The 2026 NCAA women’s tournament, combining a mix of expected winners and up-and-coming programs, has provided an exciting month of basketball for millions of fans across the nation. In the last few years, thanks to the athleticism and on and off the court charisma of powerhouse stars in both pro and college teams, women’s basketball is now front and center and more thrilling than ever. 

Witness, for instance, the Vanderbilt Commodores’ Mikayla Blakes, the nation’s leading scorer, perform a near triple-double with 25 points against Illinois. Or the outstanding performance of UCLA’s Lauren Betts and Gabriela Jaquez as the Bruins stomped the Gamecocks of South Carolina to win the school’s first NCAA national title. The list that highlighted the Madness this March could go on, but the point is clear: Women’s basketball is a treat to watch.

But how well do these competitive schools, whose ability on the court has been rewarded with bids to the Big Dance, do when it comes to helping their students reach financial security? 

To find out, I have applied a methodology detailed in my recent analysis of the men’s tournament. 

The formula used ranks each college on an Economic Mobility Index (EMI), based on how many years graduates need to pay down the total net cost of their degree; how much more than a high school graduate the college’s bachelor’s degree recipients earn after 10 years; and how broadly the school’s effort applies to its low- and moderate-income students, using the percentage of students eligible for Pell grants as a proxy for low family income. 

Consequently, the EMI ranks 1,320 bachelor’s degree-granting institutions by how well each provides economic mobility for its most disadvantaged students. 

One way to grasp the value of the EMI is by comparing the two colleges that made it to the NCAA Tournament’s championship game. Although both schools are mighty on the court, there are wide differences in the statistics they provide for the tournament and for the index. To get to the championship game, the No. 1 seeded Bruins of University of California-Los Angeles had to overcome 23 turnovers and survive a late surge from the Texas Longhorns to manage a 51-44 win against the only team that beat them this season. Meanwhile, the South Carolina Gamecocks made it by breezing past the Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University. 

More significantly, in the Social Mobility Tournament, the University of South Carolina got only as far as the second round because the school’s total price tag is $43,300, but the earning premium for its graduates — compared with someone with only a high school diploma — averages just $28,600. Therefore, it takes 1.5 years on average to pay down the cost of its degrees. Compare this to UCLA, where a degree costs $34,500 and the earning premium is a whopping $45,000, making it possible to pay back the amount spent on a degree in less than one year. 

What’s more, South Carolina’s student body is made up of only 19.9% Pell-eligible students, compared with 31.9% for UCLA. The result: South Carolina ranks 501 in our index with a 17.6 EMI score, whereas UCLA, which went on to play in the championship game in both our bracket and the NCAA tournament, is ranked 115 with an EMI score of 30.4. 

Given the challenges colleges face today, as more and more people question whether they are worth the cost, the EMI calculations provide an important service. Not only do they help to identify which colleges are associated with the highest return on the educational investment made, but also which ones are doing so for the greatest numbers of underresourced students.

From a wider perspective, the 2026 NCAA teams in the Sweet Sixteen were a formidable lot. The No. 1 seeded University of Connecticut Huskies crushed the Syracuse Orange. The No. 1 seeded Gamecocks of South Carolina did the same to the embattled Trojans of USC. Meanwhile, the Louisiana State University Tigers, on their way to a fourth consecutive Sweet Sixteen appearance, battered the unfortunate Lady Raiders of Texas Tech by a punishing 101-47 score. 

Still, not every game leading to the Sweet Sixteen was lopsided. In one of the most thrilling games of the tournament, the Gophers of Minnesota sneaked by the Ole Miss Rebels by a mere 2 points, and it took two overtime periods for the University of Virginia Cavaliers to best the Hawkeyes of Iowa. 

But no matter which team you rooted for, this is exhilarating basketball right through to the Final Four matches between four No. 1 seeds. Still, as I have noted in the past, what should be no less thrilling is observing how well some of the tournament’s schools succeed in putting their students on the path to economic security.

After all, with college costs a major concern for most parents and students, an examination of the total net price to earn a degree at the participating schools is worth undertaking. For example, on average, an undergraduate degree at the Sweet Sixteen colleges in our Social Mobility Tournament costs approximately $40,900 but provides an earning premium beyond a high school graduate of about $32,200. It is data like these that make possible an earning premium that permits a graduate to pay down the cost of their degree in less than two years. This type of information is important for anyone considering a college education.

Also important is knowing how wide the door is open at any institution. For instance, when it comes to access, the colleges in our Sweet Sixteen differ greatly from their counterparts in the NCAA tournament. The Social Mobility Sweet Sixteen enroll nearly twice as many Pell-eligible students — 138,000 out of 461,600 — than those in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen, where only 74,200 out of 342,000 students qualify for Pell grants. 

While the winners in the NCAA tournament receive much praise, and their schools enjoy both bragging rights and potential increases in applications and donations, there is much reason to also celebrate this year’s Social Mobility Tournament champion, the University of California at San Diego. 

Not only did the Tritons win the Big West Tournament, but they also enjoy a 34.8 EMI score, putting them in 68th place out of 1,320 schools in the index. This means their approximately 11,100 lower-income graduates can pay back the cost of their education in less than one year and go on to earn on average more than $43,600 than a high school graduate in California.

I look forward to seeing powerhouse teams like the NCAA’s Final Four win games, but more than that, I am pleased that policymakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress and in state legislatures are now paying close attention to which schools are putting their students on the road to financial well-being. These are the schools most worthy of our praise and most deserving of the admiration that comes with success, whatever their fate on the court.

March Madness, that anxious, exciting and promising time for players and fans alike, is upon us. Like millions of others, I have been really enjoying these three weeks of competitive games full of surprises and awesome athletic feats. However, beyond the thrills, this moment highlights the stakes not just for the players, but also for colleges and their broader missions. While loyal students and alumni have experienced moments of joy and grief as they followed their schools’ progress, and administrators hoped for wins that will increase applications and donations, even more important for the nation is how these colleges enable upward economic mobility for their graduates. 

American higher education is experiencing one of the most challenging times in its history. Since 2017, when ����Ӱ�� began publishing a Social Mobility Tournament bracket composed of colleges participating in the Big Dance, the percentage of surveyed adults who believe a four-year degree is not worth the cost has risen from 40% to 63%. 

This loss in public support that colleges previously took for granted has made them targets of both left- and right-leaning critics and policymakers. They are demanding that schools take greater responsibility not only for educating students, but for ensuring that the education they receive leads to employment with meaningful earnings.

With this in mind, our bracket aims to shift the focus to the broader mission of higher education: advancing economic mobility. Beginning in 2017, each year we have taken the schools competing in the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament and plotted them in a parallel bracket, where winners and losers are determined not by their prowess on the court, but by how well the colleges put students on the road to financial security.

To do this, we employ Third Way’s Economic Mobility Index (EMI), created by the former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard, Michael Itzkowitz. This index uses information from the department and the Census Bureau to rank 1,320 bachelor’s degree-granting institutions by how well each provides economic mobility for its students. Taking into account the key concerns of students, parents and policymakers, the EMI first assesses the return on investment for lower- and moderate-income students at each college by calculating the out-of-pocket costs required to earn a four-year degree. 

