Former NCAA swim captain warns Virginia elections could decide future of women’s sports
A former NCAA swim captain from Virginia who has alleged retaliation by university officials after objecting to a transgender student joining her team said she is "100%" concerned about the results of the upcoming statewide elections and the impact they could have on women in sports.
Former Roanoke College swimmer Lily Mullens spoke to Fox News Digital ahead of Virginia's upcoming elections about her experience raising concerns with her college about a transgender classmate, who was born a biological male, joining the school's female collegiate swim team.
The concerns about the matter fell on deaf ears and were brushed aside by college administrators, Mullens said, but she noted that Republican officials in the state came to her and her teammates' defense.
"Gov. Youngkin had reached out to the captains and I personally and asked how we were and how things kind of played out. And that was such a huge thing, because not even the president of my school was able to do so," Mullens told Fox News Digital. "Seeing somebody who's the leader of an entire state do that and then not have my school president, who's only overseeing 2,000 people … it's hard to describe. I was so shocked, and I was grateful at the same time."
The state of Virginia is gearing up for several consequential statewide elections later this year, including a race for the governor's seat and for attorney general. Incumbent Gov. Glenn Youngkin has reached his term limit, so Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears was handed the baton to keep the governor's mansion Republican.
She is facing off against former Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
Current Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares is also up for re-election and is being challenged by Democrat Jay Jones, who is dealing with the fallout from resurfaced text messages showing him wishing death upon a Republican colleague.
Earlier this year, Miyares said he found reasonable cause to determine that Roanoke College discriminated against Mullens and her teammates on the basis of sex and retaliated after the girls spoke up. It was a finding the college subsequently contested, calling the allegations "unsubstantiated" in a press release the school put out at the time and sent to Fox News Digital.
The issue stemmed from a transgender student who previously swam on the school's all-male swim team but wanted to switch to the all-female team following hormone therapy and other transitioning measures in the fall of 2023.
A meeting of the swim team and its members to discuss the new swimmer's upcoming participation was one moment Mullens saw firsthand that her college's administrators were unlikely to support her objections.
SPANBERGER REFUSES TO URGE JAY JONES TO EXIT RACE, DODGES QUESTIONS AFTER ‘TWO BULLETS’ TEXTS
"The purpose of the meeting was to bring us all together with this individual to, in a way, hash out whatever feelings or opinions we had to the individual with administrators in the room," Mullens recalled to Fox News Digital in August.
"At one point, it was discussed that this individual, without the transition, had thought about and gone through with planning a suicide. So, that was something that was told to all of us."
Mullens, who described herself as a religious person, said she and her teammates' first reaction was confusion after the swimmer shared specific details about a suicide plan.
"All of us felt emotionally confused. We didn't know what to do," Mullens previously shared with Fox News Digital.
Meanwhile, school administrators present at the meeting "didn't say anything," according to Mullens recollection of the event. And on-campus mental health professionals were never notified about the situation until after Mullens and others went public with the matter in a press conference. Following the press conference, Mullens and her teammates were denied opportunities to study abroad in locations of their choice despite good academic performance and a history of extensive extracurricular activities, according to Miyares' findings.
Mullens told Fox News Digital the explanations she and other swimmers got for their denials only added confusion to the whole matter even further.
"Basically, it said, 'Not only is the professor responsible for the student’s academics, but also for their behavior,'" Mullens said. "I had no idea what that means. I've never had any sort of disciplinary action to me."
CAN JAY JONES BE REPLACED? DEMOCRATS' DEFENSE OF SCANDAL-PLAGUED CANDIDATE DRAWS QUESTIONS
In additional conversations with Fox News Digital leading up to Virginia's November elections, Mullens said she felt like the college simply brushed aside all of her concerns, while taking actions that suggested support for the transgender swimmer.
"Every single email that was sent in response to us Roanoke girls speaking out — I remember our original press conference, as well as when we spoke at the Trump rally in Salem that he had last year — our president sent out emails where he said, ‘We love and support our LGBTQ students.’ So, it was like, ‘Well, if you preach inclusion and diversity that includes of ideals.’ So, when people kind of brush over that and then don't say anything else about it, it's so hypocritical to me and I don't … I've never understood how we can have one without the other.
"We need leaders who are able to say, 'Absolutely not, we're just not going to let this happen,'" Mullens said.
Approximately a week ago, Youngkin issued Executive Directive 14, which directed the state board of health to begin drafting new policies requiring private spaces, such as locker rooms and bathrooms, and for sports teams to remain separated by students' gender assigned at birth.
Mullens said she feared that, just like a new president could overturn President Donald Trump's plethora of executive orders, a new Democratic governor could do the same in her state. During a gubernatorial debate Thursday night, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Democratic Party candidate, would not answer definitively whether she would rescind Youngkin's Executive Directive 14, but she did say she does not believe politicians should be determining rules for school districts.
Her GOP opponent, Earle-Sears, unequivocally said she would not rescind the directive.
Mullens also expressed concern in her interview about the upcoming attorney general race in the state, pitting Miyares and Jones against each other. Recently, Jones came under fire after text messages from 2022 surfaced of him saying then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert should get "two bullets to the head."
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"I think it's insane that somebody who is wanting to be the top person when it comes to the law in the state can say that there's people he wishes death upon and things like that. That could very well turn into me. It could turn into my teammates," Mullens said. "The top of the law in a state should be somebody who you know is going to defend every single citizen, no matter what."
Mullens, meanwhile, called Miyares "instrumental" in supporting her and her teammates, including through helping get their story out to the broader public.
"We were bullied. I mean, I have death threats that came into my direct messages on my personal social media accounts. I have anonymous messages that were sent to me by people who I could have been sitting next to in class, and it's stuff like that that is so hard to deal with," Mullens said.
"When Attorney General Miyares came out and said, 'Look, we're going to investigate what the school did to these girls,' we were just so grateful."