One of the most polarizing and pressing issues in American sports today is the decision to include or ban transgender athletes from competition in women's sports.
The face of the issue has been Lia Thomas, the trans swimmer who dominated women's college swimming last year at the University of Pennsylvania.
The issue has driven legislative discussion in many states, and in June, Ohio's House of Representatives approved a bill to ban trans athletes from participating in women's athletics.
But when the bill was passed, there was only one high school trans athlete in Ohio — Ember Zelch, a softball player who played backup catcher. Recently, she spoke candidly with Pablo Torre on his show "Pablo Torre Finds Out" as he tried to learn the story of the individual at the center of the state's attempt to ban trans athletes from playing.
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Torre, who moved from ESPN to Meadowlark Media earlier this year to start this show, flew to Zelch's home in Northeast Ohio to speak to her. He started his interview by sarcastically describing the setting of Zelch's room – one that did not match that of a jock looking to infiltrate women's athletics.
"I've been told that you're amazing at softball and all sports really, " Torre said sarcastically.
"I mean truly incredible — just look at all my trophies," Zelch said, later pointing at the one trophy she had: a participation trophy.
"This is not the room of the person I was promised," Torre said later on.
Zelch described herself to Torre as a "weird kid," one who loved all kinds of animals, including snakes and geckos. Her own mother, Minna Zelch, whom Torre spoke to as well, also bluntly described her daughter's athletic prowess — or lack thereof.
"She's never hit a home run in her life," Minna Zelch said.
Zelch said that her desire to play softball started in the eighth grade, but because she was undergoing puberty, she had to pass some stringent tests from the Ohio High School Athletics Association.
She said she needed to take pills to control her testosterone levels and submit health reports that even her own doctors were confused about. But she eventually got the approval from OHSAA to allow her to play.
"The state agrees that I'm a girl," she recalled telling her brother while she was in tears.
Once she joined the team, she said there were no issues among her teammates. In fact, she told a story of simple team introductions in which she said her "fun fact" was that she was trans. Her teammates didn't really like that she didn't share something different.
"They thought it was weird, not that I was trans, but that I told them I was trans like it was a big deal," Zelch said.
Ohio recently tried passing legislation that kept trans female athletes from playing sports. But Ember Zelch just wanted to play softball, and nobody on her team seemed to mind.@PabloTorre: "If the kids on the team didn't care ... who did not want you to play softball?"
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) September 19, 2023
Ember:… pic.twitter.com/y9Zo0PoVot
Torre asked Zelch who had been the opponents of her desire to play.
"Exclusively politicians. And mostly older, male politicians," Zelch said.
Zelch said she's had to speak in front of the state house during discussions of the bill, and she has described the experience as "demeaning and horrifically painful."
"Last time I testified against a trans athlete ban, the committee was not listening," Zelch said. "They were actively talking to each other and whispering to each other during my testimony. I do not care anymore about educating them. Because it's clear that they don't care to listen. It's clear that they don't want to be educated. They don't want to be knowledgeable. They just want to have power."
Torre then asked Zelch to explain what the argument of the other side generally is.
"There are some people who do really think that their stance is to protect girls," Zelch said. "The vast majority of people, if they have done any research, realize that that's not what's happening. It's mostly just politicians that are trying to incite fear."
The show plays a clip of Ohio Representative Josh Williams, who said in a hearing that there have been "countless complaints" filed against transgendered athletes in the state.
However, Minna Zelch said that the OHSAA told her that there have been zero complaints about transgender athletes, and Pablo Torre confirmed that by emailing the OHSAA as well.
The AP reported in 2021 that out of two dozen lawmakers that were sponsoring bills against trans girls playing sports, in almost every case, they could not cite a single trans female athlete in their state/region that had caused the problem they were allegedly solving.
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) September 20, 2023
"One of… pic.twitter.com/CtOi1bv4Mp
But Ember Zelch said that there is another concern in women's sports that she believes is more pressing than her threat as a transgender athlete: the inequities her team faced as compared to the men's baseball team.
"Almost every field was crap, for lack of a better description," Zelch said. "My team's field is the elementary school field. Our baseball teams varsity and junior varsity had two fields, both of them at the high school. They could simply walk outside for a game or practice. My team had to get on a bus to go to our field," Zelch said.
Despite all the difficulties, Zelch said she wants to continue playing softball in college in some way — though she will no longer attend school in Ohio because of the constraints provided by legislation — because it is her escape from reality and a place where she can belong.
"On the field, I can put away all the all this bullshit, all this legislation, scholarships, all thoughts constantly racing around in my head. All this struggle I can set that aside on the field, and I can join this group of people who understand my desire to just want to be part of a team," Zelch said. "That's why it's worth it to me to keep going through all these tests, to keep dealing with the ideology that I am some monster in order to still just be able to be myself and forget about life for just a little bit."
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Torre ended with a short monologue which he finishes each of his shows with to express what it is he found out during that episode — a call out to the show's title — in which he explained how this issue has been blown out of proportion.
"I am blown away by how obvious it is now that the single most exaggerated campaign issue, the single most exaggerated fear in American life, is the fear of trans girls invading women's sports — something that cable news and politicians cannot stop selling us as this huge, pressing concern," Torre said. "I do get that there are real competitive advantages to going through male puberty — like height ... but I also believe that the biggest advantage there is testosterone, and that can, and should be regulated ... inside that tiny population of trans kids ... they are not all Lia Thomas, they're not. They're not coming for your scholarships and opportunities and trophies."
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