The index then considers the added financial benefits students gain from attending one of these schools. This earnings premium is the additional income graduates accrue compared to someone with only a high school diploma. In effect, the lower the out-of-pocket costs and the higher the earnings premium, the quicker a student will receive a return on the investment needed to obtain the degree. Lastly, the index rewards schools for the proportion of financially challenged students they enroll and for the return on investment they deliver. (Click on each school in the bracket to see its Social Mobility score, total net price, earning premium and how long it takes graduates to pay off the cost of their education.)

To make this clearer, consider the following: While the Wolverines of the and the Wildcats of the faced each other in this year’s NCAA Final Four, neither school went further than the second round in our Social Mobility Tournament bracket. After all, Michigan had a lowly score of 16.9 in the EMI and Arizona only a slightly higher ranking at 25.1. Digging into the data, this disparity shows the importance of each data point that composes the index’s score.

As a EMI breakdown shows, the University of Arizona, a public institution, has a total price of $41,000 but an earning premium of a mere $23,700 for graduates when compared with someone holding only a high school diploma. This translates into a price-to-earnings premium that allows Wildcat graduates to pay off the cost of their education in 1.7 years. But the University of Michigan enjoys a net price of just $15,850 and a handsome earning premium of $48,800, making it possible for grads to pay down the total cost of their degree in only 0.3 years.

While winning games in a tournament made up of proven champions is a difficult achievement for any college, helping students move up the economic ladder is no less a challenge, especially for schools serving a high percentage of low- and moderate-income undergraduates. That’s why we believe colleges should be honored not only for victories on the court, but also for earning a high ranking in the Economic Mobility Index.

So, which teams deserve the highest praise this year? Of the 68 teams in the Social Mobility Tournament bracket, only 16 are private universities, and just six of them advanced past the first round. Moreover, by the end of Round 2, just a single private school, , managed not only to reach our Sweet 16, but, as it did last year, to go on to win our Social Mobility Tournament.

The main surprise here is that any private school could go that far, considering that the EMI is based primarily on affordability — how quickly the cost of a degree can be repaid — and the percentage of students enrolled who require financial aid. Therefore, beyond producing winning teams that can be invited to the NCAA tournament, private colleges must be inexpensive and serve a wide range of students to move up the Social Mobility Bracket. 

Given these requirements, how did BYU win it all? Though the Cougars were beaten by the in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, they earned their 33rd straight bid by having a 23-12 season in which they defeated eight teams ranked among the Associated Press’ Top 25. In addition, have a price-to-earnings premium that permits them to pay down the cost of their degree in less than a year, a feat made possible through low tuition and generous financial aid. Meanwhile, the school serves a student body in which nearly 37% of students receive Pell Grants.

How about the other three teams that make up our Final Four? How did they get there? The , and all have high EMI scores of at least 35%, giving them rankings that place them in the top 104 out of 1,320 colleges in the index. This translates into graduates who on average can pay down the cost of their degrees in fewer than four years, and all while having student bodies made up of at least 36% Pell Grant recipients. These, then, are excellent examples of schools working to increase the social mobility of their students.

In this highly polarized time, it is good to know that a bipartisan consensus exists around policies that require colleges to do more to help students gain employment with reasonable earnings. This state of affairs supports our nearly decade-long call to praise colleges like those in our Final Four. After all, few athletes will ever make the pros, but all students need to make a decent, family-sustaining living.

Clarification: The Economic Mobility Index is the property of Third Way.

The White House on Wednesday said it had “” $175 million in federal funding from the University of Pennsylvania after a transgender swimmer, Lia Thomas, in 2022 won several medals in Division I women’s swimming.

Also on Wednesday, the U.S. Education Department said its Office of Civil Rights had that the state of Maine violated federal Title IX anti-discrimination law after Katie Spencer, a young transgender pole vaulter, won a state championship last month. The department said Maine could jeopardize federal funding if it doesn’t “swiftly and completely” reverse its policies.��

Protests followed after Thomas and Spencer��began competing in women’s competitions and fared better than they previously had in men’s��events.

The moves follow through on a promise Trump made 16 days after his second inauguration, when he issued an threatening to rescind federal funding from schools that let transgender women play on women’s sports teams

As with other aspects of Trump’s presidency, it leaves institutions in the unenviable position of caving before an increasingly aggressive White House — or fighting back in federal court, where many of the legal issues remain unsettled and, in a few cases, have actually favored trans students.

The order’s practical effect: confusion, especially in the roughly half of states that allow transgender athletes to compete in sports consistent with their gender identity. These state laws and policies now face a powerful conservative backlash that sees trans athletes’ participation at every level as patently unfair and itself, and seeks to remove them — and their accomplishments — altogether.

Leading the charge: the education department’s Office of Civil Rights, which has opened more than half a dozen investigations in two months. Along with probes of anti-semitism, trans athletic policies now dominate OCR’s investigative portfolio, despite to the office by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Jackie Gharapour Wernz, a former OCR attorney who now consults for educational institutions, called the new administration’s approach “unprecedented — but it’s not even just unprecedented. It’s so much further beyond precedent that it just feels like we’re in a completely different world at this point.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.

‘Fairness and safety’

Penn, Trump’s alma mater, late Wednesday said it had not received any notification or details of the action. But a spokesperson told the that the university “has always followed NCAA and Ivy League policies regarding student participation on athletic teams.”

A spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

As with Maine, several states are finding that adhering to their own laws can invite a federal investigation — and an abrupt cut in aid — from an administration that is comfortable calling out educators who they see as failing to protect young women in sports. 

The complexity in many ways mirrors public perception. Recent , for instance, find that while 56% of Americans support policies that protect trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces, 66% favor laws and policies that require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. 

“As a parent, I’m concerned about fairness and safety for my girls in sports,” said Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty and a mother of four. Allowing “biological males” to compete in women’s events, she said, “undermines the level playing field” that federal regulations were meant to protect, “given the inherent physical advantages men have.”

In 2025, the issue no longer falls entirely along ideological lines. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said transgender athletes playing in women’s sports is “” to female athletes. 

States evenly divided

Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding, but whether that applies to trans students and athletics remains an open question. President Biden in 2022 put forth a sweeping set of changes protecting students against discrimination based not just on sex but on sexual orientation and gender identity, in effect making transgender students a protected class. But the proposal sidestepped the question of athletics, with administration officials at the time saying those regulations would come soon. 

They never came, and the Title IX protections for LGBTQ students have been repeatedly struck down by the courts. Biden put forth a draft rule to protect transgender athletes that acknowledged fairness issues but suggested they could be solved on a case-by-case basis. He last December in advance of Trump’s second term.��

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a transgender ban on women’s and girls’ sports, but the Senate a bid to consider it earlier this month, leaving educators in many states to figure it out on their own.

Add to that in federal courts that have upheld the rights of trans athletes, said Wernz, and schools are in “an incredibly tough position,” especially considering Trump’s order. 

