It's so stupid, isn't it? It's so stupid, isn't it? So. But dealing with all the theatrics outside of all that, really, this was the year that I won my first individual SEC title. University of Kentucky won its first ever program title in school history. And ultimately, I concluded my junior year placing 7th in the country, which I was proud of. Right? Top eight. You're an all american. It's a pretty high honor. But I knew right then and there that I placed 7th in the nation my junior year, that my senior year, I had a goal of winning a national title. So that's kind of the backstory to now kind of finding out about all of this other stuff going on. Senior year rolls around. About midway through my senior year, I'm right on pace to achieve my goal. I'm ranked third in the nation behind one amazing female swimmer who I knew very well. Because, you know, like in most sports, your top tier athletes know of each other regardless of where you compete, because you've grown up competing against each other. So I knew this girl very well, trailing her by a few one hundredths, tenths of a second, maybe. But the swimmer who was leading the nation by body links, might I add, which is a very large margin in swimming, right? A sport that's measured down to the hundredth of a second this summer was leading the country by multiple seconds was a swimmer that I had never heard of before. And this is the first time that me and my teammates became aware of a swimmer named Leah Thomas. For all we knew at the time, right? Keep in mind, we hadn't seen a picture of this person or else things would have been a little more clear. For all we knew at the time, this was a senior from University of Pennsylvania, which is not a school that historically produces fast swimmers. Now, I would argue, is not a school that historically produces, really anything good. Leading the nation by body links, ranging in events from the hundred freestyle, which is, of course, a sprint, and all the freestyle events in between through the mile, which if you don't know swimming, right, think about this in terms of your Olympic runners, because that's like saying your best 200 meters runner is your best marathon runner. You and I both know that that doesn't happen. They're two totally different systems. But that's what we were seeing in this person. So I'm scratching my head, right? I'm talking to my coaches, my teammates, who is this person? We had no idea. And we continued to stay in the dark until an article came out. And in this article, very briefly disclosed in a blip of a sentence, as if we were really supposed to just read right over it. It says, leah Thomas is formerly Will Thomas, and swam three years on the men's team at University of Pennsylvania before deciding to switch to the women's team. And so when I read this, of course, I was shocked, naturally. But really, it was kind of like the sense of relief that I felt, because at this point, I went to look up who will Thomas was, because, admittedly, I was curious. You know, was this a lateral movement? Someone who went from ranking amongst the best of the men to now continuing to rank amongst the best of the women? Which is, of course, not what we saw. Right. We saw that this was a mediocre man, and that's generous at best, ranking 462nd in the nation the year prior when competing against the men. But that's why I say I felt relieved, because I thought that the NCAA would see this how I saw it, and how, again, my teammates saw it, how my coaches saw it, how my family saw it, how anyone with any amount of brain activity would probably comprehend this. Look, nothing hateful about it, nothing even opinionated about it. The sheer facts on the paper in front of us that this was not a lateral movement by any means. But lo and behold, the NCAA did not see it that way. They saw absolutely nothing wrong with this. And so about three weeks before our national championships in March of 2022, they released a statement saying that Thomas participation in the women's category was a non negotiable, basically saying that, look, there was nothing that we could do as female athletes. There was no questions that we could ask or concerns that we could raise. We were told that we had to accept this with a smile on our face. So that's kind of the lead up to that national championships. And really how myself and my teammates and really, the nation, the world, actually found out about Leah Thomas. And I will say I'd heard of this happening in sports before, but I'd really only heard of it going the other way. Right? So women, females who wanted to self identify as men, then going to compete in the men's category, which, look, I don't. I didn't ever agree with. I never necessarily supported it, but maybe at the time, I didn't see a problem with it. Right? Because no one's, I guess, competition, the men's competition, isn't being threatened. So, you know, I thought it was dumb on the woman's behalf, but whatever.