Only a handful of people answered Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank’s call to wear XX-XY Athletics shirts to the Seattle Reign’s match on Sunday, Nov. 1, and Swank wasn’t among them. Close to 90 people got his emails the week before: buy tickets, then reveal the shirts at halftime. Fans with trans pride flags quickly surrounded the few who did, The News Tribune reported.
“He is glad that you and others showed up to support women’s sports,” Deputy Carly Cappetto of the sheriff’s office told the Tacoma paper by email. Swank was unavailable, the office said, without saying why.
“The Sheriff has a very large team of volunteers, and he is unable to attend every event,” Cappetto said in a follow-up. “He unfortunately has to pick and choose which events he will attend.” (Sunday’s didn’t make the cut.)
Inside the Keep, Flags Swallowed the XX-XY Shirts
The Reign and Orlando Pride were scoreless at the break. As play resumed, a few people peeled off layers to show the shirts, whose maker opposes trans women and girls on female teams. Fans in the Keep, the supporters’ end behind Lumen Field’s south goal, closed in around two men who appeared to be wearing them. Up went the trans pride flags, blocking views both ways, the paper reported. At least two more shirts turned up elsewhere. Security didn’t appear to remove anyone.
Royal Guard president Dei Caudle had emailed the paper Saturday that the Reign’s official fan club would stand against bigotry. “We 100% support trans people’s right to exist (as if that should even be in question 😡), to participate in sports, and to live their lives in freedom and safety,” Caudle said. “We wholeheartedly believe that soccer is a game for everyone and will protect that space.”
The flags were still up when center back Jordyn Bugg scored the game’s only goal. The 1-0 win clinched a playoff spot in captain Jess Fishlock’s last regular-season match before she retires, with 16,095 fans watching, the club’s match recap said.
Later, the flags followed the shirt wearers to other sections. Some fans chanted, “Trans rights are human rights.” One XX-XY shirt wearer had company all the way out of the stadium: a man carrying a big Black Lives Matter flag.
How Keith Swank Organized the Reign Protest by Email
Swank borrowed the idea from conservative commentator Brandi Kruse, The Burner reported. Kruse and her group were escorted out of an Oct. 23 Portland Thorns match after showing the shirts, The News Tribune reported. “It’s time to fight back,” Swank wrote on Facebook.
“Go into the stadium with your shirt covered, and at half time, put it on full display,” he wrote in an Oct. 26 email. Defend Washington, a political committee opposing Initiative 638, shared the emails with The News Tribune.
When the paper reached out, Swank warned his list about an “infiltrator.” “I posted that we should do this, and I organized it, just like I said I would,” he wrote.
On match morning, he urged calm. “The left wants you to be aggressive so they can say, ‘MAGA is violent,'” Swank wrote. “They will lump us all into that ‘hate group.’ Don’t give them any story.”
“Nothing says protecting women’s spaces like disrupting a major women’s professional soccer event for your own political purposes and to boost social media views,” Defend Washington director Reiny Cohen, a Reign season ticket holder, said in a statement. No NWSL team has a trans woman on its roster, the group noted.
What Initiative 638 Would Change in Washington Girls’ Sports
Washington voters are deciding Initiative 638 today, one of several trans-related ballot measures. It would keep students it calls “biologically male” off girls’ school teams. Any student joining one would need a provider’s signed statement verifying her sex at her sports physical, the initiative’s text says.
On Oct. 25, Swank told X followers to “vote to keep boys out of girl sports.” Cohen’s statement said I-638 “will require all girls to submit to invasive sex inspections.” The text lets providers go by reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup or natural testosterone levels, and it doesn’t mention a genital exam.
Pierce County Sheriff’s Own Job Is on the Ballot, Too
Pierce County voters are also deciding Charter Amendment 53. It would let the county executive appoint the sheriff, with council confirmation, and end Swank’s elected term on Jan. 1, 2027, the county’s ballot explanation says.
In January, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs said its board would consider expelling Swank over his state Senate testimony, FOX 13 reported. He’d told senators they wanted to silence him “because I said transgender women are men.” The association said his testimony “devolved into what could be perceived as threatening to legislators.”
“I have to be honest. Yes, I say stuff that’s provocative, but I’m giving people courage to stand up and speak out,” Swank told KOMO News last week.
