“@TheBabylonBee cheekily sums it up. “Caitlin Clark Canonized As Saint After Performing Miracle Of Making Women’s Basketball Watchable.” 

What a month or so it’s been for basketball star Caitlin Clark as she starts her WNBA career with the Indiana Something or Others. She’s had moments of triumph (30 points in a recent game). And a couple of duds. She’s also been roughed up physically with veteran players flagrantly fouling her, going out of their way to intimidate her physically. Initally, no foul was called on Chennedy Carter.

The League response to all this has been tepid refusal to rein in the veterans. NBA commissioner Adam Silver glibly called it a “welcome to the league” moment. (Clark says no hard feelings.) Most of which has played out in front of sellout crowds in a league that has papered more houses than a dry waller. “Confused WNBA Player Asks What This Huge Crowd Of People Is Doing At Game

And now women’s basketball’s young pole star has been left off the U.S. Olympic basketball team for Paris this July. You’d almost think the stars of the WNBA— a secondary sporting league at best propped up by the NBA— resent her being in their midst. That they fear she’ll break up the cozy LGBTQ/ BLM clubhouse they have going on. But we predicted as much in an April column entitled Now Comes The Complicated Part when her college career ended.

“The most interesting reaction may come from the women already in the WNBA. The intrusion of a white, conservative, straight Catholic woman in their midst won’t sit well in a league where women of that description have been made to feel unwelcome in many dressing rooms. She’ll need a tough hide to survive the resentment of other players who see themselves as the stars and Clark as a product of white privilege.”

That resentment has been naked and ugly from many who see themselves eclipsed by Clark’s obvious drawing power— and by their own inability to break the glass ceiling. “As we have written on multiple occasions, women’s sports has been in search of a marketable messiah to change it  from an ESPN liberal hype to mainstream. For too many in the audience— including women— the image of these sports has become too political. As the gender revolt took hold, fans were turned off by the strident lesbian soccer player Megan Rapinoe and WNBA star Britney Griner who turned every game into a referendum on the latest #BLM talking points. 

“There was a resistance to their defiance and the craven submission of corporate voices infatuated by DEI praise. To some, players on opposing hockey terms marrying each other was jarring. But Clark seems to be breaking the mold. The advertising world will beat a path to her door despite the second consecutive defeat in the Women’s Final. She’ll be honoured with woman athlete of the year and more.”

And, apparently, she’ll be resented for it. Days ago stories claimed that a Clark fan harassed Chicago star Carter and other players when they got off their team bus and outside their hotel. Wonder why? Oh yeah, Carter levelled Clark with the cheap shot.) That stirred the pot until it was revealed that— holy Jussi Smollett— it was all made up. (Must be something about Chicago.)

If you needed more evidence that Clark is living rent-free in the brains of these prima donnas, the rebellion by the veterans of the Olympic basketball team tells you all you need to know. It’s a scene reminiscent of the played-out Rapinoe getting a spot on the U.S. National Women’s team in place of a younger player to placate the team’s “equilibrium”.

WNBA star Cheryl Reeve explained the Clark snub. “I’ve never been in the trenches with her. Not even at a USA Basketball camp. Asking a coach to integrate someone she has no history with, at tournament with highest stakes, is a lot. A lot a lot.” Similar noises came from other resentful players. Which is so much twaddle.

First, Team USA hasn’t lost an Olympic match since 1996. So the twelfth spot is hardly a game changer. Second, you could hire Joyce Behar to coach this team, and they wouldn’t lose. Third, Clark has played on USA FIBA teams winning gold in 2017, 2019, and 2021 with MVP honours . She won Nike Elite national championship during high school. Named Iowa Gatorade player of the year twice. She’s got the resumé.

But she doesn’t tick the right cultural boxes for the WNBA players and their political allies. That’s what happens when players coddled by ESPN and the Title IX zealots call the shots. Noted humanist and hooper Barack Obama made lots of noise about women athletes getting equal pay as their due, but he’s gone mute when black stars acted nasty toward a white athlete.

