'Around Lia, I Wasn't Going To hazard Anything': UPenn Swimmer Breaks Silence

Authored by Matt Lamb via The College Fix,

A former teammate of William “Lia” Thomas praised the University of Pennsylvania for agreeing to keep men out of women’s locker rooms following negotiations with the Trump administration.

For the first time Monika Burzynska shared her frustrations with her alma mater for letting Lia Thomas, a male, undress and shower alongside female swimmers. Last week, the Trump administration unfroze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds in exchange for the Ivy League university’s agreement to strip Thomas (pictured above) of his records he took from female swimmers.

The school also agreed to amend its policies to keep locker rooms and bathrooms single sex.

Burzynska shared her story recently with Fox News.

“When that season eventually began, and Thomas became a fixture in the women’s locker room, Burzynska often retreated to the corner of the room to change,” the news outlet reported.

“Other times, Burzynska timed exactly when she changed to coincide with when Thomas showered. Eventually, Burzynska opted to only change in the stalls or in the family locker across the hall.”

The head swimming coach largely ignored her concerns. While the coach called her concerns “valid” he also told her “Lia is changing in your locker room and there’s nothing you could do about it.”

The coach agreed it was “not fair” but asked Burzynska not to share her frustrations but only to talk to him.

The swimmer has a “a deep sense of peace and validation,” now that men won’t be allowed in female locker rooms.

“Not only for me, but for all the girls on the team, for all the girls in the swim world and in the sport world. And I think this decision, it brought back – at least for me – a sense of fairness that had been lost,” Burzynska said. “Women’s records belong to women and that protecting the integrity of women’s sports still matters.”

She shared how she used to have compassion for individuals with gender dysphoria but the Thomas situation changed her view of transgender issues.

“I thought it must be terrible to feel like you’re trapped in the wrong body. Just be so out of touch with who you really are,” Burzynska told Fox News.

“You have these issues that are from afar and you never really quite think they’re going to touch you personally until you’re on a team with Lia Thomas and your locker is directly next to this biological male. And you would have never believed that you’d be facing this issue directly.

UPenn has agreed to right its wrongs, restore records to the rightful female athletes, and issue an apology to the women impacted by the man they allowed to compete as a woman.

Are pigs flying?

God bless @realDonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/PZxcieyp7m

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) July 1, 2025

“And then when that happens, your views change where you still feel sorry for this person because they’re clearly so deeply lost. But then it turns into more, ‘OK, this is not fair,’”

She said UPenn is staunchly liberal and pro-LGBT, which conflicted with her conservative views.

“And so I was kind of ready to embrace that, that my views wouldn’t be welcomed because I’ve been conservative most of my life,” she said. “My beliefs are grounded in faith.”

Her testimony comports with what Paula Scanlan, another former UPenn swimmer, previously told Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire.

The decision to protect future female athletes from males who claim to be women has drawn praise from civil rights activists.

“UPenn has agreed to right its wrongs, restore records to the rightful female athletes, and issue an apology to the women impacted by the man they allowed to compete as a woman,” Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer, wrote on X.