State laws are on the subject: 23 states and the District of Columbia allow transgender students to play on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

Five days after Trump’s executive order, , which oversees sports in public and private schools, that it was banning trans athletes from participating in girls’ sports, saying schools needed “clear and consistent direction” on the issue. For more than a decade, the group had allowed trans athletes to play via a waiver if they undertook sex reassignment before puberty or if they did hormone therapy, among other requirements.

The league, which oversees 318 schools and about 177,000 students, said just five students applied for waivers last year.

In addition to Maine and Penn, OCR is investigating state athletic associations in California and Minnesota, where officials have said they’ll continue allowing trans athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identity. On March 3, it announced an into a school district in Washington State that allowed a trans player to compete in basketball last month.

It’s also San Jose State University and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association for what it says are violations of Title IX.

Wernz, the former OCR attorney, who worked in both the Obama and Trump administrations, said schools and districts must now decide, “‘Do we comply with the federal courts, or do we comply with the Department of Education?’ Frankly it’s a pretty new situation.” 

‘We’ll see you in court.’

To many, the case of Thomas, the Penn swimmer, has come to epitomize the current complications. In 2022, Thomas, who’d on the men’s team before transitioning in 2019, rose from 554th-ranked in the 200-yard freestyle to fifth. In the 500-yard freestyle, she rose from 65th as a male athlete to first in women’s competition.

While Penn and several teammates supported her during the process, three former Penn swimmers to remove Thomas’ achievements from the record books.

Pennsylvania’s interscholastic athletics governing body recently its policy to recognize Trump’s executive order, but the Philadelphia School District said it’ll ignore the change in favor of its own policy, adopted in 2016, which allows trans athletes to play in sports that match their gender identity. 

While a few experts say that could jeopardize an estimated $216 million in Title I funding, Philadelphia civil rights attorney noted that Trump’s executive order doesn’t carry the weight of law — or supersede Title IX, state law or multiple court decisions that have sided with trans students.

She said Trump “has been purposely sowing a lot of chaos and confusion,” with schools fearful of losing federal funds.

The push to ban trans athletes comes despite the fact that vanishingly small numbers of these students are pushing to play. Shortly after Trump issued the executive order, NCAA President Charlie Baker said the organization would to restrict female athletic competitions solely to student athletes “assigned female at birth.” Several sports associations followed suit, even though Baker last year told Congress that of the more than 500,000 students it represents, fewer than 10 are transgender.

Chris Young, the principal of , a 720-student regional school in Newport, Vt., near the Canadian border, rarely thinks about the topic. He knows that if trans female athletes in Vermont want to play girl’s sports teams, they can. Though he has no trans athletes on his roster, Vermont says treating students differently is illegal. 

In an interview, he recalled several conversations with students asking whether it’s fair that a young person who’s transitioning from male to female could gain a competitive advantage in sports. 

“My response is, ‘No one does this as a choice. It’s who they are, and it’s an incredibly difficult road to go down if you are a transgender athlete,’” he said. “‘No one chooses that because it’s easy, and no one chooses that because they want to win a state championship or set a record. That’s just not how it works.’”

But when trans athletes like Thomas win at nearly any competition, the backlash is often outsized. In Maine, Spencer, the transgender pole vaulter, in mid-February won the Class B state championship in pole vaulting with a jump of 10 feet, 6 inches — more than six inches higher than the next competitor. That led state Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican, to post on X that in a previous season, as a male athlete, Spencer had in the event.

The issue a few days later, when President Trump got into a televised spat with Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, during a meeting of governors at the White House. With Mills’ colleagues looking on, Trump called her out, asking if she’d comply with his executive order.

Mills said she’s “complying with state and federal laws.” Maine bars discrimination based on gender identity.

Trump responded, “We are the federal law,” and threatened to pull Maine’s federal funding. 

“We’ll see you in court,” she replied.

Later that day, the education department . Days later, the administration released a that all but foretold the outcome, saying it’s “shameful” that Mills “refuses to stand with women and girls.” 

For her part, Mills says no president can withhold funding authorized by Congress “in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will.” 

In a , she added, “Maine may be one of the first states to undergo an investigation by his Administration, but we won’t be the last.”

But the NCAA tournament is not just fun and games for the schools involved; the stakes can be high. Beyond earning bragging rights, schools with triumphant teams can expect increases in both applications and donations. And a small number of players, having demonstrated amazing feats of agility, coordination and speed, can make it to the NBA draft.

Still, for the rest, basketball is only a sideshow to the serious business of higher education. College is about many things (yes, including sports), but one of the most important contributions America’s universities make to society is helping students move up the ladder of economic success.

Central to the American Dream is the belief every generation should do better financially than the previous one and that even low-income students should have a shot at moving up in the world. Despite everything that’s happening, most Americans expect colleges to serve as engines of economic growth and personal improvement.

So how well do the universities whose names are emblazoned on the players’ jerseys excel at helping their students move up the income ladder?

For the last eight years, we have taken the opportunity, while Americans are debating which are the best teams on the court, to examine which of the participating colleges are best at assisting their students in doing well economically after they graduate. 

Each year, we have constructed a parallel Social Mobility Tournament Bracket, plotting how well or how poorly the colleges participating in the national tournament do in helping to place students on a path leading to the American Dream of upward mobility.

From 2017 to 2022, we constructed our bracket by comparing the tournament’s colleges according to how many of their low-income students were earning family-sustaining earnings by their early 30s. In 2023, we shifted to comparisons that take into consideration college access, affordability and post-graduation earnings — that is, the issues that are top of mind for today’s students, parents and policymakers. 

As we noted last year, present-day families and legislators want to know which colleges are worth their tuition cost in time and money; how long a student will have to work to pay off that cost; and what proportion of each college’s under-resourced students is being placed on the path to financial security.

To account for these concerns, we have turned to the (EMI), created by the former director of the , Michael Itzkowitz, as source material for our bracket.��

Using publicly available information from the department and the Census Bureau, this index ranks 1,320 bachelor’s degree-granting institutions by how well each provides economic mobility for its students. To do so, it first considers the return on investment that lower-income students obtain at each college by calculating the out-of-pocket costs required to obtain a four-year degree. 

The index then considers the additional financial benefits students obtain by attending one of these schools. This earnings premium is the additional income graduates make in comparison to someone with only a high school diploma. In short, the lower the out-of-pocket costs and the higher the earnings premium, the quicker a student will receive a return on the investment needed to obtain the degree. Lastly, the index rewards schools for the proportion of lower- and moderate-income students it enrolls in addition to the return on investment it provides.

By considering not only the percentage of students who move up the economic ladder, but also the number of graduates qualified for federal Pell Grants, we can also assess the role each college plays in helping the nation as a whole improve social mobility for its less advantaged students.

Given that rankings on the EMI rely heavily on affordability and the percentage of underresourced students, it is no surprise that only six private colleges made it to Round 2 in our parallel bracket. 

