Val Whiting, a former WNBA player who was a two-time national champion at Stanford, made her stance on transgender participation in women’s sports clear on Saturday night.
Whiting gave her take on X after South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley was asked about the issue earlier in the day as the team prepared for their national championship game against the Iowa Hawkeyes.
“A lot of my basketball sisters feel differently but trans women do not belong in women’s sports,” Whiting wrote. “It’s not fair nor safe for biological women. There has to be another solution for trans women to be able to compete athletically besides having them compete against biological women.”
Whiting played in the American Basketball League and Women’s National Basketball League before the WNBA took off. She then played for the Detroit Shock and the Minnesota Lynx.
She played around the same time as Staley. The Basketball Hall of Famer played for the Charlotte Sting. Staley played more than seven seasons with the Sting before a short stint with the Houston Comets.
During a press conference, OutKick’s Dan Zaksheske asked Staley her thoughts on the burning issue in the U.S.
“I’m of the opinion of, if you’re a woman, you should play. If you consider yourself a woman, and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion. You want me to go deeper?” she said.
When asked whether she thought “transgender women should be able to participate in women’s college basketball,” Staley responded, “Yes.”
“That’s the question you want to ask, I’ll give you that. Yes, yes. So, now the barnstormer people are going to flood my timeline and be a distraction to me on one of the biggest days of our game, and I’m OK with that. I really am,” she added.
