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Katie Ledecky visits students at Stone Ridge of the Sacred Heart School following the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic games / Credit: Stone Ridge of the Sacred Heart School
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Penn University transgender swimmer Lia Thomas celebrates taking first place in the 500-yard freestyle race with a time of 4.37.32 during the championship final race in heat three during the Women’s Ivy League Swimming & Diving Championships at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Feb. 17, 2022. / Credit: JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
CNA Staff, Apr 9, 2024 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) approved a policy on Monday that stated that biological men cannot compete in women’s sports in NAIA-sponsored college sports.
The NAIA includes 249 schools across the U.S. and Canada, most of which are small, private colleges.
Catholic colleges such as Benedictine College in Kansas, Ave Maria University in Florida, Loyola University in New Orleans, and Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana are members of the league. Texas A&M University in San Antonio is also a member.
The decision, in a 20-0 vote, followed a December survey that found widespread support for the proposed rule among the association’s members. Of the 68 schools that responded to the survey, 58 were in favor of the policy change, according to a CBS report.
“We believed our first responsibility was to create fairness and competition in the NAIA,” NAIA president Jim Carr told CBS Sports. “We also think it aligns with the reasons Title IX was created.”
The new policy requires that students who participate in NAIA-sponsored women’s sports must be biologically female and not under the influence of any masculinizing hormone therapy.
Female athletes who take masculinizing hormones cannot compete in NAIA-sponsored women’s sports but may participate in internal activities such as workouts, practices, and teams, according to the individual college’s discretion, the policy stated.
The NAIA’s policy does not specify sex for NAIA-sponsored male sports, meaning that women taking masculinizing hormones may participate in male sports if they wish.
The policy will go into effect Aug. 1.
The decision follows recent controversy over University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male, winning an NCAA Division I Championship.
Riley Gaines, who competed against Thomas, has been outspoken about her opposition to allowing male athletes to compete in women’s sports.
Gaines and more than a dozen other female athletes filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) in March. The suit alleged that allowing men to compete in women’s competitions denies women protections promised under Title IX and that the decision “subject[ed] women to a loss of their constitutional right to bodily privacy.”
“Title IX was enacted by Congress to increase women’s opportunities; therefore, no policy which authorizes males to take the place of women on women’s college sports teams or in women’s college sports locker rooms is permissible under Title IX,” the complaint read.
Gaines applauded the NAIA’s move in a post on X, noting that the NAIA “becomes the first national college governing body to mandate athletes compete with their sex.”
A recent Vatican document released Monday affirmed the Catholic Church’s teaching on human dignity and addressed a variety of modern issues including transgenderism.
The Vatican declaration noted that “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected” while also condemning any violence or aggression toward individuals based on sexual orientation.
The St. Mary’s mens basketball team wins the West Coast Conference, earning themselves a spot in the NCAA tournament. / Credit: Ryan Barnett
CNA Staff, Mar 21, 2024 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
The St. Mary’s Gaels men’s basketball team made history this season by winning the West Coast Conference regular season and tournament titles on March 12, earning them an automatic bid for the NCAA men’s tournament.
It’s the third time in program history that the team has won both titles in the same season. This is their fifth tournament title. Their previous tournament title wins came in 1997, 2010, 2012, and 2019.
Since the beginning of the calendar year, the Gaels have only lost one game, winning 17 out of 18 games and ended the regular season 26-7 overall. The Gaels going into the tournament as the No. 5 seed in the West Region.
St. Mary’s will now face No. 12 Grand Canyon Antelopes in their first-round game at 10:05 p.m. ET on Friday, March 22.
St. Mary’s College, located in Moraga, California, was founded in 1863 by Father Joseph Sadoc Alemany, OP, who became the first archbishop of San Francisco. In 1868 the college was handed over to the De La Salle Christian Brothers, who still administer the school. The private Catholic liberal arts college has a student body of approximately 4,000 students.
Several other Catholic colleges will be joining St. Mary’s in the “Big Dance,” including Creighton University, Gonzaga University, Marquette University, St. Peter’s University, and the University of Dayton. There are also eight Catholic universities that made it to the NCAA women’s tournament — University of Notre Dame, University of Portland, Gonzaga University, Creighton University, Fairfield University, Sacred Heart University, College of the Holy Cross, and Marquette University.
Denny Bulcao, a St. Mary’s alum and former play-by-play announcer for the Gaels, told CNA that he believes the team has a “good chance of getting to the Sweet 16, possibly farther.”
“This would be our first Sweet 16 since 2010,” he said. “We’ve come pretty close about two or three times since. The last two seasons we lost in the round of 32.”
Bulcao was in attendance at the Gaels West Coast Conference Tournament championship game at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, where the team beat Gonzaga 69-60.
“The energy and atmosphere in Las Vegas is always electric, especially the semifinal and final games because so many Gonzaga fans attend,” Bulcao shared. “This year there were more St. Mary’s fans than I’d ever seen, which was excellent!”
St. Mary’s “won the semifinal game against Santa Clara pretty easily,” he added, “and the final was a hard-fought win over Gonzaga, a team that usually wins the conference and tournament championship.”
“St. Mary’s winning the regular season championship and the tournament championship is a really big deal, and it’s also especially fun to see St. Mary’s alumni and people that I worked with in the athletics department at the games.”
The former announcer highlighted the team’s defense and solid rebounding as its strengths.
“These are things that our head coach, Randy Bennett, has always stressed,” he explained. “We have a few talented shooters in guard Aidan Mahaney and forward Alex Ducas. Our ‘bigs,’ Mitchell Saxen and Mason Forbes, are usually solid. We also usually don’t make stupid mistakes or commit too many turnovers.”
Despite having a rocky start to their season, Bulcao said, “I think the team finally figured out who the true five starters would be and how they could play well together. Our point guard Augustas Marciulionis really stepped up and became the leader of the team, something we didn’t have and desperately needed for the first 10 games.”
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