There’s no question that, having made tin gods of the WNBA players for political purposes, few in authority want to check that privilege. “Women’s basketball decision-makers are not dumb,” writes black journalist Jason Whitlock on X to explain the silence. “They’ve been bullied by the BLM-LGBTQIA+Silent P Alphabet Mafia bigots.” Adds Clay Travis, “Women’s basketball hates its fans and doesn’t want to grow their game. That’s the only conclusion you can draw from their treatment of Clark. She would quadruple their (Olympic) viewership by herself. No brainer.”

To say nothing of the USA jerseys she’d sell. But the political water carriers don’t care. They would return the WNBA to what it’s always been, a subsidized pet project for the progressives in media and government. Perhaps the most on-the-nose indicator about the WNBA’s image is that Toronto is getting a team in the league. It’s a non-binary marriage made in progressive heaven.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

A Court of Arbitration for Sport panel ruled that William ‘Lia’ Thomas, a male swimmer who ‘identifies’ as female, lacked standing to challenge World Aquatics rules on males competing against women.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland has rejected gender-confused former University of Pennsylvania swimmer William “Lia” Thomas’s bid to change World Aquatic rules to allow himself and other female-“identifying” male athletes from competing against actual women in major athletic competitions such as the upcoming Summer Olympics.

Thomas, who “transitioned” to identifying as a female yet retains male genitalia and reportedly remained heterosexual (despite self-identifying as lesbian), has drawn headlines since 2022 for generating unease among his actual female teammates and opponents, partly due to having to share lockers and partly due to his domination of women’s swimming competitions since switching from the men’s team.

In January, word came out that Thomas and Canadian law firm Tyr were seeking to have the CAS overturn a rule imposed by the swim governing body forbidding any male who has experienced “any part of male puberty” from competing as a female, which in 2022 closed a loophole allowing “transgender” athletes to qualify by reducing their testosterone levels.

Thomas has said that “it’s been a goal of mine to swim at Olympic trials for a very long time.” World Aquatics executive director Brent Nowicki previously said only that the “World Aquatics policy on gender inclusion, adopted by World Aquatics in June of 2022, was rigorously developed on the basis of advice from leading medical and legal experts, and in careful consultation with athletes.”

On Wednesday, the Associated Press reports, a three-judge CAS panel released its ruling dismissing Thomas’s request, on the grounds that he lacked standing to make it because he had not been a member of the court’s member federation USA Swimming when it was first brought nor had he competed in female events “for the purpose of qualification or selection.”

World Aquatics hailed the ruling as “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport.”

Thomas slammed the decision as “deeply disappointing,” criticizing bans on so-called “trans women” (gender-confused men) competing against actual women as an affront to gender-confused “identities.”

Several nationally-prominent female swimmers who have become outspoken advocates for maintaining sex distinctions in women’s athletics also welcomed the ruling:

Allowing gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted by leftists as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.

There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be negated by hormone suppression.

In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered” by hormone use; therefore, “the advantage to [gender-confused men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”

Critics also warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives potential male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.

Thomas has become perhaps the most prominent example of the phenomenon. Former teammates have reportedly been intimidated into silence about their objections to Thomas by officials at Ivy League schools and by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), though some have spoken out anonymously, describing Thomas as thoroughly dismissive of the feelings or interests of his teammates.

Some of his opponents have been more willing or able to go public, such as Gaines, who has openly discussed the experience of tying with Thomas for fifth place at the NCAA championships’ 200 freestyle competition in 2022. Despite both swimmers performing the same, Thomas was given a trophy to pose with for photos and Gaines had to settle for one mailed to her.

“It was at this point I realized that they’re trying to save face here,” she told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022. “I actually talked with a swimmer who is a survivor of sexual trauma, and being in the locker room with a male and seeing male parts has completely retriggered everything.”