LVC Student Investigates Opportunities for Transgender Athletes

Chris Mosier, professional athlete, hired LVC student Erin Kingham ’18 for a once-in-a-lifetime internship opportunity, exploring inclusion in athletics across the country. The experience inspired her during a research design class where she prepared a project to further analyze the topic.

Kingham, a member of the Flying Dutchmen women’s swimming team, started exploring this issue after taking part in the 2016 NCAA Inclusion Forum in Indianapolis. While there, her interest was piqued, especially after meeting and speaking to Mosier, the first transgender man to participate on a national team.

“My main task was to research all of the currently existing policies for high school athletes who identified as transgender in all 50 states, put them in a spreadsheet and organize it by level of inclusivity,” said Kingham, who earned her health science degree in May.

This experience led her to create a research project of a related topic during her Advanced Research Design psychology course. “Chris and I had talked about the many reasons why the inclusion of transgender athletes is important, especially in high school. For high schoolers, sports play an important role in building one’s identity, self-confidence, and social network. This is important for all people, and to exclude someone because of their identity as transgender can be very damaging,” she said.

With her professor’s assistance and guidance, Kingham developed a research project to represent how transgender athletes are not able to have a choice on the sides in which they want to play–male or female. Transgender athletes who were able to choose which team they play have more positive social relations whether that be quantity or quality of friendships. The course was only designed to create a research proposal and plan, and did not include time for Kingham to conduct the research. Still, she hopes she will be able to do something similar in the future. “I plan to advocate for this issue by continuing to bring awareness to the issue and also making sure that when I vote for anything I vote for inclusion.”

She also hopes that a strong message stands behind all her work. “I hope this research project sends the message that the goal of inclusion in sports is not to make sure that teams are equally matched. Instead, the goal is to have an environment in which every player can be themselves.”

Previous research of transgender people reveals that their social wellbeing plays an important role in their mental health. Kingham is currently interning with To Write Love On Her Arms, a non-profit organization that helps people who are struggling with addiction, depression, self-harm, and suicide. She is able to reach out and help those of another group deal with challenging issues. 

With a passion for helping a variety of groups, she will return to LVC this fall to finish a degree in psychology and pursue her doctoral degree in physical therapy.