Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham is a WNBA player – she plays basketball for a living – but it isn’t her skill on the court that’s made her famous. Her first foray into infamy occurred last year, when she horse-collared opposing guard Jacy Sheldon and threw her to the ground after Sheldon poked Cunningham’s marquee teammate, Caitlin Clark, in the eye. Cunningham then used her newfound fame and her good looks to get into the 2026 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and get a stint as a ring girl for July’s UFC 329.
While some opposing players might not have appreciated Cunningham the “enforcer,” the haters came out en masse after a July 21 interview with ESPN in which she made clear her opposition to men competing in women’s sports.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” she says. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
It was a common sense take, but her own coach refused to have any part of it. When asked for her take on “biological males in women’s sports,” Fever coach Stephanie White dodged, and then threw Cunningham under the bus:
“I wouldn’t really say that I’m educated enough from a scientific standpoint. I don’t ever believe that exclusion is the answer.”
Exclusion is never the answer? This is a coach in the Women’s National Basketball Association which exists even though there is already a National Basketball Association that both men and women are eligible to play in. Why then does the WNBA exist? To exclude men. Because when men aren’t excluded, then women will be. There is not a single female player in the NBA, not because any rule prevents it, but because biology does. This “inclusive” coach doesn’t get that she’s in an inherently exclusive league.
During a July 28 game with the Fever visiting the Seattle Storm, two teen girls were cussed out by one of the Storm’s owners because they had a sign supporting Cunningham’s stand. When the Fever played the Portland Fire on July 31, the Fire coach got asked about men in women’s sports, and he insisted he was “completely supportive of everyone.” Then, when the Fever played the Minnesota Lynx on August 2, head coach Cheryl Reeve wore a “Trans kids belong” shirt, and ESPN commentators Ryan Ruocco and Rebecca Lobos pointed it out, and encouraged viewers to “go and listen” to Reeve’s “incredibly thoughtful” comments defending procedures that mutilate and sterilize kids.
Cunningham hasn’t backed down, tweeting out a picture of coach Cheryl Reeve in her shirt and captioning it “There is no such thing as ‘TRANS KIDS’” followed by a smiling clown emoji. But there is some irony in Cunningham taking a stand against men in women’s sports. Twelve years ago she played for the Rock Bridge High School Bruins when the team’s primary kicker went down with a season-ending ACL injury. Long before we started pretending boys could become girls, we were pretending that girls could play football with the boys. It’s the very same kind of biological blindness that insists girls can withstand hits from 250-pound linebackers. And what kind of lesson is it for these giant boys to tell them it’s no big thing to treat women just like men? Cunningham is certainly courageous, but in the past she’s also participated in the confusion.
Sports media commentator Clay Travis offered to clear away the confusion with an Aug. 3 tweet:
“Important announcement: I am upping my offer, $10 million dollars for a head-to-head basketball game between the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and a boy’s high school state title team of my choice. If the Aces beat my team, I will give them $10 million.”
The WNBA salary cap in 2026 is $7 million for a 45-game season. Travis is calling this “inclusive” league out, offering to more than double the Aces’ salary for one extra games worth of work… if only they can beat high school boys. If there really is no difference between men and women, then why wouldn’t the very best women ballers in the world be confident about beating high school boys? Because deep down they do know what they’ve been saying about gender swapping is nonsense
We should admire Cunningham for her courage, and Travis for being willing to back his stand with big bucks. But what the world needs to hear now is the clarity that only God’s Word offers. Why is it so stupid for men to play against women? And why does the world have to pretend otherwise? It’s because they’ve rejected God’s Word, and that’s left them without any foundation to stand on. Christians know that men and women are all made in God’s Image (Gen. 1:26-27) and this, then, is the basis of our worth and our equality. But apart from God, what makes us valuable? The world has nowhere to turn but our abilities. That’s why they say we can kill the unborn, and for that matter the elderly and disabled – their lives are said to not be as valuable because they can’t do as much. But then how do they explain equality? Only by pretending that men and women can do exactly the same things. To say otherwise – to say that men can play basketball better than women, for example – is then understood to be an assault on women’s worth. So we’re all expected to ignore our eyes, and just believe that women can be oil rig workers, and “trans women are women.”
God’s people are getting some help from the Cunninghams and Travises of the world in exposing these crazy lies. But the Church needs to step up and point the world to the God who defines reality. This is our moment to give Him the glory by providing the world with His answers – let’s not let it slip by.
Photo is adapted from an August 2, 2026 photo by John McClellan and is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
