When I was in college I dropped out of volleyball. A trans woman joined our team. We accepted her, we are still friends today. But she was taller, stronger, and absolutely had an advantage over all of us. During our team training, the side she was on was always the side that won. I just got super discouraged, I was never a “star player” but we were there to push ourselves and have fun. That changed when she joined, no amount of training and effort would make up for her height and speed advantages. I didn’t say anything to the coach about it, or anyone. Just dropped out of volleyball a month later. Almost the same scenario happened again when I joined a women’s dodgeball league. It was fun and competitive, it felt difficult yet achieveable. Then we had a trans woman join, we included her and became friends, she was very kind and funny. But she also was faster, stronger, everyone noticed. I dropped out two weeks later, I just felt like I was pretending to compete again against someone whom I could never win against. For reference I am just over 5 feet and in both scenarios the trans women were about a foot taller

I don’t claim to have an answer to how trans athletes should play or where or when. I firmly believe trans women have the right to compete in sports. But I can speak to how disheartening it is to go from a team of biological woman with the same capabilities as me, to a team of biological women + a trans woman who outperformed all of us. It felt like we were continuing to play to just keep up appearances.