Before Lia Thomas' infamous tie with Riley Gaines at the 2022 NCAA championships, the women's swimmers of the Ivy League and their families witnessed the impact that the former University of Pennsylvania swimmer had on the sport - up close.
In a regular-season tri-meet against Yale and Dartmouth on Jan. 8, 2022, Thomas won the 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle.
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That was the first time Kim Jones, mother of former Yale women's swimmer Raime Jones, saw Thomas swim in person.
"Oh my gosh, I can't, I mean, he was huge. It felt like a joke," Kim Jones told Fox News Digital. "It took everything I had inside, not to cry… you think someone is going to put a stop to this nonsense, and then watch it unfold, it felt like the Twilight Zone."
Jones and her daughter both knew Thomas would be at the meet going into it. But then, seeing it play out in real-time set off an emotional reaction from the whole family.
"My daughter, she was super upset. She'd spent days preparing to face a man," Jones said. "My daughter was 6 feet tall and broad-shouldered, very athletic, and he just utterly dwarfed her, both in the width of his shoulders and in his height."
"No one thought it was real, but no one could stop it. You just felt like you were watching a runaway train and I remember walking out of the facility and just breaking down in tears."
But for Kim Jones, seeing Thomas beat her daughter at that meet was neither the end nor the beginning, of the emotional toll the situation took on her and her family.
"The girls had already been pulled into mandatory meetings across the Ivy League, and really been bullied and silenced," Jones said. "They had been pulled into meetings and told, 'Don't speak to media. This isn't your fight. Let the men in charge of the NCAA decide what to do. Your school and your league have already determined their stance, you signed up for this.' There was a lot of gaslighting.
"They even said 'it was your job to keep your families quiet.'"
Fox News Digital has reached out to Yale, UPenn and the Ivy League for comment.
Jones recalled an alleged futile phone call with a representative from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she tried to plead her case, but was allegedly told that if she "didn't agree with" Thomas competing against women, she could "always write a letter." Fox News Digital has reached out to the ACLU for comment.
"And I remember hanging up and thinking, 'You have no idea what I could do,'" she said.
So Jones began a mission to bring about consequences.
She started by writing anonymous op-eds about the situation, while encouraging other Ivy League parents to do the same. But she wasn't satisfied.
"I knew an organization needed to exist," Jones said.
That opportunity came weeks after Thomas' controversial NCAA championship appearance, where the trans athlete won the women's 500 freestyle and tied with Gaines in the 200 freestyle.
Then Gaines herself helped connect Jones with another person with the same idea, former University of Arizona women's swimmer Marshi Smith. Smith had been watching the controversy with Thomas play out from afar. But it still hit close to home as a former women's swimmer herself.
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Smith, a former six-time All-American, was the 2005 NCAA champion in the 100 backstroke. But Smith, recalling the pressure and stress of preparing for that 2005 championship meet, believes it paled in comparison to the experience of preparing to face a male.
"I cannot imagine having to walk on deck, knowing every media camera in the world is outside, shooting the entire meet because they know that you are set up to race a man," Smith told Fox News Digital. "We train with men all season, we have the same coach, I'm very well aware of the differences between male and female swimmers, so knowing that and going on deck would have been so defeating at the time."
Smith's experience of competing against men casually and in practice pushed her to aggressively question the fairness of Thomas being allowed to compete competitively in college.
"Never once in my mind would I ever seriously consider or judge myself in comparison to any of my male teammates," Smith said. "The first time I ever pictured that scenario was with Lia Thomas in the NCAA."
So together, Jones and Smith connected with the shared goal of activism. Smith had already rented booth space at that year's NCAA annual conference, which took place in Smith's hometown of Las Vegas. Her initial plan was just to hand out flyers and hope for a conversation with some visiting athletic directors.
"[Kim] said, 'We're going to do a lot more than that,'" Smith said.
The two former women's athletes put on a three-day conference titled the "The Birth of ICONS."
It was the inaugural event for the Independent Council on Women's Sports, and included panel interviews with women's athletes, legal experts, medical experts and women's tennis legend Martina Navratilova.
"I don't know how we pulled that off," Jones said. "I think everything just fell into place."
The group went on to finance the legal costs for the Gaines vs. NCAA lawsuit, which it announced in March 2024. The suit, headed by Gaines, includes a plaintiff list of other women's NCAA athletes who were impacted by the participation of Thomas, and has since expanded to include other plaintiffs impacted by males in women's sports.
ICONS is also financing individual lawsuits against UPenn by three of Thomas' former teammates, and a suit against the Mountain West and San Jose State University over grievances involving trans volleyball player Blaire Fleming.
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