Dawn Staley, who recently led the South Carolina Lady Gamecocks to a perfect season and National Championship, had a surprising take on transgender in athletics.
Watch Staley during a post game interview following her team’s win in the final four:
Far right content creator: "Do you think that trans women should be able to play women's sports?"
Dawn Staley, coach of SC's women's basketball team, doesn't hold back: "Yes… and people are going to flood my timeline… and I'm ok with that."
Wow!pic.twitter.com/XxLDwDZUdB
— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) April 6, 2024
This is a relatively surprising take given the fact that Staley has built a program to uplift women in female sports.
Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican from Alabama, rips Staley apart during an interview on Outkick’s “Hot Mic”.
Fox News expands on the interview:
“If someone wants to really get out there and really challenge her on this, get ‘em a head coaching job in girls basketball and start recruiting men to play and see what she says about that,” he said. “They would be totally dominated if they went and got backups from some of these college basketball teams and let them play against women.
“I can’t even believe we’re talking about this. People have lost their minds even thinking about men playing in women’s sports. Title IX is the best thing to ever happen to this place up here. One of the few bills they have passed that’s really made a difference in the last 52 years. And it’s equalized women’s sports and really given them an opportunity to compete and earn the right to be champions in any sport.
Tuberville goes on to discuss why Staley could have that opinion:
“She just followed the line. She didn’t want to disrupt people’s thoughts about her. She’s obviously an activist along with being a coach because there’s no earthly way she could believe, ‘OK, I want to coach girls against men.’ There’s no way she could believe that, but she said it for that reason. Just don’t understand the direction a lot of these people are going. Stand up.
“She should be standing up for all those young girls, those young women she was coaching. She just won a national championship and talk about the good things. We’ll take anybody on, but it’s really not right for men to come over and say they want to play in women’s sports. It’s not right. And it’s unfair, and it’s unsafe.”
Many people were outraged over Staley’s comments, all taking to X to voice their opinion:
Sad how she selfishly had a safe womens sports career and then threw the next generation of female athletes under the bus.
What a horrible person.
— FreeRoamer (@randy24049) April 8, 2024
Congrats on beating Iowa but can’t rock with you with trans players in women basketball or any other sport- Dawn Staley ripped for answer on trans basketball players pic.twitter.com/rJrrD4QZ2r
— SHO’NUFF (@IAMSHO_NUFF) April 8, 2024
Let all the men who want to play women’s sports play it. Don’t even make them dress up as a girl. Just go out there and dominate. It will destroy every female league in which it’s allowed. And then maybe sanity will return.
— David Leslie (@DavidLeslie254) April 6, 2024
Probably better than saying the opposite and losing her job. It’s still mad though. Is she really saying she’d be happy for Le Bron to play against her team just because he says he’s a woman? That’s the logic of it.
— Colin Wight (@colwight) April 7, 2024
If this is how Staley really feels, why would 18 year old females choose to go play for her at South Carolina?
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