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Lia Thomas will not be selected to be the NCAA Woman of the Year representative for the Ivy League, the conference announces
Lia Thomas’ NCAA Woman of the Year bid has come to an end, with the Ivy League selecting Columbia University fencer Sylvie Binder as its conference representative.
Senior from Armonk, New York, Binder was one of the 577 overall students named for this distinction back in April. She was also one of eight athletes nominated from The Ivy League.
Lia Thomas, a transgender woman and national champion swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania, was not selected.
“We are proud of Sylvie and all she has accomplished,” said Columbia head fencing coach Michael Aufrichtig in a statement. “She is a very deserving recipient of this prestigious award.”
“This is a great honor for our program,” he added.
Binder is the fourth Columbia student-athlete to be named Ivy League Woman of the Year, and the first since 2016. She will now be up for the national award, which will be announced on October 19.
The Ivy League’s decision to not select Thomas as its Woman of the Year has sparked a debate among students and athletes, with some saying that the conference should have chosen the Penn swimmer because she is a transgender woman.
“I am disappointed that the Ivy League did not select Lia Thomas as its Woman of the Year,” said Sarah Rheault, a former Columbia women’s fencing coach, in an email to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
“I think it is important to have trans representation in awards like this,” she added. “Lia is an incredible athlete and person, and I think she would have been a great representative for the conference.”
Others have argued that the Ivy League made the right decision in choosing Binder, saying that she is a more deserving candidate because she won an NCAA championship and had a successful fencing career at Columbia.
“Sylvie Binder is an amazing fencer and athlete,” said one student on Twitter. “Lia Thomas is also amazing but she didn’t win an NCAA championship.”
“The Ivy League made the right call,” another student said. “Lia Thomas is a great athlete but she didn’t achieve as much as Sylvie Binder.”
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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Lea Thomas is a male pretending to be a female and is mentally ill. He does not qualify for any female specific titles or awards. The term “transgender” and references to him as “she” in the article,except where people are quoted, needs to be corrected. People need to stop promoting and putting up with these distortions of gender and promotions of deviant behaviors.