To understand why only two of them made it to the Sweet Sixteen in our Social Mobility Tournament Bracket, consider that the average net price for a degree at these six schools is $68,500. On the other hand, a degree at the 26 public colleges that also made it to Round 2 costs only $39,000, a nearly 44% discount.  

That said, the real surprise in our bracket this year is that a private university, , won the championship. The BYU Cougars, a 21 seed in the NCAA tournament, ranked 66 out of the 1,320 colleges in the EMI. Their graduates enjoy a price-to-earnings premium that allows them to pay down the total net cost of their degree in less than a year.��

Our Social Mobility Tournament runner-up, , is not far behind. The Tritons, the 47th seed in the NCAA tournament, rank 68 in the index and also manage to pay back the cost of their degree in less than a year.��

Indeed, the other two schools making up our Final Four, the universities of and , are also worthy of great praise. The former ranks 67 in the index, with its Cougars able to pay back their education in less than two years. Meanwhile, Memphis ranks a very respectable 130^th�� in the index, with its Tigers taking only three years to pay back the cost of their degree.

Whichever school takes home the NCAA tournament trophy will rightly celebrate its prowess on the court and will likely reap the benefit of increased applications. In contrast, little to no acclaim will accrue to schools whose primary merit is their ability to help students reach family-sustaining wages when coming out of low-income households.

Nearly 4,500 basketball players make up the pool of tournament dreamers. These athletes are drawn from among the approximately 7.5 million young men who made up the nation’s high school graduating classes during four years. This means a male high school graduate has an extremely small chance of playing on a Division I basketball team, and of these, fewer than 1 in 75 senior players will ever be drafted by an NBA team. No doubt, much is at stake for players and schools as they battle their way to the Final Four.

But much is likewise at stake for the more than 16 million students who enroll in American two- or four-year colleges. Like the Division I players, most of them are working hard to gain a solid spot in the U.S. economy. But with college graduation rates rarely surpassing 60%, the colleges and universities that manage to do well for large numbers of low-income students are far more deserving of recognition than even those schools committed to producing winning basketball teams.

In effect, the Economic Mobility Index scores matter, and schools that rank high on it should celebrate them as a source of pride. After all, as we have said over the last eight years, these are the sorts of results that should be boosting applications from the many young adults who want to enjoy not only the ephemeral pleasure of having a winning school team, but also the long-term benefits of upward mobility.

Pine Bluff, Arkansas

On a gray February morning, the Pine Bluff High School gymnasium was filled with colorful balloons and flooded with music and laughter as family and friends, students and staff gathered to celebrate four college-bound star football players signing their national letters of intent. 

Less than six miles away, a mother was mourning the loss of another beloved player, her 16-year-old son, Kendall Burton, who was gunned down just weeks earlier. 

Addressing a standing-room-only crowd, the four elated student-athletes all thanked the same person — and the heartbroken mother in her quiet apartment did, too: Coach Micheal Williams.

The two events painfully juxtaposed what Williams has worked hardest to achieve since returning to his hometown — creating a pathway to college for his players — and what he has fought so strenuously to keep at bay. between the ages of 10 and 19 in this town of roughly 40,000 were the victims of homicide between 2020 and 2022, according to the most recent data.

“Kendall Burton was a great kid,” said Williams, who’s built close relationships with all of his players, but especially this affable teen. “I would let him date my daughter, you know, that type of kid. I always tell everybody he was the coach’s son.”

Shaketa Simmons, Burton’s mother, said Kendall felt the same way: “He loved Coach Williams. He would always say, ‘Coach Williams got our back. He would do anything for us.’”

Williams, who understands the grinding poverty that can lead some students astray, has always encouraged his players not to squander the opportunity they’ve earned through sports. But he had struggled in recent weeks to relate that message: Burton was a clean-cut kid who stayed out of trouble and still, his future was taken from him.

Burton’s death devastated the coach and now he found himself summoning the young man, who he picked up every morning before practice, to help keep his teammates on track amid their sorrow.

“I tell them, ‘You have to carry on, fight hard to be that person you are because your friend is looking at you,’” Williams said. “‘He’s clapping from heaven.’” 

Boys to men 

A former Pine Bluff football player himself, Willliams, now 40, helped lead some of the most storied teams in the country, including the one belonging to Duncanville High School just outside Dallas: They won in the last two years and were in the nation. 

But no matter where he worked, he kept an eye on his football roots. He knew Pine Bluff players had talent, but somehow that wasn’t translating into college offers. Williams eventually discovered why: Some didn’t have the grades and none got the exposure they deserved.

Upon taking the coaching job in 2022, Williams immediately installed an academic-focused program: Players would practice in the morning and sit for study hall and tutoring in the afternoon. They would also participate in a character-building program — another of the coach’s initiatives — where they might learn to tie a tie or talk to a judge to better understand the criminal justice system.

“From Day One, I knew I needed to do something to try to change their grades,” Williams said. 

For the sophomores, juniors and seniors, he built each player’s social media profile on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and alerted the recruiters he’s worked with through the years.

“Once I started sending those things out, it started drawing attention to a lot of the great athletes we have,” he said. 

Among them: Jonathan Goins Jr., 17, and Landon Holcomb, 18, who both committed to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff at the Feb. 7 signing. Chandler Laurent, 18, and who has earned a 4.1 GPA, will play for Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Makyrin Goodwin, also 18, is headed to Henderson State University in Arkadelphia. All received full or partial athletic or academic scholarships. 

Goodwin, who plays both right and left tackle — really anything on the offensive line,  is looking forward to the next chapter of his life and thanked his coach for the progress he’s made until now. 

“He is the best coach I ever had,” Goodwin said of Williams. “He makes sure we do good in school and everything. He’ll just call and check on you sometimes.” 

Williams himself was an excellent running back — potential NFL material — but didn’t end up making it that far, in part, he said, because his high school coaches, whom he adored, weren’t focused on recruiting. So, he said, he did not have a shot at a big-time college. Instead, he attended Paul Quinn College in Dallas on a partial football scholarship. 

And that’s why, when he became a coach himself, he prioritized recruiting, getting his players on the right schools’ radar and making sure they had the grades to be NCAA eligible, which for Division I schools means a GPA of 2.3 or higher in their core classes and 2.2 or better for Division II.

Coach Williams is a godsend and he has a heart for children. Not just sports. I said children. And under his tutelage, they become men.

Principal, Ronnieus Thompson

Principal Ronnieus Thompson appreciates Williams’s hard-earned connections and partnerships with colleges and universities. Four of his senior players have been given scholarship offers at DI colleges this school year, including Goins and Holcomb.

 Two others penned national letters of intent in December — both to the highly regarded University of Missouri, part of the powerhouse Southeastern Conference and this year. Headed to Mizzou are Courtney Crutchfield, a four-star athlete who was the No. 1 high school football player in the state and number 11th in the nation under Williams’s leadership, and three-star athlete, Austyn Dendy, 17, who is ranked fourth in Arkansas. 

