Triangle’s largest swim league bans transgender youths; 1 team quits in protest
The Tarheel Swimming Association (TSA), Wake County’s largest summer recreational youth swim league, has voted to require transgender swimmers to compete based on the sex they were assigned to at birth and not their gender identity.
The decision, which runs counter to standards established by the national governing body USA Swimming, has drawn criticism from some parents and members.
One team, the JCC J-Rays, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Raleigh-Cary, has withdrawn from the league.
“The new rule is unnecessary and in direct conflict with the JCC’s values of inclusivity,” said the federation’s Deborah Rosenzweig in a March 1 letter to TSA. “We will not participate in that.”
Established in 1971, TSA promotes competitive swimming among private swim clubs in Wake County. Nearly 13,000 athletes ages 18 and under compete across its almost 90 teams.
On Feb. 18, the league conducted an anonymous vote via paper ballot — one vote per team — to clarify rules regarding transgender swimmers. The vote was 43 to 25 to mandate that athletes swim according to the sex they were assigned at birth, with 19 teams not voting, according to the meeting’s recorded minutes.
Benton Satterfield is a parent in the league and voted in favor of the rule. “The league has always separated swimmers into competition categories by age and by gender — meaning sex — to ensure fairness for all participants,” he said. “We simply voted to uphold these rules, as opposed to adopting a new definition of gender, in order to maintain the firm boundaries that protect all swimmers in the league.”
A handful of swimmers impacted
The league estimates a handful of swimmers — “around five to 10 kids” — could be impacted by the change.
One is an 11-year-old transgender boy from Raleigh whose father requested anonymity and declined to identify his son’s team out of concern for his privacy.
“This isn’t abstract. Our child’s mental health — his very life — is at stake,” he told The N&O in an email, citing increasing rates of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth attributed to anti-LGBTQ+ state laws.
For three years, his son has participated in the league in a Raleigh suburb. The first year, at age 8, he competed in the girls’ category, but it was “a disaster,” his father said.
“He wore jammers and a swim shirt, and at nearly every meet, a parent from the opposing team would try to pull him out of the race, assuming he didn’t belong. The anxiety this caused nearly made him quit the sport altogether.”
Everything changed when his son began competing with boys, his father said. “From that moment on, the issues stopped, his confidence soared.”
TSA’s new policy “will force young people to disclose personal, sensitive information just to swim — to out themselves in front of strangers every time they step onto the blocks,” he said. “What kid should have to go through that? What parent would want their child subjected to that?”
Charting unknown territory
A growing number of local sports leagues are reexamining their policies as a debate over transgender athletes in sports rages across the country. In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting transgender athletes from women’s sports, including schools and athletic associations. That followed a January executive order in which he declared it “the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”
Advocates argue that transgender youths should have the same opportunities as their peers, and sports are part of educational opportunities subject to civil rights laws.
Critics argue that physical advantages undermine fairness and safety in competition, though usually those complaints target transgender girls.
The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have agreed for years that gender exists as a spectrum. The AMA advocates for removing sex as a legal designation on the public portion of birth certificates because it “perpetuates a view that sex designation is permanent and fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity.”
TSA president Shawn Gage said the league’s decision to address the issue grew out of a complaint made in 2023 by a representative from one of the teams about the league’s lack of policy.
“It didn’t seem like it was about fairness, but more about ideology,” Gage said. “Team representatives didn’t believe transgender youth should be allowed to swim as the gender they identified with.”
The league’s rules, developed over 50 years ago, were ambiguous. Gage said it quickly became clear that the league needed to create guidance to avoid potential conflicts on the pool deck.
But Gage didn’t want to make an executive decision. “I wanted it to be a league decision,” he said. “I know how complex, polarizing and charged this issue is, how it affects people’s lives. I wanted everyone to have their opinion on the table.”
After conducting surveys, he established a task force to gather input and research policies in other leagues. Then it came to a vote.
Gage said he doesn’t personally agree with the new policy given that TSA is a recreational league, but accepts the result, which he said was a clear majority.
“Irrespective of my personal feelings on the matter, at least it was decisive.”
Clay Lohnes has multiple children in the league. He’s against the new rule and said he’s disappointed with the outcome. “When I think about what recreational summer swim should be, it shouldn’t exclude kids. TSA should be a welcome and opening organization,” he said.
The rule will take effect at the beginning of summer season in June.
In the Spotlight designates ongoing topics of high interest that are driven by The News & Observer’s focus on accountability reporting.
This story was originally published April 11, 2025 at 9:48 AM.
