Olympic champion Nancy Hogshead honored for advocacy as she pushes WNBA on female eligibility rules

US Olympic swimming legend Nancy Hogshead won the USOPA’s Dorothy Franey Langkop Ambassador award, being selected by her peers, after fighting to protect women’s sports.

Three-time Olympic swimming champion Nancy Hogshead was honored Thursday for her work advocating for female athletes as she continues to push the WNBA to formally adopt female-only eligibility rules.

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“It was just really nice to be recognized by my peers,” Hogshead told OutKick in an exclusive interview Friday.

The civil rights attorney and founder of Champion Women has spent years working on Title IX compliance, protections against sexual abuse in sports and the preservation of female athletic categories.

Her current efforts include a petition calling on the WNBA to explicitly define “woman” as female for eligibility purposes. The petition, launched in August, had accumulated more than 21,000 verified signatures as of Friday.

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Hogshead wore an XX-XY Athletics shirt to Thursday’s ceremony and said she received an overwhelmingly positive response from other attendees.

“People came up to me all night long and were saying, ‘Thank you so much for what you’re wearing. Thanks so much for what you’re doing. I have daughters. I have granddaughters,’” she said.

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“My work has been to defend and further those wins, to make sure that women’s sports remain a space for females, to make sure that girls’ and women’s programs are funded the way that the law requires, not the way that’s necessarily convenient, and to hold our movement accountable for abusive coaches and for the safety of our athletes.”

The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement states that only women are eligible to play in the league but does not further define the term or establish a specific transgender eligibility policy.

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No transgender woman has played in the WNBA.

Hogshead nevertheless argued the league should establish its rules before a dispute arises.

“Boys and men have invaded virtually every aspect of girls’ sports,” she told OutKick. “It’s inevitable that, of course, a male will come in. And why not? You’re the WNBA. Come up with eligibility criteria that is supportive of a female-only category.”

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“We didn’t inherit the Olympic dream to keep it for ourselves,” Hogshead said at the conclusion of her speech. “We inherited it to pass it on.”

(*) Full article: https://www.foxnews.com/outkick-sports/olympic-champion-nancy-hogshead-honored-advocacy-pushes-wnba-female-eligibility-rules