Hannah Mouncey is an athlete of unique distinction. She’s been part of a men’s national team that qualified for the World Championships, and she has also done it with her country’s women’s team.
Not many athletes — if any — can make that claim.
Mouncey was a staple of the Australian national handball teams for several years, both before and after her transition.
Now on the latest episode of Five Rings To Rule Them All, she opens up about those experiences, playing Aussie rules football and being banned by the AFLW hours before the league’s draft, overcoming homelessness and mental illness through her transition, and the notion that she and other trans women are safety risks to other female athletes.
“There’s not been a single instance of someone saying they were tackled or they were hit or they were bumped by me and they popped their shoulder out,” she said, adding that she hasn’t been the cause of any other serious injury in either sport. “It hasn’t happened.”
She also chronicles her struggles with Handball Australia, and the fight over her use of the locker room that she says ultimately left her thousands of miles away from the competition during the 2019 World Championship.
“After that I didn’t want to be part of the sport. I couldn’t trust anyone in the sport, maybe two or three people I could trust.”
You can listen to the conversation with Hannah Mouncey on the Megaphone player, or by visiting Spotify for an easy browser player. Five Rings To Rule Them All is also available on Google Podcasts, Apple podcasts and many more platforms. Just search for Outsports wherever you get your podcast.
And be sure to follow Five Rings To Rule Them All on Twitter.
You can follow Hannah Mouncey on Instagram @HannahMouncey, or on Twitter @HannahMouncey.
