A collegiate transgender swimmer is being compared to Lia Thomas after winning races and smashing a program record, prompting renewed calls for the NCAA to take action to ensure competitive fairness in female athletics.
Meghan Cortez-Fields, a senior at Ramapo College of New Jersey who swam for three years on the men’s team, broke a school record in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 57.22 seconds at the Cougar Splash Invitational held Saturday in Dallas, Pennsylvania.
Cortez-Fields also won the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:12.05. Four days earlier, the swimmer won the 100 butterfly and was part of the winning 200 medley relay in a meet against William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.
The Independent Council on Women’s Sports, or ICONS, said that Cortez-Fields “erased a woman’s name from the record books” and called out NCAA President Charlie Baker, saying, “This is on your watch.”
NCAA male swimmer, Meg Cortez-Fields at Ramapo College, NJ, switched to the women’s team, using their locker room & sharing hotel rooms with female teammates this season.
— ICONS (@icons_women) November 20, 2023
He won 2 women’s events & erased a woman’s name from the record books in Dallas, PA this weekend. @NCAA… https://t.co/L3QogY4vf0 pic.twitter.com/8qSqsOVNMX
Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky All-American swimmer, compared the Ramapo star to Lia Thomas, the male-to-female transgender athlete who won a title at the 2022 Division I women’s swimming championships.
Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth in the 200-yard freestyle, but NCAA officials gave the trophy to Thomas for podium photos and mailed a replica to Gaines.
“Ramapo College swimmer in NJ goes from less than mediocre male swimmer to a record smasher competing against the women,” Gaines wrote on X. “Hm, where have we seen this before?”
A public liberal arts college in Mahwah, New Jersey, Ramapo competes in the NCAA’s Division III, which does not allow athletic scholarships and is typically considered the least competitive division.
Gaines said that Cortez-Fields’ record-setting time would have been a nonstarter on the men’s side.
“As a swimmer myself, I can attest to these times and what they mean,” she told Fox News. “Fifty-seven seconds in the 100-yard butterfly for the men is atrocious, for lack of a better word. That’s not competitive by any means.”
She said policies allowing male-born athletes to compete against women based on gender identity are “only adversely affecting women.”
“We don’t see females going into men’s sports and becoming record-smashers,” Gaines said. “This is only going one way.”
Tennis great Martina Navratilova also weighed in, saying on X: “Women’s sports is not the place for mediocre male athletes who compete as women. Period.”
Transgender male swimmer breaks WOMENS record after transferring from the men’s team and going on to win 1st place.
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) November 22, 2023
Meghan Cortez-Fields smashed Ramapo College’s record for the 100 yard butterfly with a time of 57.22 which earned him 1st place.
He also scooped the top spot in… pic.twitter.com/UpmpWMSEht
Cortez-Fields has not commented publicly on the pushback but said last year in an interview with the college newspaper that Lia Thomas was an inspiration.
Thomas broke women’s records in 2022 as a senior at the University of Pennsylvania after swimming for three years on the men’s team, catapulting the debate over inclusion versus fairness into the international spotlight.
“[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,” Cortez-Fields told the Ramapo News. “Even going into this season, I had a fear of succeeding, because I don’t want what happened to her to happen to me.”
Ramapo was criticized for removing an Instagram post congratulating Cortez-Fields on setting a school record, but the college said that a student did so to avoid attracting “insulting comments.”
In a statement Wednesday, Ramapo spokesperson Brittany Williams-Goldstein said that “Ramapo College supports all of our student athletes.”
“As an affiliate member of the NCAA, Ramapo College Athletics follows all NCAA policies, including the NCAA Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy,” she wrote in an email to The Washington Times. “The original social media post of Meghan’s achievement was deleted by a peer who wanted to protect their teammate from insulting comments on the post. The College supports the peer’s decision.”
She continued: “The College continues to post team and individual student-athlete achievements for all programs on our Athletics website. The College has been checking in on Meghan and her teammates to ensure that they have the resources and supports they need to manage the attention and cope with the public vitriol. We would be remiss to not reiterate that there is a person, a team, a community, and broad public policy coursing through the heart of this story.”
Amid the Thomas uproar, the NCAA revised its transgender-eligibility policy by opting to defer to the national governing bodies for each sport. The changes now being phased in are scheduled to be fully implemented for the 2024-25 academic year.
Ramapo College’s next swim meet is scheduled for Dec. 8 at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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