Bringing the total headed to college to eight, cornerback Perrea Little signed with DIII Centenary College of Louisiana just this week and wide receiver Marquez Brentley Jr. accepted an academic scholarship to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

“Coach Williams is a godsend and he has a heart for children,” Thompson said. “Not just sports. I said children. And under his tutelage, they become men.”

‘The person I am today’

The coach describes himself as strict. He doesn’t mind adding some bass to his voice to deliver a point on the field and players who arrive late to 6 a.m. practice will find themselves pushing a 45-pound plate 100 yards before moving on to exhaustive drills.

In his softer moments, he talks to them about family trouble, girl problems and how they sometimes can’t wash their clothes at home because the power has been cut off. In that case, Williams invites them to use the school’s washer and dryer. 

“I’ve been poor,” he tells them. “I know how it feels to wake up and there’s roaches in your food or maggots in your rice: You haven’t been through anything that I haven’t been through. But success comes from being a powerful young man and being able to fight through adversity.”

Sometimes, when Williams was a young boy, his own family would lose electricity and the three kids and their parents would all sleep together in the same room to keep warm. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to look out the window, he said, to see his parents picking up cans on the side of the road to afford a 49-cent pack of hot dogs.

“If we were going to play baseball, my mom would go out and search every thrift store to try to find us a glove,” he said. “It may have been old but, you know, we made the best out of it. It helped make me into the person I am today.”

Emmanuel Hudson, 16, and a defensive tackle, said the coach always comes through for him. He’s given the teen food when he’s hungry and, most recently, a dress shirt for a formal school event: Many come from a small collection Williams keeps in his office in case such a need arises. 

“He’s just been so good in my life,” Hudson said. “Like a stepfather, for real.”

It’s the type of support that’s helped him through the loss of his friend, Kendall Burton, who was shot dead Jan. 12 at an intersection close to his grandmother’s house. 

The investigation into Burton’s death remains open and Pine Bluff police did not respond to a request last week for an update. Earlier, department spokesman David DeFoor told ����Ӱ�� police had a suspect in mind but not enough evidence to make an arrest. The department was asking for the public’s help, offering up to a $10,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction.

Simmons credits the entire team for being such a positive part of her son’s life, which was marked by a grave struggle long before he was gunned down: A growth on Burton’s neck when he was 8 was diagnosed as Hodgkin’s lymphoma. 

“Those are his brothers,” Simmons said of his fellow players.

Sitting in her son’s bedroom, which she’s turned into a memorial, his pictures and jerseys hung up on the walls, Simmons said it’s the family’s deep sense of faith that she leans on now that her son is gone. As a child battling cancer, Burton would tell his mother not to worry, that, “God got me.”

“When I think about my boy … I just want to cry, I just want to let loose,” she said. “But most of the time I can’t because the spirit comes to me and says, ‘No, I got Kendall.’ When I hear that, I’m like, ‘OK, OK, I hear you.’”

The new model students 

Williams’s father, Micheal Sr., a minister of music, drove a school bus for Pine Bluff for 20 years and had numerous jobs after that. He eventually became a preacher who also sang and played piano at a local church and nearby prison. At one point, he owned a used car lot in Pine Bluff, but his generosity undermined his efforts: A customer with a particularly heart-wrenching story might walk away with a free vehicle, his son said.

His father never saw Williams play when he was younger because he was always working. Now, he never misses a game: He broadcasts them on Facebook. Williams’s mother, Pamela, who became a nurse, remains her son’s biggest fan. Hers is often the loudest voice cheering from the stands. And her son’s spare supply of dress shirts and the like often comes from her, the result of Pamela Williams regularly bargain hunting for those in need. 

“She taught me the gift of giving,” Williams said. “They both did.”

It was that sense of wanting to give back and improve the lives and prospects of young people that drew him home. It’s a notion shared by many: Williams arrived in a city already working hard to bring about positive change. It opened an enviable in 2019 and has plans to long-neglected parts of the community, including historic buildings. But perhaps the most life-changing moment for Pine Bluff students will come when the district breaks ground on a new, state-of-the-art high school, replacing a decades-old facility with roofing so decrepit that it rains inside classrooms and hallways. 

“The right work is being done,” said Thompson, the principal. “Have we made it all the way there? Of course not. But we are taking those steps in the right direction.”

Thompson credits the coach for being a critical part of this effort, adding that his reach extends well beyond the field: When students struggle in other areas of their life, he’ll call upon their teachers and counselors for help. 

“We don’t have trouble with the athletes anymore,” Thompson said. “They used to be some of the biggest knuckleheads. Now, they’re model students and that’s the way it should be. I’m glad that he’s here.”

Micah Holmstrom, a 10th- and 12th-grade English teacher, said Williams’s mandatory study hall has allowed him to chase down students who were missing assignments or who needed extra help.

“I knew exactly where they were,” Holmstrom said, adding Williams’s emphasis on academics made his work even easier. “Those guys are so comfortable with him and it’s in a place that’s a familiar environment: They’re more willing to sit and hack through some of the difficult stuff than in class.”

Frank Lyles, a math teacher, uses the time to teach kids about complex topics they didn’t  understand in class, including parabolas, a U-shape curve whose contours students can find in their own game: Every ball they throw follows a similar arc, illustrating his lesson. 

Parents, too, credit Williams for helping their children stay focused. Nicole Dendy, whose son, Austyn, will pursue veterinary studies at Mizzou, said football is her son’s drive. 

“Football motivates him,” she said. “So, whatever it takes to get him on the field, that’s what he’s going to do.”

Hudson, the defensive tackle, helped prepare the gymnasium for the college signing day in Februrary. He was overjoyed to see older players recognized for their athletic and academic success.

“Coach Will and the other coaching staff have been hard on us to put the work in,” he said. “He said, from Day One, whatever we want, we’ve got to earn. So, I feel like we earned it and that’s why we got it.”

]]> /article/read-to-your-dog-your-cat-just-read-ncaa-boosts-literacy-for-indy-3rd-graders/ Mon, 20 Nov 2023 13:00:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=717979 Since 2016, the NCAA has been tackling the literacy crisis through its reading incentive program, Readers Become Leaders. Indianapolis, home of the NCAA, is just one of many cities where the organization hosts a “Read to the Final Four” challenge, where dozens of participating schools go head to head in a March Madness-style competition to see which will log the most reading minutes over 10 weeks.

In Indianapolis, the NCAA also partners with local TV station WISH for an “I Love to Read” challenge that encourages third graders to log their daily reading time. This year, more than 30 Indianapolis schools participated from five districts. The NCAA entices students and schools with prizes ranging from Scholastic Books and Visa gift cards to invitations to college basketball games.

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Over the last decade, reading scores in Indiana have been on a steady decline, to the point of stagnation. This year’s state Reading Evaluation and Determination (IREAD-3) test results showed that third-graders’ scores rose just 0.3% from 81.9% proficiency last year, and that number hasn’t improved much in years. Earlier this year, the state passed HB 1558, a science of reading bill that places greater emphasis on phonics than context clues and guessing. Since third graders who aren’t proficient in reading by the end of the school year are to graduate from high school on time and more likely to drop out altogether than those who are proficient, the NCAA hopes to help teachers by encouraging students to spend more time reading.

