(LifeSiteNews) – Former ESPN personality Samantha Ponder is the latest figure from the mainstream sports world to speak out against the inclusion of gender-confused males in female athletics, citing the experience of her own daughter.
Ponder, who hosted Sunday NFL Countdown until ESPN fired her last year (officially due to budget cuts but suspected to have been motivated by her past speaking out on social media), posted October 19 on X about witnessing “yet another basketball game today where my middle school daughter is guarding an obviously naturally born boy in a girls tournament. The parents cheer while the boy is physical and dominant against the girls. The all girls team loses.”
“We’ve taught our kids to never make fun of the kid … to always be kind and loving,” she continued. “That the parents are the problem. That no kid is born in the wrong body. But if I’m honest, watching my daughter get posted up by a boy whose parents have deceived him in this way is maddening.”
“To everyone saying ‘just move!’ I understand the sentiment but (in my humble opinion New York City) is the greatest American city that has lost its way,” Ponder explained. “I want to fight for truth and love. I don’t want to give in to insanity and darkness. This is still America.”
It’s happened many times now living in NYC… yet another basketball game today where my middle school daughter is guarding an obviously naturally born boy in a girls tournament. The parents cheer while the boy is physical and dominant against the girls. The all girls team loses.
— Samantha Steele Ponder (@samponder) October 19, 2025
To everyone saying “just move!” I understand the sentiment but IMHO NYC is the greatest American city that has lost its way. I want to fight for truth and love. I don’t want to give in to insanity and darkness. This is still America.
— Samantha Steele Ponder (@samponder) October 19, 2025
“I thought this was sports. We’re talking about female collegiate athletes, Olympic athletes, and it’s wrong to shine a voice on that and give another voice, another opinion?” Ponder has previously said. “I wasn’t against debate or healthy discussion. I just didn’t want anyone telling me, ‘No, no, no, you can’t talk about that. I wasn’t really giving my own opinions on it, as much as I was saying, ‘Listen to these girls, they’re in the locker rooms. Why do their opinions not deserve a platform when we’re giving awards for Women’s History Month to someone born male? I couldn’t understand it, I still don’t understand it.”
Mandatory inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be fully negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men (do) 0not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy;” therefore, “the advantage to transwomen [biological men] afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Even the left-wing United Nations has acknowledged as much via an October 2024 report by special rapporteur Reem Alsalem that found more than 600 female athletes around the world have lost more than 890 medals to men in 29 sports as of March 2024. “To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,” the report concluded.
In America since the 1980s, more than 1,941 gold medals in female events that would have gone to female athletes have instead been claimed by men identifying as “trans women,” and along with them more than $493,173 in prize money across more than 10,067 amateur and professional events, according to data compiled by He Cheated and reviewed by Concerned Women for America.
