The beginning of 2022 has been chock full of sports moments, both breath-taking and controversial. The LA Rams winning the Super Bowl, the Brooklyn Nets and LA Lakers collapsing, the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team qualifying for the World Cup, and the Men’s and Women’s March Madness Tournaments are just some of the headlines that have released in the past few months.

Lurking under those events, however, is the story of the University of Pennsylvania’s star swimmer Lia Thomas.

Thomas recently made national news as an openly transgender woman competing in the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming and Diving National Championship. Although the majority of people are just now hearing about her situation, Thomas’ story dates back to her freshman year during the 2017-2018 season.

In an exclusive interview with Sports Illustrated in early March, Thomas detailed her journey as she transitioned from a man to a woman, and how that affected both her psyche and swimming career. Though she came out to her brother and parents between her freshman and sophomore years at Penn, Thomas was still uncomfortable revealing herself to her friends and the swim team.

Thomas’ 2018-2019 campaign on the men’s team was one of her best seasons with second-place finishes in the 500-yard, 1,000-yard, and 1,650-yard freestyles. Despite the success, the swimming star fell into a deep depression.

“I got to the point where I couldn’t go to school. I was missing classes. My sleep schedule was messed up. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed. I knew at that moment I needed to do something to address this,” Thomas told SI.com.

Beginning in May 2019, Thomas began taking hormone replace therapy (HRT) and immediately began to feel better. Later that year at the start of her junior season, she came out to her teammates and coaches. The head coach of both the men’s and women’s teams, Mike Schnur, and his coaching staff were open and supportive of Thomas’ decision and allowed her to switch teams.

The NCAA permits transgender athletes to switch teams, but according to the Sports Illustrated article, they have to complete at least a year of HRT treatments before entering competition. Thomas continued to train all throughout her junior and senior years (the pandemic allowed seniors to retain a year of eligibility), and although she noticed a substantial drop in her performance, Thomas was still happy to be back in the water.

Then came the 2021-2022 swim season. Though not as fast as she used to be, Thomas led the NCAA in the 200 and 500-yard freestyles, breaking her own records a couple times over. This forced some of the Penn parents to draft a letter to the university, in which they complained that the “integrity of women’s sports” was “at stake.”

Thomas’ own teammates held similar views to the parents, to the point where a few of them asked Ivy League officials to bar her from competing in the conference tournaments. Their motion, however, was unsuccessful, and Thomas ended up competing in and qualifying for the NCAA Championships.

Much of the controversy surrounding Thomas has been misguided. There is a general narrative for transgender women in sports that, due to physical advantages, they will dominate the field and break all the records set by biological women.

In Thomas’ case, while there may have been some physical advantages that couldn’t be fixed by the HRT, her performance in the NCAA Championships wasn’t the world-shattering event people like her teammates thought it would be. Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle, but her time was nine seconds slower than Olympian Katie Ledecky’s, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the 200-yard freestyle, she tied for fifth.

Famous podcaster Joe Rogan called Thomas’ situation “an assault on women’s sports,” and that it wasn’t fair that “someone who was number 4-6-2 as a man, 462 in the nation, is number one as a woman a year later.” However, as previously mentioned, Thomas had placed second in three events in the Ivy League Championships before transitioning, so the notion that she was a below average swimmer as a man is false.

Former swimmer and Hampton sophomore Lauren Prescott gave her opinion on the situation as well. When asked how she would feel if one of her teammates was transgender, she stated that she “would be fine with it as long as they treat me right.” However, she was apprehensive about facing a transgender woman in a race as she believes it wouldn’t be fair.

The nation may have to face this conversation again as Lia Thomas hopes to compete in the 2024 Olympic Games.