The University of Wyoming will have no problem complying with a new collegiate-level sports ban on the participation of biological males in women's sports, the school said Thursday.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) on Thursday updated its student-athlete policy for collegiate sports, to bar athletes born as males and identifying as women from participating in women's sports.
Transgender athletes still can train on women’s teams, but they can’t partake in formal competition without risking their schools’ funding, under the new policy.
The change follows President Donald Trump signing an executive order Wednesday, threatening to strip federal funding from schools that don’t keep sex-specific sports competitions separate.
“The university will have no problem complying,” said University of Wyoming spokesman Chad Baldwin in a Thursday interview with Cowboy State Daily.
He declined to comment further.
Controversy surrounded UW and other schools in the Mountain West Conference this past fall, as conference member San Jose State University (SJSU) rostered a transgender volleyball player on its women’s team.
The player, Blaire Fleming, had played for SJSU in multiple seasons before Fleming’s transgender status became public knowledge last year. But the revelation prompted a domino effect of some conference schools, including UW, forfeiting matches rather than playing SJSU.
Three UW volleyball players banded with women from other schools in suing the Mountain West Conference, claiming its policies were discriminatory and its rule requiring them to take a loss for forfeiting was not proper.
That case was still pending in federal court as of Thursday.
Churning In Cheyenne
Proposed laws to ban male participation in female-designated sports are still pending in Congress. Three more similar bills are pending in the Wyoming Legislature, as well. The state bills have a different goal from the federal bills: Letting people who can articulate a harm from transgender sports participation sue schools.
State Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, who was the lead sponsor on a limited trans sports ban Wyoming enacted in 2023, cheered Trump’s executive order Wednesday. She said Wyoming should still pass its own legislation to separate collegiate-level sports, since it is uncertain what any future presidential administration will do.
For the past three years, the NCAA deferred to sports’ national governing bodies regarding transgender athletes’ eligibility.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
