The 9-1 San Jose State women’s volleyball team played at Colorado State on Thursday night. But the Spartans won’t complete the road trip by making the hour-long drive over the mountain pass to face Wyoming two days later.
The roads are clear. There’s a storm of a different sort brewing, though.
Wyoming became the third team this season to refuse to play San Jose State, which has a transgender athlete among its starters. A fourth, Utah State, announced Wednesday night it will forfeit its Oct. 23 match against the Spartans.
Last month, Boise State and Southern Utah opted against playing San Jose State as well.
In the case of Wyoming, Utah State and Boise State, all members of the Mountain West Conference with San Jose State, the announcement was a brief statement that did not specify a reason for the forfeits. In all three instances, it was followed within hours by a social media post from the state’s governor supporting the decision on political grounds.
“It is essential that we preserve a space for women to compete fairly and safely,” Utah Gov. Spencer J. Cox posted Wednesday night. “Our female athletes are left grappling with this difficult issue because the NCAA has failed in its responsibility to protect female athletes and women’s sports. It’s time for the NCAA to take this seriously.”
Next up on San Jose State’s schedule: a home game against San Diego State next Thursday.
The Aztecs plan to play. A statement from SDSU said: “We remain focused on competing with integrity and sportsmanship in alignment with all NCAA guidelines. We are ready to play and are committed to supporting our student-athletes.”
What promised to be a historic season for the Spartans on the court has become that in a different court without a net.
Two weeks ago, San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a federal lawsuit challenging the NCAA’s policies for transgender athletes as a violation of Title IX “by allowing men to compete on women’s teams.”
“Brooke and many of the girls on the SJSU women’s volleyball team agree with this criticism and agree it is unfair to the teams they are playing that SJSU has a male on their team,” says the legal complaint, which was initially filed last March in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia. “They are also concerned about the risk for injury to the female athletes on teams SJSU faces.”
Slusser remains at San Jose State as the starting setter, regularly passing to senior Blaire Fleming, a 6-foot-1 outside hitter who transferred from Coastal Carolina three seasons ago and, after missing much of last year with an injury, is currently second on the team in the statistical category of kills.
Slusser transferred from Alabama last year and said she was assigned to a dorm suite with Fleming and other volleyball players. The two were often roommates on road trips before, the legal complaint says, Fleming revealed her gender history to Slusser over lunch last spring.
Further, the complaint states that Slusser and “many of the girls on the team” were afraid of being hit by Fleming’s spikes in practice.
“Concerns about potential concussions were being hit by a Fleming spike were regularly discussed by the women on the team,” the complaint states.
The complaint alleges that San Jose State players were instructed by university officials not to discuss Fleming’s gender in public or potentially face removal from the team.
San Jose State has not made Fleming, her teammates or the coaching staff available to the media. University officials confirmed the team is traveling with additional security and the school has disabled the comments section of its social media accounts.
Its only statement came after Wyoming’s decision to forfeit Saturday’s match in Laramie: “It is disappointing that our SJSU student-athletes, who are in full compliance with NCAA and Mountain West rules and regulations, are being denied opportunities to compete. We are committed to supporting our student-athletes through these challenges and in their ability to compete in an inclusive, fair, safe and respectful environment.”
The NCAA transgender guidelines defer to a sport’s national governing body, which for USA Volleyball obliges athletes transitioning from male to female to have testosterone levels under 10 nanomoles per liter, typically achieved through hormone-suppressing medication. The NCAA requires proof of annual testing.
That number is still many times more muscle-building testosterone than women naturally produce.
A study commissioned by track and field’s world governing body found men have between 7.7 and 29.4 nmol/L of testosterone, and women between .6 and 1.68 nmol/L.
Some scientists argue the effects of male puberty are largely irreversible in terms of musculature and bone density even after gender-affirming surgery and prescription drugs. World governing bodies in cycling, swimming and track and field have adopted rules that bar transgender athletes in women’s sports who have experienced male puberty.
Others say the science isn’t definitive and that banning transgender athletes amounts to discrimination.
“It is doubling down on a policy of discrimination and exclusion instead of fostering what we should be fostering as part of athletics, which is camaraderie and competition,” Tom Temprano, a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ rights organization Equality California, told KQED-TV in San Francisco. “Instead, we’re centering these divisive values and discriminatory actions, which I would imagine the vast, vast majority of these student-athletes are unhappy with and would be opposed to.”
Boise State, which has six of 16 players from California and only one from Idaho, appears to have decided as a team to forfeit last Saturday’s game at San Jose State.
In 2020, Idaho became the first state to pass a law banning transgender athletes in women’s youth sports, and Gov. Brad Little is an outspoken proponent. About half of U.S. states have similar laws now, although California is not among them.
Fleming transferred from Coastal Carolina in Conway, S.C., at a time when a transgender sports ban from elementary school through college was working its way through the South Carolina legislature.
Wyoming initially said it would play this weekend’s match in Laramie, then reversed course Tuesday. The university release said the decision came “after a lengthy discussion.”
Some Wyoming legislators, WyoFIle.com reported, sent a letter to the university’s president and athletic director asking them not to play. The state passed a bill last year barring transgender athletes in middle and high school sports.
“The legislature has been very clear,” the letter said, “that the University of Wyoming, being a publicly funded land grant institution, should not participate in the extremist agenda of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or propagate the lie that biological sex can be changed. We all know it cannot.
“We assure you: The majority of our constituents do not want the integrity of women’s athletics to be decimated by the participation of males who overall have superior physical strength and abilities to women. We the undersigned legislators urge you to cancel this match.”
It’s unclear where the Wyoming players stand on the issue, although at least two made social media posts supporting the decision not to play.
“Protecting the future of women’s sports,” Macey Boggs, a senior setter from Gering, Neb., wrote.
The Mountain West declined comment. Its Transgender Participation Policy states it “is a matter of that individual institution’s discretion in the context of its interaction with the individual, the application of state law, etc.”
The 3-0 loss at Colorado State was the first of the season for the Spartans, who are now 2-1 in the Mountain West after the Boise State forfeit and a 3-1 win at Fresno State behind a team-high 16 kills by Fleming and 35 assists by Slusser. Forfeits count as 3-0 victories.
The match Thursday night in Fort Collins, Colo., coincidentally or not, was Colorado State’s annual “inclusive excellence game … focused on promoting the university’s Principles of Community and on-campus resource centers.”
SDSU, which also hosts San Jose State on Nov. 9 at Peterson Gym, as well as UNLV and Nevada have indicated they plan to play the Spartans. New Mexico and Air Force have yet to make definitive public statements about their intentions.
If Boise State, Wyoming and Utah State cancel all their regular-season meetings, San Jose State would play only 13 of 18 scheduled conference matches.
The top six teams qualify for the Mountain West tournament Nov. 27-30 in Las Vegas, with the winner receiving an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Originally Published: