The right-wing media is running with the story that a young woman who accepted a Division 1 volleyball scholarship to the University of Washington is transgender. The story is based on a report by Reduxx, a website wholly dedicated to anti-trans news. Reduxx’s Anna Slatz claims to have received a tip from an anonymous source that a young woman who attends a private Los Angelos high school is transgender. The source claimed the girl’s performance in her sport was suspiciously good, and that there were widespread rumors among parents of volleyball players about her being trans.
Assigned cannot independently confirm whether the volleyball player named by Reduxx, Tate Drageset, is or is not transgender. The Reduxx piece does not make it clear what information the claim is based on, and the other reports in right-wing outlets such as the Post Millennial, the Daily Caller, Sportskeeda, and OutKick credit the reporting by Reduxx.
While Reduxx is vague about their sourcing, the certainty that Drageset is transgender may have come from the contents of a short film “Trans-mission.love,” which Slatz describes. Slatz claims the film was commissioned by Drageset’s mother years ago, and that the film does not include the child’s face but has one shot with a volleyball bearing the name Tate. The link to the short film currently returns an error message.
Reduxx claims that Drageset is not public about her transition history. The site has also linked her to a volleyball-and-clothing-loving transgender 9-year-old who was profiled by the LA Times in 2016. The anonymous child in that story is referred to as T. Reduxx does not clarify how they connected the subject of LA Times piece to Drageset.
The child profiled by the LA Times in 2016 socially transitioned in third grade. The story describes her parents’ gradual realization that she was trans, the process of coming out at school, as well as an incident where she was bullied by a classmate who slipped a note into her homework folder calling her a boy. It also describes her mother as having played volleyball in college, and an older sister who was playing competitively in high school at the time the story ran.
If Drageset is transgender, she would be the first trans athlete known to have been offered a scholarship for women’s sports.
UPDATE 12/17/2023: On Saturday, December 16, former 5th place NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines repeated rumors circulating among anti-trans activists that Drageset’s scholarship had been rescinded by the university. All of this, including Drageset’s trans identity and her connection to the young woman in the LA Times profile remains unconfirmed as of this writing on Sunday afternoon, December 17.
UPDATE 12/27/2023:An alert reader noticed that this Breitbart story on December 18th included a claim that Breitbart’s reporter had heard via email from Stacy Drageset that Tate would “not be playing volleyball for the University of Washington.” (Breitbart, a far right website with a tabloid style, is not generally considered a reliable source of information.)
Whether or not she’s trans, it’s hardly surprising someone would play and excel at the same sport her mom and older sister play! That and the private school are the real advantages here.
Thanks for looking into this. It’s impossible to figure out what’s going on because these sycophants have flooded the search results with transphobia
Tate would be far from the first trans woman D1 volleyball player. That she’s the first to earn a scholarship for her playing is a testament to her hard work and skill. She doesn’t deserve the jealousy driven vitriol she’s apparently received.
Assuming that Tate is trans, she would also not be the first trans woman to be offered a DI scholarship, or to compete for a power 5 school. There have been a small, but slowly growing number of trans women who have competed (most anonymously, quietly and protected by their schools) in the NCAA over the past 12 years. There are, however, more than 200,000 women playing NCAA sports every year, and trans women remain under-represented in the women’s category in the NCAA. Given that trans women are a sub-category of all women, then trans women are not taking spots from women, but rather are deserving of their share of total women’s spots in NCAA sports.
One more thing. The University of Washington is currently the 70th ranked team in NCAA DI women’s volleyball and the 8th ranked squad in the Pac-12. Tate is a high ranking recruit but hardly the best high school volleyball player in California. It has been stated that Tate was the division 5 California player of the year, however division 6 is the highest ranking division in the state. Tate would not be the division 6 player of the year. If Tate is indeed trans, then this is one more example of the exploits of a trans athlete being greatly exaggerated.