ESPN Town Hall Meeting Tomorrow

I touched on the subject in an earlier TransGriot post, and I'll be tuned in from 6-8 PM EST on Friday night when ESPN hosts a town hall meeting from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA on the current image of the Black athlete.

It's part of the week of ESPN programming leading up to King Day that started January 11 entitled Content of Character.


This town hall will be hosted by Good Morning America's Robin Roberts and Outside The Lines Bob Ley.  

The panelists for the two hour program will be director Spike Lee, ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon, Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari, current WNBA Tulsa Shock player and world champion track & field athlete Marion Jones and former University of Miami football coach Randy Shannon.

Should be an interesting two hours.

NCAA Working On Trans Athletic Policy Interpretation

I've been saying they have needed to do so for years along with other people inside and outside the community, and now it looks like the NCAA is finally getting around to it.  

According to the Inside Higher Ed blog the NCAA is putting together a policy interpretation on trans athletes that creates a pathway for us to compete that is fair to cis student athletes as well.

The NCAA working group from its Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports has come up with a set of recommendations nearly identical to ones issued in a report by the National Center on  Lesbian Rights and the Women's Sports Foundation. 

Kye Allums emergence as the first open trans athlete in NCAA Division I play has put a face on the issue as well as drawn much needed attention to it.   The IOC and other international sports governing bodies have been changing their policies since 2004 to allow the participation of trans athletes, and it was time for the NCAA o follow suit as well. 

It's always smarter to do so on your own rather than to do so while facing a lawsuit.

Outside of the 110 stealth trans athletes that are alleged to have competed at the NCAA level by Canadian world champion mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq, there has been another open transman who has competed in NCAA competition, but not at the high profile Division I level as Kye Allums is doing. . 

Transman Keelin Godsey was a Division III three discipline track athlete who competed in the hammer throw, shotput and discus at Bates College. He transitioned in 2005 under the same no testosterone parameters that Allums is now using..

On July 7, 2008 he attempted to become the first transperson ever to qualify for a national Olympic team and the Olympic Games in the women's hammer throw competition.    The two time Division III champion's best throw of 65.57 meters in the Olympic Trials left him 10 feet shy of making history and qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Games as he finished in seventh place.   


Under the proposed NCAA trans athlete policy interpretation, a transwoman would be permitted to play on a women’s team if that athlete has undergone testosterone suppression treatment for at least one year.

The member institution would have to provide the NCAA with written documentation of testosterone suppression for the year of treatment and documentation of ongoing monitoring to be eligible to play on a women’s team.

In the instance of a transman such as Allums, the athlete would be permitted to play on a men’s team at any time.

If the athlete wants hormone treatment, however, then the athlete must get a medical exception for the use of testosterone before being eligible to participate in intercollegiate athletics because the substance is on the NCAA’s banned drug list.

Athletes who transition socially, but do not seek hormone treatment, also have the option to compete for their birth-gender team.

Helen J. Carroll, director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ sports project said,."I’m very encouraged that the NCAA is moving forward in a positive way including transgendered student-athletes in a way that’s practical and works. It’s a very exciting time for the entire transgendered community.”

Carroll stated that this move by the NCAA may make it easier for transgender athletes to publicly come out about their status now that they know how they can maintain their eligibility to play sports.

I agree with her assessment.. I believe it has been that uncertainty that has kept more collegiate trans athletes from coming out

The NCAA’s national office staff is reviewing the interpretation to determine if it satisfactorily addresses the issue of trans athletes or if there is a need for further legislation to clarify it as official NCAA policy.  .

If the determination is made that further legislation on the issue is warranted, it would be considered by the NCAA member institutions during its upcoming 2011-12 legislative cycle.

Whatever way it transpires, since many of the state level high school athletic governing bodies in the United States follow NCAA rules, it could possibly have a trickle down effect in terms of their policies toward high school athletes in the various states as well.


But Helen Carroll is right.  It is definitely an exciting time for trans athletes currently matriculating in colleges across the nation, because the NCAA is working on a policy that not only allows us to get into the game but be our true selves while doing so.  .

TSU Headed To SWAC Title Game!

I used to spend a lot of fall Saturday nights in the Astrodome and Rice University press boxes as a kid enjoying my bottomless soda cups and watching the Texas Southern University Tigers take on their SWAC competition. 

My father was the play by play man for TSU football back in the day, so in addition to the first rate press box cuisine at the Dome I got to see a lot of outstanding future NFL players such as Hall of Famers Walter Payton and Doug Williams, and TSU stars such as Oilers wide receiver Ken Burrough and Julius Adams .

While TSU has had 60 players make it to the NFL, onee thing I didn't see a lot of was TSU winning the SWAC or a lot of football games.    Those were the days of Eddie Robinson and his Grambling Tigers dominating the league.

TSU's most recent SWAC title in football was one they shared with two schools in 1968.  I sat through a lot of games in which the only thing I could brag about was the halftime performance of the Ocean of Soul marching band. 

The 2010 edition of the Texas Southern University Tigers shook off a 1-3 start under TSU alum and current head coach Johnnie Cole who was their quarterback back in the day. 

The Tigers have ripped off seven straight wins, including a 41-34 overtime victory over long time pain in the butt Grambling to capture the SWAC Western Division Crown.


