Thank you ladies! I had to go do work so only coming back to the thread now.
To the woman who said my experience sounded abusive: this is what is so infuriating about the Lia situation. College sports at that level aren't a democracy. Ivy athletes aren't on scholarship, but for everyone else, scholarships are year to year. If a coach doesn't like you and wants to get rid of you, they don't have to give a reason. No athlete is going to win against their coach and athletic department even if you could afford a lawyer. Imagine if you're going into your senior year. You can't get an academic scholarship at that point, coaches talk to each other so if one coach decides they don't like you they can tell other coaches not to accept your transfer, and another school might not even have your academic program or accept credits. They can kick you off the team whenever they want and if you don't have money to pay for school, that's your problem and you could lose your whole degree.
By the way, when my friend had that experience with her roommate being raped by another athlete, a bunch of us wanted to wear rubber wristbands against sexual assault. Sports communities are really small: like swim mom said, we all grow up competing against each other so lots of us are friends. We had a meet against their school and we wanted to wear little wristbands about sexual assault and we were unequivocally told no, that politics weren't allowed in the NCAA. They told us if we wanted we could sit down with a counsellor and talk about our feelings. And that was just a bracelet no one could even see! So to hear the mom talk about suddenly being forced to wear T-shirts with a political slogan - see the difference when women want to speak out about issues affecting us?
Another thing, since I'm sharing - I keep saying people say, well sports shouldn't be about competition anyway, it should be about inclusion and social benefit. So if it's not about competing, how come LT has to compete so badly? Men get to compete and women are supposed to treat sports like social work or something as if we didn't train our whole lives, watch what we eat, wake up at the crack of dawn, have our families sacrifice everything!
And on a team, we were always told we had to tolerate different viewpoints. It's not like a friend group where you get to choose. On teams you have conservative girls, super liberal girls, girls with different religions, different cultures and countries and races...we were always told we had to learn to respect each other's differences and work together. I had a super pro life teammate, like I mean now she protests abortion clinics pro life. I had extremely religious teammates who wanted to pray before meets and atheist teammates and Jewish teammates. And that's part of being on a team. But suddenly with LT, everyone has to shut up and there's only one viewpoint allowed and no one is even able to have another viewpoint?
And last thing, if you haven't competed at this level it can be hard to understand the relationship you have with your teammates. Yes, everyone doesn't always get along (e.g. pro life teammate) but when you're competing together you're all each other has. It's really tough being an athlete at that level. We train together like 20 hours a week. You live together, have study hall together, get screamed at by the coaches together. When you're having a bad workout, it's your teammate looking over at you and telling you to keep going, it will be over soon, you can do it who gets you through. At the US Olympic marathon trials, Shalane Flanagan was having a really terrible day and her teammate ran with her and was like "we're both going to make it" and literally talked her through it. That's what your teammates mean to you. When your coaches are on you, or you're injured, or life is going badly, you come into practice and those girls are who holds you up and gets you through. So hearing about how LT is making these girls unsafe in the locker room, and how they have to pretend to like it - it affects everything. How do you trust your teammates if you confide in them and then they say you're a bigot and might report you? How do you laugh with your teammates about farting in practice or flooding with your period or something if LT is there and you don't feel comfortable? It changes that whole dynamic and means teammates can't even depend on each other if the school is basically surveilling them.
But yeah, when people are saying why don't the girls just refuse to compete I don't think they understand how much control teams have, how you've been trained to be obedient, to swallow pain, to not complain, to suck it up, to put yourself aside, to stay positive, to support your team, to be perfect and good...how do those girls even find their voice? The coaches and AD have all the power and if you don't like it, you can leave and leave all your friends, your whole life, your whole identity. But only LT's identity matters, not women.