Sen. Tommy Tuberville met with two NCAA women’s swimmers who opposed trans woman Lia Thomas competing in their events and thanked them for “standing up for women’s sports.”

Tuberville, the former football coach at Auburn who wrote a bill to block trans women from competing in women’s collegiate athletics, tweeted a photo of himself posing with former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines and North Carolina State’s Kylee Alons.

“I will continue to stand with you — and we will save women’s sports,” Alabama’s senior senator tweeted Thursday.

Gaines, who believes there are only two genders, has been critical of Thomas competing in NCAA women’s swimming events.

Thomas, a trans woman, has been at the forefront of the debate on trans women competing in women’s sports after she won an NCAA championship.

Gaines considered Thomas’ accomplishments cheating.

“Lia Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who EARNED a national title. He is an arrogant, cheat who STOLE a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman,” she tweeted in March in response to an NCAA special during Women’s History Month that honored the former Stanford swimmer, misgendering Thomas.

“Trans women competing in women’s sports does not threaten women’s sports as a whole,” Thomas has told ESPN. “People will say, ‘Oh, she just transitioned so she would have an advantage, so she could win.’ I transitioned to be happy, to be true to myself.”

Alons told Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., she felt uncomfortable at the idea of Thomas being able to see her changing in the locker room during the 2022 championship that she changed in a closet, according to the congressman.

“She told me how she changed in a storage closet at the NCAA finals rather than experience the sexual harassment that comes with undressing in front of Will “Lia” Thomas – a biological male who insisted on being in the female locker room,” Steube tweeted: