Op-Ed: Girls deserve to take up space

Audio By Carbonatix

I have two daughters, ages 9 and 7. When I look at them, I see girls who are still figuring out how much space they are allowed to take up in this world. I want them to be able to follow their dreams and beyond.

Growing up, I had a team to compete on, locker rooms where I could change, bathrooms where I could have privacy, and organizations where I could build friendships alongside other girls and women. The wish for my girls to have the same should not be radical in 2026. Yet, here in Colorado – and across the country – those wishes are slowly slipping away.

Just this week, members and alumnae of Kappa Kappa Gamma returned to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit as their years-long legal battle with their sorority continues. The Holtmeier v. Kappa Kappa Gamma case grew out of Kappa’s decision to admit a transgender-identifying male student into its University of Wyoming chapter. Their argument is that Kappa leadership violated the female-only sisterhood they were promised.

These girls have been fighting for years. They’ve been dismissed, ridiculed – you name it, they’ve heard it. And yet they are not backing down. I find that so incredibly brave.

Their battle against males infiltrating women’s spaces isn’t confined to their sorority – far from it. At one of our largest high schools here in Colorado, students have access to only all-gender restrooms on the second floor. Think about the message that sends to our daughters – and sons for that matter. No separate, private, space for themselves.

Another big problem besides this? Parents don’t seem to know.

I spent years competing at the highest levels of women’s athletics. I was a two-time NCAA champion at the University of North Carolina and an American record holder. Sports gave me the confidence I craved, lifelong friendships, and a supportive community. They taught me how to lose, how to win, how to lead, and that I belonged somewhere.

But I worry when debates solely focus on the upper levels of organizations. What about the girls affected in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and D3 collegiate teams? This issue doesn’t just touch the D1 athletes; it hits home for every woman. I even worry about those athletes on the bench, in addition to the all-star trophy winners, who might lose out on a shot at competing when faced with the prospect of a male on the team. Athletics, after all, are a zero sum game.

Our future leaders are the little girls sitting in elementary-school classrooms today. They’re the teenagers walking into high-school locker rooms awkwardly avoiding the man changing right in front of them.

Sports and sororities might seem like worlds apart, but they aren’t. In actuality, both are safe spaces for young women to grow into the humans that they were called to be. Both spaces recognize that women benefit from being around other women.

This summer, the Supreme Court upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho preserving female athletic teams for biological females. The court held that states may determine eligibility for women's and girls’ sports based on biological sex.

President Trump has also directed the federal government to enforce Title IX in a manner that protects female athletic opportunities, including women’s sports and locker rooms.

Those developments don’t decide Holtmeier’s case, but they sure do give it momentum.

If we recognize that biological sex matters when women step onto a starting line, why are we so uncomfortable acknowledging that it can matter when women ask for privacy and women-only associations, too?

What are we teaching them when we repeatedly ask them to surrender their spaces?

The plaintiffs in Holtmeier v. Kappa Kappa Gamma standing up in Denver have been through more than any college student should have to endure. But they are courageous. And I will be standing in lockstep with them until we can ensure that all that women’s spaces are for biological women.