Sophie Cunningham has been a top target for transgender activists since the summer.
She said biological men don’t belong in girls’ locker rooms. Then she refused to take it back.
Now she’s gone home to Missouri. And what she wore onto that football field has the woke crowd fuming.
One cap, one word, and a whole lot of applause
Cunningham never really left Columbia behind. She grew up about 10 minutes from campus, won four straight state titles at Rock Bridge High School, and by the time she wrapped up her college career in 2019 she stood among just three Mizzou women’s players to score 2,000 career points.
So when the Indiana Fever guard turned up at Missouri’s recent homecoming game, the home crowd knew exactly who she was.
But the fans in the stands weren’t the only ones paying attention to her outfit.
Cunningham wore a ball cap with a short message stitched on it, according to the Los Angeles Times. Smaller letters along the side read “No Cis Just.” The front carried one word in big, bold letters: “Woman.”
And she didn’t leave anybody guessing about what she meant. When the stadium announcer called her name and she walked onto the field to applause, Cunningham pointed at the cap with both hands, Breitbart News reported.
About as subtle as a lob pass to an open center.
For folks who don’t keep up with campus vocabulary, “cis” is the label activists cooked up for people whose sense of self matches their biology. Most Americans just call those people men and women. Cunningham’s hat made the same point without a lecture.
How one locker room answer put a bullseye on her back
The whole fight goes back to July. Cunningham sat down with ESPN and addressed the flak she had taken over her views on males competing against women.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” Cunningham said.
She kept going. “And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Reporters pressed her again before a game against the Connecticut Sun. She didn’t budge an inch. “I think it’s kind of common sense,” she said.
She also told them, “I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category.”
Activists answered with rallies and protests ahead of multiple Fever games, according to Just Women’s Sports.
But plenty of people had her back. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt jumped in from the briefing room.
“It’s even more ludicrous that you do have Sophie Cunningham, a female athlete herself, very accomplished in her own right, coming forth and speaking that truth that men shouldn’t play in women’s sports,” Leavitt said.
Riley Gaines, the former NCAA swimmer who has spent years fighting for female athletes, chimed in on social media. “In a world full of Megan Rapinoes, be a Sophie Cunningham,” Gaines wrote, according to the Daily Wire.
The Athletic picks a fight it may regret
Here’s where things get ugly.
A columnist for The Athletic, the sports site owned by the New York Times, recently urged the Fever to part ways with Cunningham, Breitbart reported. The reasoning boiled down to her views on trans athletes making her “too turbulent” for the WNBA.
Sit with that for a second. A woman said little girls deserve their own locker rooms. A sports writer at a newspaper-owned outlet decided that opinion should cost her a roster spot.
And the timing sure is convenient. The Las Vegas Aces knocked Indiana out in the first round of the playoffs, which made Cunningham an unrestricted free agent, according to Just Women’s Sports. She started just three games this season but still finished as one of Indiana’s top bench scorers, knocking down 41.9% of her three-pointers.
So nobody in the front office even has to swing an axe. All the Fever have to do is let her walk.
Why the WNBA can’t wiggle out of this one
The WNBA has spent years planting its flag on the activist side of this debate. Back in 2022, the players’ union put out a statement pledging to “fight for trans youth across the country,” the Daily Wire reported.
That’s the culture Cunningham clocks in to every day. And she’s one of the very few players willing to say out loud what a huge share of ticket buyers already believe.
Here’s the corner the league has backed itself into. If the WNBA keeps males out of the women’s game, it concedes that biology decides who counts as a woman, which is the exact point activists insist nobody may make. If it lets them in, every team suddenly has a reason to go recruit the biggest, fastest men willing to sign up, and the women’s game stops meaning much of anything.
No comfortable middle ground exists. Cunningham’s hat said as much with a single word.
The Supreme Court has already weighed in on part of the argument. The justices upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho that bar males from competing on girls’ school teams, according to the Union Democrat.
Remember who has been packing the arenas lately, too. Caitlin Clark brought a flood of new fans to the WNBA, and Cunningham earned her own loyal following as the teammate who stood up for Clark on the court. Show her the door and those fans will get a pretty clear message about where they rank.
Cunningham told reporters back in July, “I’m not a very political person.”
Maybe not. But she sure knows how to read a room. And when a stadium full of hometown fans applauded as she pointed at that cap, it looked like the room was reading her right back.
Indiana will make its call on her future in the months ahead. The columnists have made their pitch. The folks in Columbia made theirs, too.
“Sophie Cunningham Trolls Trans Activists with ‘Woman’ Hat at Mizzou Football Game,” Breitbart
Los Angeles Times (as cited by Breitbart)
The Athletic (as cited by Breitbart)
“Sophie Cunningham speaks out on protecting girls from competing against ‘biological men’,” Fox News
“Sophie Cunningham defends stance on protecting girls from trans athletes, WH joins her,” The National News Desk
“WNBA Star Breaks With League On Explosive Issue,” The Daily Wire
“Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham stands by her comments about transgender athletes competing,” Union Democrat
“Sophie Cunningham WNBA Free Agent,” Just Women’s Sports
“Senior Feature: There’s Only One Sophie,” Mizzou Athletics