EXCLUSIVE: Former College of Pennsylvania swimmer Grace Estabrook was one of many many younger ladies who shared a pool and locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas within the 2021-22 season.
From 2019, when she was first advised Thomas could be becoming a member of her staff, till her senior 12 months in 2022, Estabrook alleged she was repeatedly pressured by the college to not oppose Thomas’ inclusion on the staff. Estabrook advised Fox Information Digital that directors tried to persuade her that she would by no means get a job or get into grad college if she spoke out in opposition to it and that any subject she had with the scenario was as a result of she had a “psychological drawback.”
And in between the practices and meets that made her really feel “uncomfortable” and “powerless,” Estabrook says she additionally witnessed the mainstream media have a good time Thomas as a civil rights icon and even be nominated for the NCAA Lady of the 12 months award.
However now, in 2025, Estabrook is one in every of three former UPenn swimmers who’ve filed a lawsuit in opposition to the college, the Ivy League and the NCAA over its dealing with of the scenario because the tides on the problem flip within the courtroom of public opinion.
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Penn’s Lia Thomas waits to swim in a qualifying warmth of the 200-yard freestyle on the Ivy League Girls’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Harvard College, Feb. 18, 2022, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photograph/Mary Schwalm)
Fox Information Digital reached out to UPenn for remark.
Latest information suggests the overwhelming majority of Individuals now oppose trans athletes in ladies’s sports activities. The NCAA just lately modified its coverage to stop them from competing within the ladies’s class after President Donald Trump signed an govt order to deal with the problem final Wednesday.
Nonetheless, many Democrats proceed to battle for trans inclusion in ladies’s and women’ sports activities, and a number of states haven’t complied with Trump’s order.
For Estabrook, who says she lived by way of the expertise of fixing her garments with Thomas within the room and being threatened to not complain about it, the considered elected officers nonetheless combating for a trigger that ensures different ladies expertise what she did is “miserable.”
“That is simply actually miserable,” Estabrook mentioned. “I simply do not know why anybody would need to perpetuate abuse to ladies on giant scales like this. I believe that is why we’re doing what we’re doing. It is as a result of we wish a transparent courtroom determination that may assist establishments be capable to set clear insurance policies to ensure this by no means occurs once more. We would like that enduring authorized precedent. … It is miserable, however that is why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Estabrook’s journey all through the scenario with UPenn has featured frequent “miserable” moments.
Her locker was just a few toes away from Thomas within the locker room, forcing her to again herself right into a nook for the sake of her personal consolation.
“I’d sort of again right into a nook that had low visibility and simply attempt to change as rapidly as I may, and I had different teammates who would go into the lavatory stalls and alter in there,” Estabrook mentioned.
“We have been those that have been pressured into hiding, it was very uncomfortable, and there was simply this fixed worry and disruption of peace of like, ‘OK, I simply haven’t got a protected atmosphere right here anymore,’ not solely bodily however emotionally and psychologically, and it was simply extremely aggravating. I look again on it and I do not understand how I endured that.”
Estabrook added that the scenario put “unbelievable” stress on each her thoughts and physique, and it disrupted her swimming capacity.
The optimistic media protection of Thomas was the insulting cherry on high of the scenario for Estabrook. She mentioned that many instances when she and her teammates traveled to a meet, they not solely needed to cope with the anxiousness of Thomas of their area but in addition a horde of reporters there to cowl the trans athlete in a optimistic gentle.
“I simply keep in mind feeling, ‘That is so alien,’” Estabrook mentioned. “It simply felt prefer it was this complete celebration of Thomas and the entire transgender ideology motion.”
“The entire media I keep in mind seeing or studying on the time was celebrating Thomas as this groundbreaking figurehead of the transgender neighborhood … there was simply such a celebration of it that it was actually pushed in our faces and forcing us to just accept it.”
Estabrook mentioned the toughest second of the expertise got here on the 2022 Ivy League championships. She hoped that Thomas could be dominated ineligible to take part. Nonetheless, the Ivy League allowed Thomas to swim. Thomas finally set pool data in each particular person occasion the athlete competed in and topped the victor’s podium 4 instances.
Thomas went on to place up an identical efficiency on the 2022 NCAA championships. There, Thomas ended up in an notorious tie with former College of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines. That tie finally sparked the seeds for change that gave Estabrook and numerous different ladies hope when the expertise prompted Gaines to talk up and turn into a distinguished advocate for girls’s athletes searching for safety from trans inclusion.
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Former UPenn swimmer Grace Estabrook (Grace Estabrook)
“I used to be simply so grateful for her bravery,” Estabrook mentioned. “I actually do really feel empowered by the work that Riley Gaines has been doing and seeing ladies leap on that very same prepare and begin to converse out. … It empowered me to have the ability to do the identical.”
Extra hope got here this previous 12 months after Trump pledged throughout a Fox Information city corridor interview in October that, if elected, he would ban trans athletes in ladies’s sports activities. Trump received the election, and exit polls urged the problem of trans inclusion performed a distinguished function within the determination of many reasonable voters.
Trump rapidly made good on his promise, signing the “No Males in Girls’s Sports activities” govt order final Wednesday. For Estabrook, seeing this come to fruition has gone a great distance in affirming her political views.
“I used to be very excited to listen to that and much more excited when that grew to become a actuality final week so rapidly after he took workplace,” Estabrook mentioned. “It is simply very encouraging to see that now we have a president who’s simply so supportive of us and can be seeing this in accordance with actuality.”
Estabrook’s lawsuit, which has been filed alongside former teammates Ellen Holmquist and Margot Kaczorowski, seeks to have all of Thomas’ data and accolades as a lady swimmer revoked.
Along with Estabrook’s lawsuit, Trump’s Division of Schooling has launched an investigation into potential Title IX violations that occurred at UPenn and has additionally suggested the NCAA to discard Thomas’ accolades within the ladies’s class.
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