They did so last night by beating Arkansas-Pine Bluff 20-13 and punched their ticket for a trip to Birmingham to attempt to win TSU's first ever SWAC outright championship.   They will take on SWAC Eastern Division champ Alabama State on December 11.

They will also be ending their recent nomadic search for a football home by moving next year to the new downtown stadium being built for the MLS Houston Dynamo.

But I'm happy to finally see TSU have some success on the football field and so are all my family members who are TSU alums.


Good luck at the SWAC Championship game Tigers and beat the ASU Hornets!

What Trans Sporting Advantage?

One of the arguments that has come up since junior GWU guard Kye Allums became the first open transperson playing NCAA Division I basketball is that he would have an advantage playing against cis women as a male.

Oh really now?    Care to ask the now retired Reggie Miller when he played against his Hall of Fame enshrined older sister Cheryl who is the better basketball player in their family? 

I heard this whine as a teenager when Renee Richards transitioned back in the mid 70's and had to go to court to play in women's tennis events.   She eventually won the right to do so and competed on the professional women's tour from 1977-1981.

What was Renee Richard's highest ranking achieved?   20th in 1979.   And how many Grand Slam singles titles did she win?   The same number as Anna Kournikova:  Zero .

Canadian mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq won three Canadian and one world championship in mountian biking while enduring an avalanche of complaints from other cis female competitors and having one cis female competitor, Danika Schroeter suspended for unfurling a '100% pure Woman Champ shirt during the 2006 Canadian nationals.

It was only a matterof time before the issues that we faced in terms of employment and other areas started trickling into the sporting arena.

It is presumed that a male to female transperson, because we grew up with testosterone fueling our growth spurts, gives us an advantage because we tend to be taller with denser bone structures. 

However, what people forget is that we also have to lug that same dense skeleton around with musculature that has now elongated to feminine lengths and have less strength to do it with. 


In addition to that problem we now have to get adjusted to the playing our fave sports in a feminine (or masculine) body, and it takes time.  Professional golfer Mianne Bagger has stated that she's noticed she can't hit a golf ball as far as she used to.  I play tennis, and it took me a few years to not only get adjusted to the new centers of gravity for my body and the gradual changes I only became aware of as I played matches post transition, I now have to deal with a less powerful serve and had to alter my style of play to compensate for it.   


And on top of that, as with all aspects of trans life, there's not a whole lot of research that has been done on the subject of HRT on people who transition while doing a world class athletic training regimens.

This upcoming NCAA women's basketball season for GWU is definitely going to be an interesting one.

With transpeople transitioning at earlier ages, it's only a matter of time before we have a teenage transman wish to try out for his local football team and a teen transwoman want to play girls sports at her high school.

It's a win-win for the transperson and society if we get to play the games we love and learn those important life lessons that sports teaches us.


It's past time we come up with common sense rules that not only are fair to all involved, but protect the human rights of transpeople who simply wish to compete and experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat  through sporting achievement like everyone else on the planet.

World Series Homophobia

I was happy to see the Texas Rangers finally win the American League championship for the first time in their club history against the Evil Baseball Empire (the NY Yankees) last week.

Leading up to the initial game of the World Series last night I was torn between rooting for the home state team even if they do play in (yuck) the Dallas metro area and the National League champion San Francisco Giants.   Ranger manager Ron Washington is seeking to become only the second African-American manager to win a World Series title, team president Nolan Ryan used to be an Astro and I was leaning slightly in the Rangers direction.    But Giants manger Bruce Bochy once played for the Astros as well. 


But after some comments from some nekulturny Rangers fans branding this edition of the 2010 World Series as the 'Steers vs Queers' and this blog post letting fly with homophobic commentary aimed at the city of San Francisco and midterm election Teabagger rhetoric, I'm picking a side now.

Go Giants!

Noted in Game One the 'Steers' got beat by the 'Queers' 11-7. 

Karma rhymes with witch doesn't it?

Team USA Women 2010 FIBA Worlds- Good Start! USA 99-Greece 73

The Team USA women successfully began their quest for an eighth FIBA world championship in Ostrava by beating Greece 99-73 in their tournament opening Group B game.

They were in the unfamiliar position of coming into this tournament as bronze medalists.

Several members of this team such as Tamika Catchings and Sue Bird who played on the 2006 FIBA squad are on a mission to return this team to its recent gold medal winning ways in international basketball competition.  

Every player on Team USA scored and five were in double figures led by Swin Cash and Angel McCoughtry's 16 points each.   Candice Dupree and Tina Charles chipped in 12 apiece with Tamika Catchings contributing 10 points in 20 minutes of play.

Team USA shot 55.7% for the game and a blistering 45.5% from 3 point land on 5 of 11 shooting from behind the arc and outrebounded Greece 43-19.


Maya Moore became the third collegiate player in the last twelve years to play on a US FIBA team (Chamique Holdsclaw 1998 and Candace Parker 2006) and helped ignite the 17-6 run that expanded a three point USA lead to 32-18 at the end of the first quarter.   That lead grew to a 52-35 at halftime despite Evanthia Maltsi's game high 29 points for Greece.

Team USA continues its Group B play tomorrow with the FIBA Africa champion Senegal team they obliterated last week in a Spanish warmup tournament and Saturday against a French team missing two of its better players from its Eurobasket squad in Sandrine Gruda and Emilie Gomis.

If they finish in the top three teams in Group B they will move on the the crossover round against the surviving members of Group A September 27-29.