FORG-325 Media Project 1

Quinn Woods and Matthew Brown discuss the nature versus nurture debate in swimming. They believe that physical attributes play a significant role in determining success in the sport. They also touch on the importance of mental toughness and the challenges of individualized training. The conversation shifts to the topic of gender and sports, with a mention of Leah Thomas, a transgender female swimmer who broke records. They discuss the need for new divisions in athletics and the potential controversies surrounding this issue. They also mention an open water swimming competition that included a non-binary division, but no one signed up for it. They conclude by highlighting the talent and achievements of female swimmers in comparison to their male counterparts. Hello, and welcome to Conversations in Forg Sports. My name is Quinn Woods, and I am joined by Matthew Brown, and today we are discussing relevant topics in the world of swimming, and we'll get right into it. All right. So, Matthew Brown, what do you have to say, starting off this conversation right now? Hello. Well, I mean, in regards to the first, like, couple of weeks we had in this class, I think a good starting point is nature versus nurture, and I would just say, talking about what we think is more prevalent in swimming today. I mean, I personally think, I was in this debate, so I don't have that much new to add, but I wanted to ask you what you believe is more prevalent in swimming. Right. So, swimming is a very physical sport, and it definitely takes a lot of mental fortitude and willpower to be able to, you know, get yourself going at every practice, because practice makes perfect, as we know. And so, in my experience, you know, I've seen a lot of swimmers over the course of my career, a lot of really talented swimmers, and I believe that it's because of, you know, what they are born with, you know, like their physical attributes, I think that's the biggest thing that determines the success of a swimmer. You know, you can have really talented swimmers race against people who are, you know, super, you know, well-driven and have a really strong work ethic, and more times than not, the talented swimmer who doesn't train as hard will win. That's interesting, because you said work ethic, and it makes me think of the mental toughness aspect, and I think there are, personally, I would say, I know I argued for nature, but I think in general, it honestly is, for swimming, it's such an individualized sport, where you're so separated from a team environment when it comes to training for it, that it really requires a nurture aspect. I know Epstein had his story of the tale of two high jumpers, and how one just joined the game, and all of a sudden, they were, like, pro-champion, but I don't know if that can really be considered in our, like, context of our sport, because we've seen the amount of people that just cannot keep up without the rigid, like, day-to-day schedule it requires. Right. Yeah, definitely, and for me, personally, like, I started swimming my freshman year of high school, which is really late in the swimming world. Most swimmers begin swimming when they're, you know, below 10 years old, and they swim for their whole, like, academic career, and so I was kind of in a weird position, starting out way behind all these other swimmers, but since I am a little bit taller right now, I'm 6'5", that gives me a little bit of a advantage, I'd say, just because the height advantage that my arms have, that my legs have, it gives me a little bit of an easier edge when it comes to swimming. I think, though, it's an interesting thing to bring up. I mean, I did not know that you started in high school, because one thing that seems very specific to swimming is just the idea of starting young, and how often it actually leads to people dropping this sport as a whole. I know, growing up, I started from as soon as I learned to swim, is what, like, my mom used to always say, but you would just see, the longer you went on, more and more people dropped this sport because it was too much, or it was interfering with school, or it was hard to keep yourself to go to all of these practices and swim this stuff when you don't have other people there, and it's so interesting because, compared to sports like team-based sports that work with, like, flow, like soccer or football, you see them, and they're loving it since they were age 5, but here you, I remember in high school, I think I had 5, 5 teammates in my grade that ended up staying with it, so it's very interesting to see, and I think it just really brings it back to that point that, especially with swimming or sports where you're your main motivator, and it's an individual sport with a team, that it usually ends up being more nurture. Yeah, I mean, like, when I came to Trinity College as a first-year student, the other swimmers in my class, there were 7 of us, 7 men swimmers, and we started off really strong. We had a good first season as a class, and then after COVID hit, and the years after, that kind of made a significant impact on a couple of my teammates in my class, and now our season just ended a couple days ago, and we only had 3 total male senior athletes on the team, and so that just speaks to the amount of mental dedication that you need, and COVID does impact it a little bit, but there were other instances where my teammates just kind of lost the love of the sport, and then they just stopped swimming. And I think mental toughness is a very big part of it, and usually it does contribute a lot to this nurture idea, but I think it also does include some of the nature aspect to just contradict Devil's Advocate a bit. I know Epstein talked about the dopamine levels being a set thing from birth, like, if you can actually enjoy this sport, or how much you're willing to persevere or go through, and I know also looking at these nature aspects, when we go to, like Quinn said, we just ended our season, we had our big post-season meet, when you're looking at these people who are on the podium, it's not the run-of-the-mill short guy, it's the long torso, long arms, usually short legs, but just looks like a swimmer. The Michael Phelps build. Exactly. And I think that actually brings us to an interesting point where culturally something that happened recently is the idea of Leah Thomas. She is someone that has said to have this build, and she is a born male, transgender female, and she actually brought huge attention to swimming and the idea of gender versus sex in this giant realm of sports and what we consider rules and regulations as of today. So I wanted to know, what do you think about this topic of contention? