Slice of Life

Kye Allums, first openly transgender Division I athlete in NCAA history, speaks at Syracuse University

Whenever Kye Allums tells people he’s trans*, the first thing they do is look at his chest and his crotch.

“It’s as if they’re trying to find something, as if trans* were a look,” Allums said. “It’s not a look — it’s a feeling.”

Allums, the first openly transgender Division I athlete in NCAA history, spoke at Syracuse University Wednesday night. He discussed his life story, sharing anecdotes about growing up with his religious mother and his experience coming out while playing basketball at George Washington University.

Allums, who now identifies as queer fluid trans*, explained that his expression of gender changes frequently. Some days he feels masculine, and others, he feels feminine. He is attracted only to personality.

“I don’t date body parts,” he said. “I date people.”



Allums said his mother struggled to accept his identity, and the fact that she insisted on raising him as a girl is something that just never made sense to him. When she discovered that he was dating girls, the first thing she did was take him to the hospital, assuming he was on drugs.

His mother now accepts who he is and Allums said that his siblings will remind her to use male pronouns if she slips up.

Because his mother made him serve as a Jehovah’s Witness, Allums wasn’t permitted to play sports until ninth grade. He played three sports in high school but went on to play for George Washington upon graduating. In 2010, Allums came out publicly as the first openly transgender Division I athlete in NCAA history.

Though his teammates advised him not to, Allums came out to his coach. The first thing his coach asked after Allums told him was, “Do you think God made a mistake?” Allums firmly responded “no,” and said he believed God made him who he was for a reason.

After a journalist published one of the first articles about him, Allums had to schedule two hours every day before basketball practice strictly for interviews. That was also when people began sending him thousands of Facebook messages, asking him to help them come out.

Now, Allums travels around the country to share his story with people. He’s already published the first of five books, which he calls “The Words Matter” series. He said the books are about finding his identity, not specifically about sports.

“People say I’m an activist, because I feel like that’s what people think I’m supposed to say,” Allums said. “I don’t know how I feel about the activist label. I just see it as me being me — me connecting people together.”





Top Stories