Former ESPN personality Samantha Ponder has once again decried the inclusion of transgender girls in sports, this time in reference to her daughter’s basketball game in New York City.
Ponder’s social media post on Sunday came amid the city’s battle with the Trump administration over funding and the rights of transgender children in New York City Public Schools.
Ponder, who is married to former NFL quarterback Christian Ponder, revealed earlier this year that she homeschools their three children, meaning the basketball game was likely not an NYCPS event.
“It’s happened many times now living in NYC… yet another basketball game today where my middle school daughter is guarding an obviously naturally born boy in a girls tournament,” Ponder wrote Sunday. She said the opposing team won easily.
Ponder has made her stance against transgender girls and women participating in women’s sports clear in the past. She backed noted anti-trans activist Riley Gaines in 2023 and threw shade at Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif — who is not transgender — after Khelif won gold in Paris last summer.
ESPN fired Ponder in August 2024, though she told fellow ex-ESPNer Sage Steele that she believed that had more to do with her limited role at the company than any of her social media comments.
New York City Public Schools is in the middle of a months-long battle with the Trump administration over the rights of transgender children in schools.
Trump’s Education Department said in September it would withhold $36 million in funding for magnet schools over a five-year period if NYCPS did not change its policy, which allows students to play on sports teams and use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identities.
In response, city leaders sued the Education Department last week, claiming the administration had put “politics before public schools.”