Earlier this month, nearly 5,000 eager third graders filled the Indiana Farmers Coliseum for a showdown between Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and Spalding University. During the free event, which Indiana-Purdue won 70-63, encouraging messages from college student athletes and even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Usher played during timeouts and halftime to promote the importance of reading daily. The third graders are invited to attend another game Nov. 20, hosted by Butler University. 

At the game, which was preceded by a pep rally, each student was given a free book to take home. Other prizes include thousands of dollars in credits from Scholastic and new books for school and classroom libraries.

Victor Hill, the NCAA’s associate director of inclusion, education and community engagement, said the organization decided to develop the literacy program after superintendents of Indianapolis’s four districts emphasized the impact the national reading crisis was having on their schools. The NCAA launched the program in Houston in 2016 with more than 7,000 students from Title I schools, and since then more than 300,000 students nationwide have participated. 

“We don’t want to take credit for what the teachers do, but they did say the competition really sparked an interest in a lot of the kids, and they saw kids reading who hadn’t been reading before,” Hill said. “They sent us pictures of kids reading during lunch, during recess, and the school library saw a spike in books being checked out.”

In Indianapolis, the response from students and teachers has been overwhelmingly positive, even from students not in third grade. The competitions get the entire school excited as they cheer on the third graders to read as much as possible. But Hill said the biggest challenge is getting parents to initiate at-home reading. Through ads on WISH-TV and announcements geared to parents at the pep rallies and basketball games, the NCAA encourages families to read with their children for at least 30 minutes a day, hoping the excitement will continue when students are home.

“We tell the children during our pep rallies, ‘If your parents, your brothers or sisters are busy, if you’ve got a cat or a dog, sit and read to them. Read to your goldfish. Just read,’” Hill said.

]]> /article/some-arkansas-high-school-athletes-would-profit-from-fame-under-proposed-legislation/ Sun, 26 Mar 2023 12:30:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=706521 This article was originally published in

A bill filed in the Arkansas Legislature focused on students-athlete’s publicity rights looks like a win-win for all involved on the surface. But student-athlete advocates call foul on it.

by House Speaker Matthew Shepherd of El Dorado and Rep. RJ Hawk (R-Benton) would allow high school athletes who have been admitted to or signed a letter of intent at an Arkansas college “to enter into a contract and receive compensation for the commercial use of the student-athlete’s publicity rights.

The bill, Hawk said, attempts to rein in the “wild, wild West” of NIL — name, image and likeness — in high school sports that would allow student athletes to profit off of their image.

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The NCAA began allowing college athletes to use NIL in 2021 to secure endorsements and sponsorships. But high school athletics have been a bit tricky.

The NIL became a focal point after former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon and others sued the NCAA and won. They claimed the NCAA violated United States antitrust laws by not allowing college athletes to receive revenue generated from the use of their images in broadcasts and video games.

From that ruling, high school athletes want a chance to make money off of their images, too, especially as they have gained enormous popularity and thousands of followers on their social media platforms.

“Twenty-two states currently allow high school kids to profit off of NIL, including Tennessee and Louisiana,” Hawk said. “I had some constituents ask about it. We got in a room with the triple A (Arkansas Activities Association), some coaches and the NCAA and started looking at things.”

After filing HB 1649, Hawk and Shepherd filed , calling for a 14-month study on the issue.

The Arkansas Activities Association oversees high school sports. Its handbook states high school athletes may not accept gifts or compensation for “permitting his/her name, picture, or person to be used to advertise, promote or recommend a product, service, commercial venture or political venture.”

The association could not be reached for comment on this story.

‘Unnecessary and unfair’

“This bill [HB1649] is about control,” said Byron Jenkins of Arkansas Athlete Connection, a website that serves as a booking agent for Arkansas athletes. “NIL is about allowing the athlete to profit off of their own image whether they want to sell a T-shirt with their name and image on it, sell an autograph, whatever product they want to sell. That should be allowed.

“This bill [allows] foundations and boosters connected to a school to control the athletes’ deal for money by using their image.”

Jenkins pointed out that a high school musician, for example, can hold concerts, sell recordings and monetize themselves as social media influencers while still in high school. So could student artists and writers. Athletes cannot.

Student athletes “should be able to make money off of their name, image and likeness in high school without having to sign with any college,” Jenkins said. “Owning your own image is a basic human right.”

Jenkins also said that HB 1649 is unfair to students who never receive an offer from an Arkansas university yet receive one from an out-of-state college and sign a letter of intent with that university. That happens frequently, as every college is allowed so many spots to recruit from high schools.

Daniel Greene, an attorney in Syracuse, New York, and sports law professor at SUNY Cortland, agreed with Jenkins. He said the path Arkansas legislators are taking is particularly unique.

“High school NIL has mainly been addressed by the state’s high school athletic associations, but Arkansas seems to be one of the few instances where it may need to be handled by the state legislature,” Greene, an NIL expert, said. “The unique caveat here is that not all high school athletes in Arkansas would be eligible, only those that have been accepted into admission or signed an NLI (letter of intent) or other written agreement to enroll in a university or college with the state of Arkansas.”

This limitation seems “unnecessary and unfair to the other high school athletes in the state that may not be ready or able to commit to a college or even want to go to go to college or pursue athletics at the next level,” Greene said.

“Shouldn’t everyone have the right to exercise their right of publicity? No other state that permits high school NIL has this sort of cutoff, which seems a bit arbitrary,” Greene said.

‘You should be able to sell yourself’

Hawk said that questions like these are why he created a bill allowing for a legislative study on high school students’ publicity rights.

Greene pointed out that HB 1649 also has another questionable issue.

“This amendment would expressly permit a school’s ‘supporting foundations’ to facilitate and negotiate NIL deals,” he said. “This would be very controversial since it would potentially allow for NIL collectives and booster clubs to play a more active role in the NIL landscape, which is something the NCAA has been wary of in recent months. In fact, they recently sent out a memo reminding schools that the NCAA’s current rules prohibit schools from compensating athletes for their NIL, including entities acting on behalf of the institution.”

People watching NIL at a national level, Greene said, “believe this memo was targeted at what was developing at Texas A&M and their 12th Man+ Fund and University of Arkansas with their OneArkansas NIL group.”

Passing this law, Greene said, would put Arkansas law at odds with the NCAA rules if the bill is passed.

“This bill would also permit 501(c)(3) organizations to compensate athletes for the use of their NIL, which has been a controversial topic for some time as the number of charitable NIL collectives has grown,” he said

After House Bill 1469 was filed, Hawk and Shepherd filed House Bill 1679, which allows for a study to examine high school student-athletes’ publicity rights. That bill would also create a program for student athletes about contracts and compensation rather than each athlete cutting their own deals.

The study’s results by the House Committee on Education and the Senate Committee on Education would be filed on or before Oct. 31, 2024.

