Have transgender athletes won collegiate or high school championships, and are records kept?

1. Documented championship winners: high school through international

Mainstream reporting identifies named cases of trans athletes who have won championships: Lia Thomas was reported as the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship in women’s swimming ^{[1] [6]}, AB Hernandez won girls’ events at the California high school track-and-field championships ^{[2] [7] [8]}, Veronica Ivy won a UCI Women’s Masters Track World Championship in her age bracket ^[3], and multiple outlets and trackers have listed dozens of trans athletes with state, national or international titles across sports and age brackets ^{[4] [5] [9]}.

2. Who counts and who catalogs those wins: media, trackers and advocacy groups

Because athletics governing bodies rarely publish sex-assigned-at-birth or gender-identity breakdowns tied to results, most tallies of trans champions come from outlets such as Outsports, compilations in mainstream news packages, and policy groups that maintain their own lists—Outsports published multi-decade lists of trans athletes with titles ^{[4] [5]}, while advocacy and policy organizations also produce tallies and narratives that emphasize different examples and timeframes ^{[9] [10]}.

3. Official record-keeping by sports bodies: inconsistent and partial

The NCAA and state high school federations do not maintain a centralized public database of championships labeled by athletes’ gender identity; the NCAA has an Inclusion resource for transgender student-athletes but has not systematically published counts of trans competitors or a dedicated public registry of titles by gender identity ^{[1] [6]}. The National Federation of State High School Associations likewise does not report how many participants are transgender, according to reporting that notes the NFHS’s absence of those data ^[6].

4. Contention over titles and attempts to reverse or relabel records

The U.S. Department of Education in 2025 publicly urged athletic organizations to strip records, titles and awards from transgender women, calling some accolades “wrongfully credited” and asking the NCAA and NFHS to reverse recognitions, an action that highlights an active, official push to relabel or remove championships won by trans athletes ^[6]. Opponents and some advocacy groups have also produced high tallies of “male* victories” to argue systemic impact, showing this is both a factual and political battleground ^[10].

5. Scientific and policy context cited on all sides

Supporters of inclusion cite peer-reviewed work and IOC frameworks suggesting limited evidence that trans women uniformly enjoy athletic advantage, and note individual international titles and masters championships as evidence of competitive legitimacy ^[3]. Critics point to clusters of record-breaking performances and compiled lists to argue disproportionate impacts in certain events and jurisdictions ^{[11] [10]}. Reporting shows both empirical studies and political incentives inform how wins are framed in public debate ^{[3] [10]}.

6. What can be stated with confidence and what remains opaque

It is certain that named transgender athletes have won championships at multiple levels—high school, college, national and international—as documented in news reporting and compiled lists ^{[1] [2] [4] [3]}. It is also certain that there is no comprehensive, public official registry that tracks championships specifically by athletes’ gender identity, and that some federal actors and private groups are actively seeking to alter or remove recorded titles ^{[6] [5]}. Beyond those reporting-based facts, the precise number of championship titles won by transgender athletes nationwide remains indeterminate in public sources because governing bodies do not release systematic identity-linked championship datasets ^{[6] [5]}.