A new analysis from the think tank Concerned Women of America finds that transgender athletes have taken 2,293 championship spots away from biological female competitors in the United States since the mid-1980s, according to a review of data compiled by the volunteer-run tracking site HeCheated.org.
The research goes beyond simply counting how many transgender athletes have competed in women’s sports. It attempts to calculate how many of those competitions produced an outcome in which a biological female would have won a specific title, award or spot had a transgender athlete not been in the field. In total, the database used for the analysis lists more than 14,000 instances of transgender athletes competing in women’s sporting events at the high school, college, amateur and professional levels.
The HeCheated.org database is extensive. Its first page alone lists 200 documented instances dating from March 27, 2025, to September 18, 2026. Examples include transgender athletes making league All-Star teams in high school lacrosse, winning high school state track and field championships in Washington, California and Oregon, and earning All-conference recognition in college fencing. Several entries also describe transgender athletes receiving “most improved” awards.
A Growing Population of Transgender Youth
Researchers and advocates on the issue point to broader demographic data showing a rising number of young people identifying as transgender. Author Abigail Shrier, in her 2020 book “Irreversible Damage,” cited a 1,000 to 5,000 percent increase in the number of youth identifying as transgender over a several-year period.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that about 3 percent of high school students identified as transgender. In 2025, the Williams Institute estimated that 724,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as transgender, or roughly 3.6 percent of that age group.
The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine estimated that transgender or nonbinary identification among college students has reached an all-time high, ranging between 4.7 percent and 6.7 percent. The NCAA currently requires college athletes to compete on teams matching their sex assigned at birth. The WNBA, by contrast, does not have a specific policy restricting participation based on gender.
Policy Debate Continues
Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead has launched a petition calling on the WNBA to adopt gender eligibility restrictions for its athletes.
Individual accounts have also surfaced alongside the data. A high school athlete named Ahnaleigh Wilson, who lost to a male competitor in a track meet in eighth grade, told The Seattle Times she has since competed against four biological male athletes during her time in high school. A UCLA study has estimated that as many as 122,000 transgender youth may be participating in high school sports nationwide.
The debate over transgender participation in women’s and girls’ sports remains active in state legislatures and athletic governing bodies, with Washington, California and Oregon among the states named in the newly compiled records of contested competitions.
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