Paula Scanlan, Lia Thomas’s former UPenn swim teammate, mentioned she had ‘NIGHMARES for weeks’ after sharing the locker room with the transgender athlete
A former teammate of Lia Thomas on the University of Pennsylvania has mentioned she had “nightmares” after sharing a locker room with the transgender swimmer.
Paula Scanlan, who was reportedly a sufferer of sexual assault in a rest room as a 16-year-old, mentioned Thomas’s presence introduced up earlier traumas from her adolescence.
“In general, bathrooms were a place where I felt very uncomfortable,” she instructed the New York Post. “I would just relive the situation I went through when I was 16.
“I’d be at my locker and then all of a sudden hear a male voice, and I’d just jump.” “I used to be like, ‘Oh my god, someone got in here.’”
“It’s extremely fragile,” Scanlan continued. “I’ve had nightmares for weeks that men were there while we were getting dressed.”
Lia Thomas broke data as a girls’s swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania
But her presence made some teammates, together with Paula Scanlan, uncomfortable
Thomas, who beforehand competed on the UPenn males’s swim group, was involved about equity after transferring to the ladies’s group in 2021.
She set seven UPenn girls’s group data (5 individually) and gained three particular person occasions on the Ivy League Championships in February 2022.
Thomas defended her place in girls’s swimming in an interview with Sports illustrated final yr.
“I’m a woman, just like everyone else on the team,” she mentioned.
‘I’ve all the time seen myself as a swimmer. It’s what I’ve been doing for therefore lengthy; I really like that.’
However, her critics even included these within the transgender neighborhood, with Olympic champion Caitlyn Jenner disagreeing with Thomas being allowed to compete as a girl.
“I’ve been consistent in how I’ve approached transgender athletes and it depends on the sport. Every sport is different,” she instructed Fox News earlier this yr.
“Of course we saw with Lia Thomas that she had gone through male puberty, a larger cardiovascular system, it just wasn’t fair.”
Scanlan, whose school swimming profession is over, testified in protection of ladies’s sport
Scanlan (who’s a UPenn graduate) testified earlier than the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government final week, talking on the problem of transgender athletes in sports activities.
Although Thomas’ school profession is over, Scanlan nonetheless believes the problem is vital.
“If there had been a guy on my team in high school, I would have dropped out and literally have nothing,” she instructed The Post. ‘I would never have ended up at a good university. My whole life would have been derailed.
“If this discourages even one girl from playing sports, we’ve failed,” added Scanlan. ‘It’s so vital to offer ladies the identical alternatives.’
