Oklahoma softball coach defends players who attended Riley Gaines event
Oklahoma Sooners softball coach Patty Gasso defended her players after some attended an event hosted by women's sports advocate Riley Gaines last week.
Gaines has championed fairness in women's sports since Lia Thomas tied with her at the NCAA Championships in 2022. Thomas also became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA women's swimming championship. Since then, current and former female athletes have come together to keep biological males out of women's sports.
Sooners pitchers Audrey Lowry and Sam Landry were in attendance for Gaines' speech at the Turning Point USA event, according to OU Daily. The women were far from the only Sooners athletes at the event.
Gasso told the OU Daily that she did not hear Gaines' praise of her and her team and would not comment.
"But the fact that our team is there, it's their right whether they want to go or not," she said. "I support them and whatever they choose."
Peyton McQuillan, a Sooners track athlete, defended Gaines' message in an interview with the student newspaper.
"She just wants to make sure everyone has a fair opportunity, and it's clear that she cares," she said. "It's very easy to relate to it."
Haley Bergstrom, a rower for Oklahoma, backed keeping biological males out of girls' and women's sports. She pointed to the biological differences between men and women. "Biologically, men just have an advantage over women, no matter what," she said. "So we would just like to keep that simple, but there is no problem against trans people in general."
Gaines did receive pro-trans protests at the school.
"I'm really disturbed by the sort of panic that I've seen developing over the last couple of years — the suggestion that trans people are dangerous, that they're harming society, that letting trans people participate in everyday life is somehow a risky thing that should be avoided," librarian Cynthia Teague told The Oklahoman.
"In particular with sports, there are so few trans athletes at any kind of elite level, and participating in sports is something that I think trans teens, especially, ought to be able to do."
The NCAA altered its policy to keep biological males out of women's sports. However, women's sports advocates have said the organization has left loopholes in its policy to keep that door open.
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