XX-XY Athletics Launches Ad for Womens History | Political News

On Wednesday, XX-XY Athletics introduced that Sia Liilii is its first 2025 Courage Wins Champion. Liilii is a graduating senior from the University of Nevada, Reno and the previous captain of the ladies’s volleyball crew. In 2024, Liilii led her crew to boycott a recreation with San Jose State University, which has a organic male who identifies as feminine on their girls’s volleyball crew. 

Nevada tried to power the ladies gamers to compete, citing gender discrimination in the event that they forfeited. Liilii was pivotal in serving to her teammates take a stand, and keep sturdy beneath the stress from the college to play the sport. 

From the XX-XY Athletics press release:

Without consulting the Nevada, Reno crew, the college administration introduced the crew would play San Jose State University (SJSU) girls’s volleyball crew, which included a male athlete, of their girls’s volleyball match in October 2024. Liilii and her crew spoke up towards being pressured to play a male trans recognized athlete on the SJSU crew, whom they acknowledged had a mixture of energy, explosiveness, and leaping capacity that no different participant within the convention had.  

University officers tried to intimidate her into silence and admonished her that she wasn’t “educated” enough on the subject, saying a male taking estrogen has much less athletic skills than females do. Liilii and her crew stood up to the college and forfeited a match towards SJSU. And a crowd of 450 people and Tulsi Gabbard confirmed up to cheer them on.  

Because the Nevada crew didn’t have a full cohort of gamers, Nevada had no selection however to forfeit the sport. 

Great to be with a number of of Nevada’s champions for feminine athletes within the Senate Chambers during our legislative session pic.twitter.com/QABF2nqn11

— Stavros Anthony (@StavrosAnthony) March 19, 2025

As the XX-XY Athletics press release additional outlined,

Her actions meet the best normal of braveness, integrity, and management within the battle for equity, equal alternative, and security in girls’s sports activities on the collegiate degree.  

Liilii is first and solely (to this point) 2025 Courage Wins Award winner for her willingness to problem institutional choices, advocate for her crew, and prioritize the integrity of girls’s sports activities for future generations. 

I’m so grateful to have acquired the Courage Wins award 🥹💝 I give all of the glory to God for giving me the energy to stand up for what is correct!!! #XX≠XY #BOYcott https://t.co/TNnyAssHmv

— Sia Liilii (@SiaLiilii) March 19, 2025

In a video interview with founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics Jennifer Sey, she was effusive in her reward of Liilii, and how she exemplifies “what sports can offer a young person.”

Sey continued,

It’s not about going to the Olympics. It’s not about with the ability to do a flip on the beam, it is about developing character and braveness and resilience, and studying that you are able to do actually arduous issues, and when you fall down you will get up and keep attempting. And that you simply’re not going to be great at one thing straight away, however it’s a must to work arduous at it. That’s the worth of sports activities.

XX-XY Athletics was created with the aim of defending girls’s and ladies’ sports activities and girls’s and ladies’ areas. Sey additionally developed the XX-XY Athletics Courage Wins Award to take the financial cancellation that usually outcomes from taking a stand towards the transgender agenda out of the equation, and to raise the voices of courageous feminine athletes like Sia Liilii. Sey additional desires to power faculties, universities, and governing our bodies just like the NCAA to listen to the voices of these girls and work to guard their accomplishments, quite than float alongside on the present of the tradition. 

Sey mentioned, 

the Nikes of the world solely have fun the world champions and guess what? The D-1 aggressive athletes like Sia work simply as arduous, they provide up simply as a lot, you recognize? I believe Sia, as a result of she stood up because the captain of the ladies’s volleyball crew at University of Nevada and mentioned, we’re not going to compete towards a crew that is fielding a male participant, that’s not truthful, that’s not proper, that is larger than me; I believe she displays the sort of braveness we wish to develop in younger people. 

Along with Sey, the XX-XY Athletics Courage Wins Advisory Council contains former University of Kentucky swimmer and girls’s sports activities activist Riley Gaines, podcaster and former sports activities correspondent Sage Steele, podcaster, reporter, and former sports activities broadcaster Michele Tafoya, and Independent Women’s President Carrie Lukas. All girls of braveness who acknowledge and promote the courageousness in others. But the clothes company is not only about reinforcing the message that ladies’s sports activities matter or that preserving girls’s areas is important. As a former model government for Levi Strauss, Sey can also be centered on offering a high quality product that people can be ok with sporting and that they are going to return to buy again and again.

I would like us to be a profitable model. I’m not on this as a gimmick; I wish to make superb merchandise. Products that people love and are available back to, and that they really feel they’ve an different to the sort of woke manufacturers who fake to champion girls however actually do no such factor. 

Success is not only concerning the message, however the branding and financial energy to do advocacy that furthers the message and funds scholarships and sponsorship {dollars} for feminine athletes. 

If this model would not grow and is not profitable, I do not get to do the advocacy both, Sey mentioned. So, we’ve to prioritize business outcomes. That mentioned, I imagine manufacturers can affect the tradition and I’d like to get to a place, not the place we’ve a [television] community, however that we’ve our own awards ceremony. We’re really considering this now.

Using the ESPN ESPY Awards, and the Arthur Ashe Courage Award as a model, Sey hopes to exchange that image with one which represents true braveness.

I’d love to exchange the ESPYs, or a minimum of compete with the ESPYs, and reward courageous feminine athletes who’re brave and stand up in protection of their sports activities. Not simply on this subject of males coming into girls’s sports activities and areas, however the subject of abuse In girls’s sports activities remains to be very important as effectively. So, we definitely wish to broaden all of the ways in which we help courageous brave girls athletes.

XX-XY Athletics produces highly effective media to platform the voices of feminine athletes, reinforce their model, and amplify their message.

Meet the 2025 Courage Wins Champion Sia Liilii. 

WATCH: