{"id":860979,"date":"2026-09-26T04:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T04:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/860979\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T04:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T04:50:08","slug":"olympic-champion-nancy-hogshead-honored-for-advocacy-as-she-pushes-wnba-on-female-eligibility-rules-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/860979\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic champion Nancy Hogshead honored for advocacy as she pushes WNBA on female eligibility rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three-time Olympic swimming champion Nancy Hogshead was honored Thursday for her work advocating for female athletes as she continues to push the WNBA<\/a> to formally adopt female-only eligibility rules.<\/p>\n

Hogshead received the U.S. Olympians and Paralympians<\/a> Association\u2019s Dorothy Franey Langkop Ambassador Award, which recognizes continued service to the Olympic and Paralympic movement after an athlete\u2019s competitive career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just really nice to be recognized by my peers,\u201d Hogshead told OutKick in an exclusive interview Friday.<\/p>\n

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The civil rights attorney and founder of Champion Women has spent years working on Title IX compliance, protections against sexual abuse in sports and the preservation of female athletic categories.<\/p>\n

Her current efforts include a petition calling on the WNBA to explicitly define \u201cwoman\u201d as female<\/a> for eligibility purposes. The petition, launched in August, had accumulated more than 21,000 verified signatures as of Friday.<\/p>\n

Hogshead said hundreds of Olympians and Paralympians have also backed the broader effort to preserve women\u2019s sports for female athletes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have 520 Olympians and Paralympians that have signed on to our petition,\u201d she told OutKick. \u201cPeople who are in sport, they want sport to be formally sex-segregated.\u201d<\/p>\n

US WOMEN OLYMPIANS REACT TO HISTORIC SUPREME COURT RULING ON THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN\u2019S SPORTS<\/a><\/p>\n

Hogshead wore an XX-XY Athletics shirt to Thursday\u2019s ceremony and said she received an overwhelmingly positive response from other attendees.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople came up to me all night long and were saying, \u2018Thank you so much for what you\u2019re wearing. Thanks so much for what you\u2019re doing. I have daughters. I have granddaughters,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

During her acceptance speech, Hogshead argued that Olympic and Paralympic athletes have a responsibility to use their platforms to defend the principles that gave them opportunities to compete.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery girl in this country who gets a team, a scholarship, a locker room, a coach and a fair sport is standing on what we built,\u201d Hogshead said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy work has been to defend and further those wins, to make sure that women\u2019s sports remain a space for females, to make sure that girls\u2019 and women\u2019s programs are funded the way that the law requires, not the way that\u2019s necessarily convenient, and to hold our movement accountable for abusive coaches and for the safety of our athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The WNBA\u2019s collective bargaining agreement states that only women are eligible to play in the league but does not further define the term or establish a specific transgender eligibility policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The league addressed the debate in August, saying there were \u201cno immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA<\/a>\u201d and denouncing what it called \u201cbad-faith efforts\u201d to demean or marginalize others. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert also said the league would continue discussions with the players\u2019 association while prioritizing fair competition and the integrity of the game.<\/p>\n

No transgender woman has played in the WNBA.<\/p>\n

Hogshead nevertheless argued the league should establish its rules before a dispute arises.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoys and men have invaded virtually every aspect of girls\u2019 sports,\u201d she told OutKick. \u201cIt\u2019s inevitable that, of course, a male will come in. And why not? You\u2019re the WNBA. Come up with eligibility criteria that is supportive of a female-only category.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hogshead won three gold medals and one silver at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Champion Women says its work also helped support the federal legislation that established the U.S. Center for SafeSport and strengthened oversight of abuse within the Olympic movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t inherit the Olympic dream to keep it for ourselves,\u201d Hogshead said at the conclusion of her speech. \u201cWe inherited it to pass it on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three-time Olympic swimming champion Nancy Hogshead was honored Thursday for her work advocating for female athletes as she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-860979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}