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a very sensitive matter. Leah Thomas went through puberty as a male, was able to develop for the first 20 years of her life in a man's body basically, and so she has a lot of the physical attributes. She did take the testosterone reducer drugs and whatnot. Hormone blockers. Hormone blockers, yes, yes, yes. So she did follow NCAA regulations and what the swimming world required for those who have transitioned, but she was still breaking records and she was ranking among the top of the female swimming world. And so it is a delicate issue, and that begs the question of should there be another division in athletics, non-binary, or do you make a whole other transgender male, transgender female categories for specific cases like this? I think it does. The problem with this is that we end up seeing a lot of, like you said, controversy. It becomes a heated topic because it starts to take the level of controversy out of the sport and it makes it a personal issue. Right. But when you're looking at rules and regulations of sports, like we said, sports are a constantly changing thing and it's a situation where we ask do we start to create these rules and how do we go about doing this? I know you said earlier, we were talking, you said that you competed in a meet where they allowed people to choose their own category. How did that go? Right, yeah. So over the summer of 2020, I swam in an open water swimming competition and they started us all, all the competitors, male, female, all ages, we started all at the same time. We swam the same course and we all finished whenever we finished competing. And afterwards, they did divide us into masters male, masters female, open division of male, open division of female, open meaning all ages. And then there was a non-binary division trying to be as inclusive as possible. And I ended up actually placing second in that race. I was out-touched by an 18-year-old swimmer who she was pretty quick for her age and she had a lot more training than I did at the time. But for the non-binary division, when they were calling out the awards, no one stepped up to receive it. And it turns out that no one actually signed up for the division as a whole. So I think that sports, swimming in particular, they're starting to phase in this new division of non-binary. But I think that it will take some time definitely to attract this new group of people to the sport. I think that's really interesting because I didn't know that by trying it out, I think you would assume that people want to join this, but it seems that there's almost a stigma to be the first, to be one of the ones who goes in. And even though there are authors like Martin Kova that talk about people that don't fit these binary categories, they want And I hear that it's successful in some places, but it also sounds like in many sports there aren't places for them to do it or for them to do it comfortably. Exactly. Which makes it such an interesting topic. But you said in your race, were you beaten by a female? Not to call you out, but... Yes, I was, yep. A female who was three years younger than me. So there we go. I mean, that just goes to say that there's, in these places, you can find, I know, what's it called? It was in, I think, Epstein, that they talked about endurance sports similar to swimming or long distance running, that there is the least variation in this natural advantage that men have over women. But even then, it is interesting to show that if they wanted to, they can compete and they can find themselves doing what they want to do. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, we were comparing the top swimmers of the women's SEC championship swimming that just finished this last weekend and comparing it to the men's NESCAC championship, which also happened at the same time. And many of these female swimmers from this Division One league, the SEC, they would have placed in the top of the men's NESCAC. And so we see this comparison between D1 and D3, male and female. And that kind of sparks the question like, should top female performers be able to enter into these lower men's division leagues trying to challenge themselves and maybe take that next step and see if they can emerge into this new division? I think, I mean, if they want to, I think that is perfectly fine and perfectly good for them. But like we said, I think the problem is the stigmas around it. And I think, like you said, no one entered that category. And there are risks of being out in the public doing that. And also, I know we talked about, in one of the debates, we talked about medical risks and the fact that even in certain cases, them undergoing these surgeries is something that is dangerous for them. So I think it becomes a individualized issue of if they want to do this, undergo this process to join it. But it makes it very interesting. And I think it's so interesting to me that swimming is the place that it sort of got brought to mainframe. And I think the idea of Leah Thomas, it sort of made it an issue to all transgender people. It sort of spearheaded a negative movement for them, which almost like backfired what they wanted to do. And I think there are a lot of risks. And even, like I said, it might be an individual aspect, but it does have greater meanings and changes the rules of sport, like you said. I mean, the article that we were assigned that specifically talked about the Leah Thomas case with her teammates coming out and saying that they actually did not want her to compete at NCAAs or these other championship level swim meets just because they were losing their spot going to the tournament as there's limited seats for each team to go. And while they did congratulate her for her stepping out and feeling brave enough to do this, there was still kind of this hesitancy to let her fully do what she wants to do, and that's swimming. At the end of the day, it's just sports. And we're all swimmers, and we love swimming, and people shouldn't be restricted from being able to do that. Yeah. And I think that is a good point to end this discussion of our first media project. Yeah. Thank you, Professor Alcorn, for listening to all of this. Yes. Thank you, Professor. All right. All right. Well, on that note, this has been, what did you call it? Conversations with... Conversations in Forg Sports with Matthew Brown. There we go. All right. Goodbye. Goodbye.