South Carolina Gamecocks basketball coach Dawn Staley sparked fierce reactions on social media Saturday after she was asked about transgender participation in women’s sports.
Staley and the Gamecocks outlasted N.C. State in the Final Four Friday night and will face Iowa in the national championship Sunday. During a press conference, OutKick’s Dan Zaksheske asked Staley her thoughts on the burning issue in the U.S.
“I’m of the opinion of, if you’re a woman, you should play. If you consider yourself a woman, and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion. You want me to go deeper?” she said.
When asked whether she thought “transgender women should be able to participate in women’s college basketball,” Staley responded, “Yes.”
“That’s the question you want to ask, I’ll give you that. Yes, yes. So, now the barnstormer people are going to flood my timeline and be a distraction to me on one of the biggest days of our game, and I’m OK with that. I really am,” she added.
Staley’s remarks kicked off a debate on social media.
Riley Gaines, an OutKick contributor who hosts the “Gaines for Girls” podcast, shared her thoughts.
“Dawn Staley knows perfectly well that men’s basketball is a totally different sport than women’s basketball,” she said. “That’s obvious by the speed of the game, the size of the ball … the sheer amount of layups compared to dunks when a player gets a fast break.
“I wonder if Dawn Staley also supports 18U playing with 12U, or heavyweights fighting the featherweights or Olympians competing in the Paralympics. It always sucks seeing a well-established woman who has broken barriers for women in sports turn into a sellout in the name of ‘inclusion.’ The women’s category was created to be intentionally exclusive by design. Go Hawks.”
Others gave their opinion on X.
South Carolina state Rep. Adam Morgan wrote, “Our tax dollars shouldn’t fund people and programs pushing these embarrassing ideologies that contradict SC values.”
Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder was also asked the same question. She said her focus was on the national title game against South Carolina, but the question was an “important issue” for “another time.”
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