Angie Griffin swims like a woman, a skill that earned her the title of a top ten U.S. Masters Swimming competitor in her age group for more than a decade.
The 46-year-old’s dedication to the sport means Griffin does, as she humbly told The Federalist in a phone interview, “all right” at USMS competitions. At first glance, Griffin’s second-place performance last April in her USMS age division’s national championship breaststroke event seemed to fit that bill.
It wasn’t until after the meet that Griffin realized she was only runner-up because a man took first place.
One year later, instead of focusing on winning at this year’s USMS Spring Nationals in Greensboro, North Carolina, Griffin is gearing up to argue against a lifetime ban from the organization that made her fall back in love with the water for saying men in women’s sports is unfair.”
“I swim for fun,” the Bay Stater said. “I don’t participate in the committees and the making of these policies and the rules. I didn’t know they had little bylaws that they could say, ‘Hey, you’re speaking your mind and using facts for your opinion. So we’re gonna silence you for having a different opinion than us.’”
The Deep End
Griffin started swimming as a child and eventually worked her way up to competitive swimming in high school. She eventually walked away from the pool for 15 years, but decided to dip her toes back into the sport in 2014.
“I was overweight, and I needed to do something,” Griffin said. “I went to one [USMS competition], and I was addicted.”
Griffin’s new obsession went, well, swimmingly for more than a decade, until last year at the U.S. Masters Swimming 2025 Spring Nationals in San Antonio, Texas. In April she was beaten at her own game, in her seemingly sex-protected division, by a man.
Griffin wasn’t the only one who lost out on a top title to Hugo “Hannah or Ana” Caldas. The 47-year-old male took home five national titles in women’s 45-49 events. Footage from the championship meet shows Caldas swimming seconds ahead of his female competitors.
Griffin heard whispers of male athletes, including infamous swimmer Lia Thomas, infiltrating women’s competitions and taking the top spot away from a deserving female. But she never believed it would happen in her organization, much less her age division.
“It’s kind of Twilight zone-y,” Griffin said. “I’m older. My perspective of it is this is a problem that the young girls have been facing, and I wasn’t going to have to deal with it. And then it happened, and I assumed that everyone would be shocked and say, ‘This isn’t right.’”
Caldas reportedly competed in USMS men’s division events from 2002 to 2004, but now holds more than a dozen USMS records, including 10 lifetime, in the women’s division. Outside of swimming, Caldas also reportedly holds titles and took prize money in women’s rowing, CrossFit, and weightlifting.
“Swimming is one of the sports where it’s so obvious that a male has advantage over a female,” Griffin explained. “It’s just common sense by looking at it.”
USMS may be a recreational league, but Griffin said that’s not an excuse for injustice.
“To someone, it’s just this, but to us, it’s practice, it’s money spent,” she said. “We all work. We’re not professional athletes. We have full-time jobs. We’re just doing this before and after work. It doesn’t matter if it’s Little League or the playground or anything, it has to do with competitive fairness.”
Griffin filed a formal protest about Caldas’ win with USMS. She also penned an op-ed for Swimming World Magazine on May 6, 2025, arguing that “Fairness in Sport is Not Optional: Why USMS Needs to Change Transgender Policy.”
“Coming in second to a biological male at a national championship is not fair. That’s not hate. That’s my new reality,” Griffin concluded.
On May 19, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into USMS “over potential violations of state law.”
“The policy of US Masters Swimming, which allows men to compete in women’s events, is reprehensible and could violate Texas’s consumer protection laws,” Paxton said. “Not only is this policy insulting to female athletes, but it also demonstrates deep contempt for women and may violate Texas law.”
The attention prompted USMS to adopt an interim eligibility policy that appeared to require swimmers who participate in the women’s category in “National Recognition Programs” to “certify their sex assigned at birth is female.” USMS classifies national championship events like the one Griffin attended in April 2025, however, as “Local Recognition Programs,” which do not require “any supplemental disclosure, documentation, or on-site discussion of a swimmer’s sex assigned at birth, or medical information.”
As Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton noted in his July 2025 lawsuit against USMS, the modified policy does not stop men from competing in women’s events. USMS countered with a public relations campaign, dubbed #SwimsuitsNotLawsuits, to paint reports of unfairness at its swim meets as “rumors.”
Sink or Swim
Rumors, as Griffin and many other female USMS swimmers already knew, they were not.
World Aquatics, the international federation responsible for governing aquatic sports, ultimately banned Caldas for five years after the swimmer refused to do a chromosome test, but USMS concluded four months after Griffin’s complaint that Caldas “demonstrated she was assigned the female sex at birth and that she identifies as female.”
Griffin was “angry” and said she felt duped. To spare her fellow female competitors the same shock, Griffin also posted a Quillette article detailing Caldas’ gender confusion and subsequent dominance in women’s sports to a USMS community forum.
The day after Thanksgiving, USMS notified Griffin that an unnamed competitor filed a grievance against her for “unsporting conduct” and “conduct detrimental to the image or reputation of USMS.”
“I thought it was funny. I looked at it as retribution for putting information that would be helpful for people to say, ‘Hey Masters, we want to change the policy. We want it to align with World Aquatics. This isn’t fair for women,’” Griffin said.
Nearly one year after she lost her title to Caldas, on April 7, Griffin will attend an online hearing to determine her fate with USMS. She will have 30 minutes to state her case.
“I don’t want people to be afraid of speaking out for what’s right. There’s nothing more important,” Griffin said. “I don’t regret for one second if I’m not allowed to compete again. But if it gets the policy changed, or gets people to speak out and not be afraid to say anything, then it’s 100 percent worth it, right?”
An official decision from USMS, Griffin believes, “will take some time.” Until then, Griffin plans to keep swimming, even if that means doing so with another country federation.
“USMS doesn’t own swimming. I can always do different competitions. I’m not going to disappear, I’m not going to go away,” Griffin promised.
Jordan Boyd is an award-winning staff writer at The Federalist and producer of “The Federalist Radio Hour.” Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
