia Thomas in the middle of the Trump administrator’s administrator on the university
Smith, a former All-American six times, was the 2005 NCAA champion on the 100 back. But Smith, recalling the pressure and stress of the preparation of this 2005 championship meeting, thinks that she pale in relation to the experience of preparing to face a man.
“I cannot imagine having to walk on deck, knowing that each multimedia camera in the world is outside, turning the whole meeting because they know that you are ready to run a man,” Smith told PK Press Club Digital. “We train with men all the season, we have the same coach, I am very aware of the differences between male and female swimmers, so knowing that and going to the bridge would have been so defeated at the time.”
Smith’s experience to compete with men with casualness and in practice prompted him to aggressively question the equity of Thomas authorized to compete in a competitive manner in college.
“Never once in my mind, I would never consider myself seriously or would not judge me in relation to one of my male teammates,” said Smith. “The first time I imagined that this scenario was with Lia Thomas in the NCAA.”
So, together, Jones and Smith connected to the common objective of activism. Smith had already rented a stand space at the annual NCAA conference this year, which took place in the hometown of Smith in Las Vegas. His initial plan was just to distribute leaflets and hope for a conversation with certain visiting sports directors.
“”[Kim] said, “We are going to do much more than that,” said Smith.
The two former female athletes organized a three -day conference entitled “The birth of icons”.
It was the inaugural event of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, and included interviews with female athletes, legal experts, medical experts and the legend of women’s tennis Martina Navratilova.
“I don’t know how we succeeded,” said Jones. “I think everything has just been set up.”
The group financed the legal costs for the Gaines against NCAA, which he announced in March 2024. The pursuit, directed by Gaines, includes a list of complainants of the other NCAA female athletes who were affected by the participation of Thomas, and have since expanded to include other complainants affected by males in female sports.
Icons also finances individual prosecution against Upenn by three of the former Thomas teammates, and a prosecution against the Mountain West and the State University of San Jose on grievances involving the Volleyball player Trans Blaire Fleming.
