Lia Thomas’ swimming future in the spotlight following NCAA’s updated transgender participation policy

Former Olympian tells 'America Reports' the NCAA only 'kicked the can down the road' with its new policy.

The NCAA’s updated policy on transgender participation threw into question whether Penn swimmer Lia Thomas will be able to race come the winter championships in March.

The NCAA announced late Wednesday its policy for transgender participation will be determined on a sport-by-sport basis. If there is no national governing body for the sport, then the NCAA sport will follow the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) policy.

The NCAA said the policy would start with the winter championships. The NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships are set for March 16-19 at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta.

"Based on the new NCAA policy put out on Wednesday, there is nothing that would preclude Lia from racing in March at the NCAA Championships. There is a framework, some guidance, but nothing that anybody would recognize as a line-in-the-sand threshold," Braden Keith, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of SwimSwam, told Fox News on Thursday.

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Lia Thomas swims for Penn. (Penn Athletics)

"The internal pressure within the sport in the last 24 hours has ramped up on USA Swimming and FINA to make a decision, to come up with a rule or a threshold, and it's left them in kind of a tough spot - they've had this responsibility, the duty to decide what the NCAA rule is, thrust upon them, when I'm sure they were hoping to be able to kick the can down the road a little while longer."

John Lohn, the editor-in-chief of Swimming World Magazine, wrote Thursday the NCAA essentially passed the buck when it came to the decision and failed to give a "clear-cut ruling" on the