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NCAA members slow to adopt transgender athlete guidelines

Zolan V Kanno-Youngs
USA TODAY
Women's hammer thrower Keelin Godsey is pushing for NCAA member schools to adopt guidelines for better integrating transgender athletes in their teams.

A decade later, Keelin Godsey still credits track and field as providing the confidence needed to come out as a transgender male.

Godsey already had respect in the athletic world after earning 11 All-American honors and winning a national championship in women's hammer throwing. He felt it was time people respected the rest of his identity.

Before he made the announcement at the end of his junior year in 2005, he searched Bates College and the NCAA for a policy on transgender athletes, out of fear his coming out would threaten his track career. But no policy existed at the time.

Luckily, Godsey had a supportive coach and teammates who accepted him all the same. The school allowed the athlete to remain on the women's team because Godsey was delaying his hormonal transition. But if Bates College, his alma mater, had the NCAA transgender inclusion recommendations that currently exist, they would have known not to require Godsey use a separate locker room.

"It made me feel completely isolated," Godsey told USA TODAY Sports. "You just completely miss out on that team experience and it makes you feel very lonely and it was very depressing at times when you just wanted to talk about your day with your teammates."

Godsey has an essay to guide future transgender athletes featured in the current NCAA transgender inclusion recommendations, which were sent to every Division I program in 2011. But Godsey, as well as some collegiate officials and other transgender athletics pioneers, are frustrated many of those programs have not publicized those recommendations to students.

USA TODAY Sports asked 75 NCAA Division I programs if they had adopted the recommendations, and out of the 50 that responded, 10 had used the recommendations to enact for a formal policy that specifically addresses the inclusion of transgender athletes in intercollegiate athletics. Out of the 40 who had not, 21 said they were still reviewing the recommendations while referring to a general non-discrimination policy that does not specifically address transgender athletes. One school, Alabama Birmingham, said "they were not aware of a current policy on the topic and to their knowledge, have never discussed the topic."

"Most schools are waiting until it's an issue, which is unfortunate," said Pat Griffin, a UMass professor and one of the authors of the recommendations. "That then puts the burden on the individual athletes who identify as trans and want to play, to go to the athletic director and say I want to play … (the athletic director is) trying to react in the moment, instead of being prepared ahead of time."

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The inclusion of transgender people — in all aspects of life — was thrust into mainstream conversation after Caitlyn Jenner's ESPYs speech called for the acceptance of the transgender community.

But before that speech there was Kye Allums, a transgender male who came out while playing on the women's basketball team at George Washington. And then there is MMA fighter and transgender woman Fallon Fox, who said the schools keeping those recommendations on hold send the wrong message to all transgender people in hiding.

"The message it sends is you're not equal and we're not paying much attention to your situation and you're not included," Fox said. "If they're not recommending these things, if they're not looking into it heavily, then that's the message."

Though the NCAA has not made a mandatory policy for transgender inclusion, the association said advancing participation opportunities is an "NCAA value."

"It is our hope that our membership will follow best practices that are outlined as this topic continues to get more attention and as it continues to be discussed within our membership," NCAA spokesperson Gail Dent said.

The recommendations include information a Title IX policy does not, such as eligibility requirements for athletes undergoing hormonal treatment. It recommends athletes undergoing male-to-female hormonal transition sit out a year before joining a women's team while athletes undergoing the reverse can play right away. It also recommends appropriate pronoun use for coaches and teammates. And it does not recommend transgender athletes be required to use separate locker rooms.

"They may do that initially and then look at the guide and decide, 'We shouldn't do it this way, we should do it another way' but by then the harm is already done to students," said Helen Carroll, the Sports Project Director for the National Center of Lesbian Rights and a contributor to the inclusion guidelines.

Some of the schools said they would follow the recommendations if a transgender student was to come out. But Griffin said that not preparing for it beforehand may prevent transgender athletes from going public. She said most young closeted transgender athletes don't want the added pressure of being a trailblazer. They just want to play the game.

"For schools, more than coaches, they need to adopt a policy and they need to do it now," Griffin said. "Before they have that transgender athlete at the door saying they want to play."

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Triathlete Chris Mosier, the first open transgender man to make a USA national team (men's sprint duathlon), counsels young transgender athletes through his work as executive director of Go! Athletes. He said many of those athletes entering college are hesitant to come out because schools haven't made it clear if they will let them participate.

"They aren't sure who they are going to have to come out to, they aren't sure how they are going to be received by the coaches and the teammates and they aren't sure they'll even be able to participate based off the policies they have in place," Mosier said.

Mosier, as well as Carroll and Griffin, wishes the recommendations were mandatory because so many schools seem to be ignoring them.

"A lot of them just sit on the desks," Mosier said. "People need to actually read through this and implement the policy changes in order to make the transgender athletes feel welcomed and included in sports. I don't know if that's happening right now."

Another option is for conferences to embed the recommendations into their policies, something Conference USA and the Mid-American Conference already have done.

After he was shown a presentation on the recommendations in the fall of 2012, MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said he felt the conference needed to act immediately. "We took it seriously and thought this is an issue we need to better understand," Steinbrecher said.

Shortly after the MAC adopted a written policy into its handbook, Steinbrecher said, an athlete at Bowling Green came out to the department as transgender. That athlete has yet to come out publicly.

"I was a Boy Scout, and we believe in being prepared," Steinbrecher said. "We service a lot of students and need to be prepared to give service and serve a lot of students."

But for the individual athletic programs, the tools to raise awareness are right in front of them. And Godsey, who recently placed second at the Williams College Dick Farley Invitational in the men's hammer throw, can testify that if schools do include those athletes, they could be saving their lives.

"Every time I got to throw, I'm not male, I'm not female, I'm not transgender — I'm not anything other than an athlete," Godsey said. "I'm a hammer thrower and I'm going to do that. For me, that was everything I needed and more. It saved my life."

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Follow Zolan V. Kanno-Youngs @Kannoyoungs

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