WNBA coach Cheryl Reeve, who wore a shirt with the message “Trans Kids Belong” as an apparent troll of Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham, previously called for a “Rooney Rule” in her organization to protect women’s coaching jobs from being taken over by men.
In an interview on the podcast Good Game with Sarah Spain, Reeve openly expressed fear about men taking women’s jobs in coaching positions.
“We had more women coaching college basketball before Title IX. After Title IX, when it became more important and more investment – that was code for, ‘well, that’s a man’s job.’ You got paid more; it became a man’s job,” she said.
“To this day, we still don’t have more women coaching in college basketball than we do men. Apply that same thing to two years ago, we lost seven WNBA coaches, they got fired, because all of the sudden, this money, the WNBA blew up,” she continued. “Valuations of franchises. In comes the NBA folks again, who had cast us aside for many years. Now, they want their franchises back. That sorta thing. It’s more important again. And then we have more men.”
Speaking with ESPN recently, Cunningham expressed support for keeping biological men out of women’s sports.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham told ESPN.
“I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” she added.
Her comments sparked severe backlash from the online left, prompting her to double down in a press conference.
“I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense, and I think I will always believe in that. “I think it’s really important to protect children.” “
“I don’t dislike anyone,” she added. ” I’m there to love, but I’m also there to love biological women.”
In response, Reeve said that “every kid has a right to sports regardless of (being) gender diverse, transgender.”
“… Now, what gets nuanced is when you’re beyond puberty, when you’re in Olympic sport, when … we have scholarships at stake and that sort of thing,” she added. “That’s where I say that common-sense people get together, and you find common ground to find a way to be inclusive. The answer isn’t no. It is not the case that we have ‘biological men in girls’ locker rooms,’ the way it’s being phrased, the innuendo there that somehow transgender women are predators. … There’s a lot of narrative that is problematic that we need to address. That is simply not what’s happening.”