“We have to ask, do we want kids to go into the court system for a NIL system?” Hawk said. “I think the answer would be no. If the states around us have it, what is to stop their parents from moving to another state so their kids can make money? We would lose top talent.”

Jenkins argued that the talent always belongs to the student athlete. Many high school athletes, he said, already have what is considered as NIL value — production, exposure, influence and relationships.

“Those kids can influence people to buy a hat with their image on it, and that’s their image. They should not be forced to allow a college, boosters or a nonprofit to control it. They should be able to keep their brand going even if it starts in pee wee sports or elementary school. You should be able to sell yourself.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

]]> /reimagining-march-madness-if-the-sweet-16-celebrated-schools-for-helping-students-reach-higher-incomes-than-their-parents-wed-all-be-cheering-for-providence-ucla/ Thu, 24 Mar 2022 11:15:00 +0000 /?p=586832 With the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament set to resume today in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Antonio, the sports world will again be focused on every dunk, free throw and three-pointer playing out on the courts.  

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But here at ����Ӱ��, we thought we’d use the occasion of March Madness to celebrate top schools for an entirely different reason — elevating graduates into the workforce and empowering social mobility. 

Colleges vary widely in how well they set graduates up for career success and aid them in climbing the “income ladder.” Recently Jorge Klor de Alva, president of the Nexus Research and Policy Center, worked with the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights dataset to match and analyze data from thousands of colleges as well as millions of income tax returns to determine every school’s ability to take students born to parents in the bottom 40 percent of income distribution and to help them go on to achieve earnings in the upper 40 percent of household income by their early 30s. 

By identifying the percentage of students who made this ascension, Klor de Alva was able to compare schools in an apples-to-apples fashion in a reimagined March Madness bracket. 

“A score of 0.50 on our bracket means 50 percent of students whose parents were in the lowest 40 percent were able to climb to the top 40 percent in earnings,” he wrote in a recent essay. “Our Social Mobility Tournament Bracket spotlights the extent to which disadvantaged students enrolled in the selected colleges have managed to reach family-sustaining earnings 10 years after leaving the school.” 

As we enter Sweet 16 weekend, here’s what the finalists would look like if used Klor de Alva’s social mobility percentages to determine winners: 

In real life, Bryant University’s basketball team lost their First Four game and failed to progress in the brackets. But, after seeing our “Social Mobility Tournament,” Bryant would be the 2022 contest winner if the focus was celebrating schools that helped students prosper.

For context, here’s the full March Madness bracket, scored by social mobility percentage (click to enlarge):��

Of note: UCLA, which previously won our Social Mobility Tournament in 2017, makes it all the way the Social Mobility Sweet 16 before being knocked out by Wisconsin’s Marquette University. 

To learn more about the calculations, the rationale and the importance of celebrating schools in moving students up the ladder, read Klor de Alva’s deep dive right here.

]]> /article/its-so-hard-as-trans-bans-spread-experts-weigh-how-to-balance-fairness-and-inclusion-in-high-school-sports/ Wed, 07 Apr 2021 20:00:12 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=570600 After germinating largely outside the political limelight over the past few years, a new cultural controversy has come to dominate the early months of the Biden administration: the debate over the rights of transgender youth.

The first push came from the president, who on his first day in office calling for federal agencies to root out discrimination based on gender identity and expression, including in public schools. In February, the administration also for litigation filed in Connecticut by a group of high school runners who argue that their rights under Title IX were violated by the state’s policy of allowing trans girls to race against them.

Republicans picked up the gauntlet happily, with introducing bills to require K-12 athletes to compete in the gender category that they were assigned to at birth. Governors in , , and have all signed such laws, which have also passed in at least one chamber of state legislatures in , , , and . After a split between Republicans in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem along the same lines.

Beneath the political stakes lie swiftly changing legal and cultural mores, which are themselves being reshaped by new discoveries on the biology of athletic performance. In all, the status of trans athletes — and particularly the question of whether trans females should be allowed to compete in the girls’ category in high school competitions — has been taken up by combatants on all sides of America’s ongoing debate over the politics of sex and gender. Meanwhile, as the fight moves from playing fields to legislative chambers and courtrooms, advocates are attempting to strike a compromise between the necessities of competitive fairness and inclusion.

That balance has begun to develop at the pinnacle of elite sport, with regulatory bodies like the and the reaching accommodations that allow trans women to participate under specific conditions — typically including measures to suppress their bodies’ production of testosterone, which is linked to performance attributes like speed, power, and endurance. But adolescence, when many trans children are still early in their social and physical transitions, is a far more ambiguous stage.

Joanna Harper, a sports researcher at England’s Loughborough University and herself a trans runner, observed that various proposals to address the issue for teenagers all come with downsides. In an interview, she set a goal of “being as inclusive as we can possibly be without destroying the competitive balance.”

“It’s so hard,” said Harper. “How do you tell a 15- or 16-year old that they have to go on hormone therapy to play sports? It’s an extraordinarily difficult thing to say, but for these very high-performing athletes, it does create a conundrum.”

To others, one consideration supersedes all others: the need to welcome trans children into all aspects of school life, including sports. Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of the advocacy group GLSEN (previously known as the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), said that no claims around competitive fairness could justify treating trans students any different from their cisgender peers (i.e., those whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth).

“To use words from another civil rights fight, we know that anything separate is not equal. We know that when we start differentiating across lines of identity, young people will not be served by that.”

A ‘patchwork’ system

But according to Doriane Lambelet Coleman, sex differentiation is vital to the survival of women’s athletics. A professor at Duke Law School, Coleman is the co-director of the institution’s Center for Sports Law and Policy. She is also a former collegiate track champion who has worked in both American and international settings to develop anti-doping policies and rules determining eligibility for women’s competition.

Coleman that Title IX, which forbids sex-based discrimination across all federally funded educational programs, clearly mandates the segregation of athletes into categories according to sex-linked traits. Since its very purpose is to provide women and girls with the same access to athletic opportunity that boys have always enjoyed, forcing cisgender females to contend with rivals whose bodies lend them a competitive advantage effectively “[defeats] the purposes of the institution that is girls’ sport.”

“We need legislation that affirms the commitment to girl’s and women’s sport, and specifically to this set-aside of separate-sex teams on the basis of biological sex,” Coleman said. “It was never in doubt before that that’s what separate-sex sport meant, but now that it is questioned, we need to re-affirm that commitment.”

But Coleman also rejects the legal barriers being proposed and passed by Republicans, calling them overbroad. Some exceptions need to be drawn for trans girls and women who have undergone hormone treatment, or who transitioned before the onset of male puberty, she added.

The legislative push at the state level began almost exactly a year ago in Idaho, which flatly banned trans females from playing on girls’ teams at K-12 and post-secondary schools. In instances where doubt existed about an athlete’s biological sex, it would be resolved by an examination of “the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels,” the text read. (The law was by a federal judge last summer, and litigation is still pending.)

As the legislation moves through statehouses around the country, students are facing an increasingly divided picture of athletic eligibility. , 16 mostly socially progressive states currently allow trans girls to compete in the category that matches their gender identity. Among the rest, some require they take medically prescribed hormone therapy, some require them to adhere to their natal sex, and some offer no recommendation.

