A trans-identified male college athlete has been quietly moved onto the women’s fencing team at Wagner College, and may now be collecting a women’s scholarship. Redmond Sullivan, who had previously competed on both the male and female teams simultaneously, seized gold in the women’s category at the Connecticut Division Junior Olympic Qualifier last week.
Sullivan first began competing in female sports while attending Daniel Hand High School in Connecticut, where he won a state championship in girls track and field for shot put during a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) competition.
According to the results of the CIAC meet, Daniel Hand High School would have placed fourth had it not been for Sullivan’s dominating performance in the girls category, during which he threw the shot put nearly four feet farther than his second-place female competitor. Sullivan was the only student athlete to make it in the CIAC championship Top 10 during their first year of competition.
That same year, while competing in girls shot put and discus, he earned first, second, or third place in 14 separate competitions. Bizarrely, Sullivan was allowed to compete in girls track and field while he was also competing in boys fencing at the same school.
After graduation, Sullivan began attending Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. He joined the men’s fencing team, and participated in the New England Division USFA Pomme De Terre on June 17, 2023, during which he placed 29th out of 58 male competitors. As late as October of 2023, Sullivan was still classified as a fencer on the men’s team. But just one month later, he began competing in women’s fencing.
His transfer to the women’s team was unannounced by Wagner, and Sullivan enjoyed a significant improvement in his performance after beginning to compete against females.
At the Northeast Fencing Conference Varsity Meet in November, Sullivan won 3-0 in all of his matchups. Then, at the December 1 Seahawks Invitational, a fencing competition for Wagner College, Sullivan won two out of three fencing sets in the female category.
On Sunday, Sullivan won gold at the Connecticut Division Junior Olympic Qualifier in the Junior Women’s Foil.
Wagner College has not responded to a request for comment. On their website, the school claims to be “committed to stopping sex discrimination” in compliance with U.S. Title IX, a 1972 law that is supposed to guarantee equal opportunities for female students, including athletes.
In 2021, the Biden administration extended Title IX protections to transgender individuals, preventing the ability for colleges to keep males out of female sports. Several Republican states have sued over the federal changes to Title IX, arguing that it is unsafe and unfair for female athletes. President Elect Donald Trump has claimed he will, once in office, make changes to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
Wagner College also touts its “inclusive and supportive environments for LGBTQIA+ students.” They have published a list of “gender inclusive bathrooms” across the campus, and also instruct students to “honor the personal pronouns [of others] even when the person is not present” and to “not disclose a person’s gender identity unless you have obtained their consent.”
Marshi Smith, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sport (ICONS), condemned Wagner College for allowing Sullivan to compete against females, and added that National Collegiate Athletics Association policies have emboldened colleges to protect trans-identified male athletes.
“The NCAA is repeatedly rewarding the replacement of women in order to champion men in women’s sports. This ongoing pattern of discrimination is why we are supporting a female athlete’s lawsuit against the organization. Legal action is necessary to hold the NCAA accountable for its repeated failures to uphold fairness and equality in women’s sports, with fencing being a particularly troubling example,” she says.
In March, ICONS filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on behalf of over one dozen female athletes for letting transgender athletes compete in women’s sports and use female locker rooms.
At the center of the class-action suit is Lia Thomas, a trans-identified male who dominated the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas fared poorly while participating in male sport, but began racking up medals after transferring to the women’s team.
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