The Ivy League swimmer was nominated as a Division I athlete for Swimming and Diving, based on the NCAA web site. The award is supposed to honor the “tutorial achievements, athletics excellence, group service and management of graduating feminine school athletes from all three divisions,” based on the web site.
In March, Thomas grew to become the primary transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title after ending first within the ladies’s 500-yard freestyle occasion and recording the quickest time of the NCAA season. With that victory, she grew to become the primary transgender athlete to win a D-I title in any sport.
Thomas, who beforehand swam for Penn’s males’s staff, introduced renewed consideration to the talk on trans ladies’s participation in sports activities and the steadiness between inclusion and honest play throughout a time when states throughout the US are passing legal guidelines aiming to curb the rights of transgender individuals.
She first launched into the general public eye with a shocking efficiency on the Zippy Invitational in Ohio in December, when she set NCAA season-best occasions within the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle races. And he or she gained the 100-yard, 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle races on the Ivy League ladies’s championships in February.
In a Might interview with ABC, the swimmer talked about feeling depressed early in school, earlier than her transition. She started hormone substitute remedy in 2019 and, following NCAA protocols, took a 12 months off swimming earlier than becoming a member of the UPenn ladies’s staff in 2020.
“I knew there could be scrutiny towards me if I competed as a lady. I used to be ready for that,” she mentioned within the interview. “However I additionally do not want anyone’s permission to be myself and to do the game that I like.”
Thomas mentioned “there are loads of components that go right into a race,” however the greatest distinction now could be that she is comfortable, including that trans ladies are “not a risk to ladies’s sports activities.”
The Girl of the 12 months choice panel will decide 30 honorees, from which they may then announce 9 finalists — three from every NCAA division, based on the group’s web site. The NCAA Committee on Ladies’s Athletics will then overview these finalists earlier than deciding on a 2022 NCAA Girl of the 12 months, based on the positioning.
The Girl of the 12 months might be named on the NCAA Conference.
CNN’s Eric Levenson and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
