Over the weekend, a transgender swimmer at Ramapo College of New Jersey broke a women’s school record after having competed on the men’s team for three years.
Meghan Cortez-Fields won first place in the 100-yard butterfly at the Cougar Splash Invitational, a two-day meet between six schools in Dallas, Pennsylvania, breaking the school record with a time of 57.22. Cortez-Fields also came in first place in the 200-yard individual medley and earned second place in the 200-yard butterfly.
The Ramapo swim team congratulated Cortez-Fields on Instagram for breaking the school record, but after the post began gaining traction, and former NCAA swimmer and activist Riley Gaines drew attention to meet results on X, they deleted the post.
Gaines has been a harsh critic of the NCAA over their lax approach to biological males participating in women’s sports, after she was beaten by biological male swimmer Lia Thomas, who swam with the University of Pennsylvania men’s team before transitioning and swimming with the women’s team.
Thomas garnered international outrage, due to the natural advantage the swimmer had over biological female swimmers.
“Those who choose to remain blind to the injustice of allowing mediocre male athletes to become record-breaking female athletes are either incompetent or misogynists. There is no in between anymore,” Gaines, an ambassador for the Independent Women’s Forum, told Fox News. “Women are being asked to smile and step aside and allow these men onto our teams all the while stripping us of opportunities, privacy and safety.”
“The incident at Ramapo College shouldn’t be a shock to anyone considering we’ve seen virtually the same story time and time again with no people in leadership positions willing to take a stand for women,” added Gaines.
A Ramapo spokesperson told Fox News the school “supports all of our student athletes.”
“The original post of Meghan’s achievement was deleted by a peer who wanted to protect their teammate from insulting comments on the post,” the spokesperson continued. “The College continues to post team and individual student-athlete achievements for all programs on our Athletics website.”
Cortez-Fields swam on Ramapo’s men’s team for three years before moving to the women’s team this season as a senior.
Cortez-Fields had previously praised Thomas in an interview with the Ramapo News last year, saying, Thomas “is an inspiration to me in that way, but also I felt so bad for her because I know exactly what she was going through.”
“Even going into this season, I had a fear of succeeding, because I don’t want what happened to her to happen to me,” Cortez continued.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.