Willingham-Jaggers referred to the sharp differences between different jurisdictions as a “patchwork” system that cries out for national clarification. In her view, that should come through the passage of the Equality Act, a federal bill that would amend existing civil rights law to prohibit discrimination in housing, education, and employment on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. The Act in February, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already announced that it will be brought to the upper chamber for a vote.

Federal action is warranted because of the anxiety that trans students often feel about athletic participation, Willingham-Jaggers said. According to , over 10 percent of LGBT students feel discouraged from participating in sports because of their gender or sexual orientation. Forty-four percent of respondents said they avoided locker rooms because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable, 40 percent avoided gym or physical education classes, and 25 percent avoided athletic facilities.

“What happens when we discourage or intentionally exclude young people who are non-binary or transgender from sports [is that we] lock them out of all the positive effects that sports have on all young people — cis, trans, or non-binary,” Willingham-Jaggers said. “What is right for all students is also right for trans students.”

‘It’s no longer about sex’

Given the tiny margins Democrats now hold in Congress, neither the Equality Act nor any other federal legislation centered on trans youth looks likely to pass this session. While the possibility of regulatory reform still exists — the Justice Department recently stating that LGBT students would be protected under existing civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex, including Title IX — policymakers and educators still face the question of how the rights of trans and cisgender girls can be reconciled when they come into conflict.

For some experts, hormone therapy is a necessary part of any solution, at least at the most competitive levels of women’s sport. In recognition of changing norms, leading regulatory bodies like the NCAA and International Olympic Committee have created policies that require trans females to undergo estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy before they can become eligible for women’s events.

Though she condemns the outright bans now under consideration in U.S. legislatures, calling them politically motivated, Loughborough University’s Harper said it was “perfectly reasonable” to place some restrictions on the participation of trans women in competitions.

As evidence, she cited the example of June Eastwood, a University of Montana runner who the first openly trans female to compete in a Division I cross-country meet. Eastwood completed the prescribed course of testosterone suppression during her transition, and generally proved a high-level if unspectacular performer in the women’s division. Had she not undergone the treatment, however, she might have easily dominated her sport; while running in the men’s category, Eastwood’s personal best in the 1500 meters was just a fraction of a second behind the women’s world record.

“Successful trans girls who have gone through male puberty, who have experienced all the gains that gives them and are good at their sport, will simply be too good, too successful in girls’ sports, unless you require them go through hormone therapy,” Harper said.

A less hypothetical case came during the 2016 Olympics, when all three medalists in the women’s 800 meters event were either known or suspected to have that produces both X and Y chromosomes in women. With testosterone levels that far exceed that of typical female athletes, those runners to undergo treatment to reduce their testosterone in order to enter women’s events between the quarter-mile and the mile.

But what is possible at elite levels of competition might not be workable in high school. Not all trans children have access to hormone therapies, and requiring them as a prerequisite for athletic participation could inadvertently distort students’ decisions around gender transition. To make things even more complicated, Republican legislators in several states bans on minors receiving “gender-affirming health care,” a treatment method that can recommend the use of puberty blockers and hormone replacement. In Arkansas, the first state to such a ban, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued a veto on Monday only to the next day. If other states take the same approach, many transgender youth could be faced with a Catch-22 scenario: needing hormone therapy to compete in sports according to their gender identity, but being prohibited from receiving them.

All of it combines to make high school sports a particularly challenging space to adjudicate.

The best-known conflict within the realm of K-12 sports is now playing out in Connecticut, where have sued the state in federal court for permitting trans athletes to run track against cisgender girls. Between 2017 and 2019, those trans girls, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, combined to claim 15 state championship races. While former Attorney General William Barr formally backed the lawsuit, calling Connecticut’s policies “fundamentally unfair to female athletes,” the Justice Department under President Biden .

In part, the debate hinges on interpretations of Title IX, which was enacted nearly a half-century ago with the express purpose of in educational settings like sports. At the time of its establishment, school districts and universities directed their athletic budgets overwhelmingly toward male sports, and the concept of transgender identity was mostly outside the mainstream. By some estimates, participation in girls’ sport has increased by over 1,000 percent in the decades since. At the same time, the law permits “separate teams for members of each sex where selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill.”

Duke’s Coleman sees the increasing social acceptance of LGBT communities as a positive development, but warns that it likely will also generate more such cases if states like Connecticut don’t carefully insulate the category of cisgender girls. Otherwise, she argued, it could drift into something like an open division freely entered not only by trans girls, but also gender-fluid and nonbinary competitors, and even trans boys who are actively taking testosterone but still permitted to compete against females.

“It’s no longer about sex; it’s not about sex-linked hormones; and it’s not even about gender identity, since trans boys can stay in,” Coleman said. “So I can’t even describe that group anymore. And if you can’t describe that group, who’s going to fund it? And if people continue to fund it, how will it stand legally? It no longer has integrity or a purpose that we can identify because you’ve let everybody in, essentially.”

Culture war fodder

Only a handful of states have so far restricted access to girl’s and women’s sports exclusively to natal females, and all are among the most Republican-leaning in the country. At the national level, Republican Senators and have both called for similar measures.

David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College whose research focuses on U.S. political parties, said that the GOP seems to be coalescing around the proposal out of a recognition that LGBT acceptance remains “a controversial, uncomfortable issue for a lot of voters.”

“Republican politicians, who are increasingly oriented toward cultural as opposed to economic causes, have been looking for ways to translate the culture war into policy and legislation,” he continued. “So much of the culture war is actually not about what the government does, but here’s a case where it can be.”

While that much of President Biden’s agenda is reasonably popular, the polling also suggests an area of softness around the issue of trans athletes. According to a 2019 poll from Morning Consult, agreed that transgender women possessed an athletic edge over other women. , administered last month, found that 53 percent of registered voters supported a ban on trans athletes in women’s sports. Even among Democrats, just 42 percent of respondents said they would oppose such a ban, compared with 40 percent who would support it.

Aside from those figures, state-level Republicans are likely reading signs from former President Donald Trump, during his speech at February’s CPAC convention that “women’s sports as we know it [sic] will die” if restrictions aren’t adopted. In the same way that some lawmakers adopted Trump’s hatred of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, and are now its associated curriculum from use in public schools, they are now attaching themselves to another highly charged topic whose salience he has recently elevated.

But few if any elected Democrats have vocally opposed allowing trans women and girls to compete in sports according to their gender identity rather than their biological sex. Of the 16 states where official guidance recommends that course, all but one — Florida — has voted for the Democratic candidate in the last four presidential elections. This too reflects the partisan and geographic polarization at work, Hopkins argued.

“You don’t have a faction in the Democratic Party that’s pushing back against that,” he said. “They’re not worrying about carrying Senate races in South Dakota or Arkansas anymore because they’re out of the game in those states. That has really contributed to the culture war polarization between the two parties: Neither party is really trying to compete in the parts of the country that, culturally, are on the other side.”

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