A second women’s college volleyball team has canceled its scheduled match against San Jose State University amid controversy about a transgender player in San Jose’s lineup.
The University of Wyoming, meanwhile, still plans to play its scheduled Oct. 5 match against the undefeated San Jose team after conferring prior with the UW volleyball players and athletic department.
“Boise State (University) volleyball will not play its scheduled match at San Jose State on Saturday, Sept. 28,” sports news outlet Outkick reported Friday. “The conference will record the match as a forfeit and a loss for Boise State.”
Southern Utah University last weekend canceled its Sept. 14 women’s volleyball match against San Jose.
Whether Boise State’s forfeit is because of San Jose State’s transgender player is not publicly known. The school’s communications department did not respond by publication time to a late-day email from Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
Outkick didn’t ascribe any reasoning to the school either.
The school’s women’s volleyball schedule Friday showed Saturday’s match listed preemptively as a straight-set 0-3 loss and forfeit.
San Jose declined to comment to Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday on the sex of its reportedly transgender player, Blaire Fleming, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Fleming did not respond to a social media individual message requesting comment.
SUU did not comment following a Cowboy State Daily phone message Tuesday.
Meanwhile In Court
Blaire Fleming is an outside and right-side hitter for San Jose State University who’s made headlines in recent days after another San Jose player, Brooke Slusser, joined a lawsuit to sue the NCAA over Fleming’s inclusion on the Division I team.
Slusser alleges in the lawsuit that Fleming is a male, and that Fleming’s inclusion on the women’s volleyball team poses an unfair advantage and safety hazards.
“Brooke estimates that Fleming’s spikes were traveling upward of 80 mph, which was faster than she had ever seen a woman hit a volleyball,” says Slusser’s addition to the lawsuit complaint, proposed this week in the U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia. “The girls were doing everything they could to dodge Fleming’s spikes but still could not fully protect themselves.”
Slusser was surprised to find that Fleming had requested to room with her on volleyball trips — and that Fleming was male. After months of training and sometimes staying in the same rooms, Fleming pulled Slusser aside and admitted to being transgender, says Slusser’s proposed addition.
Slusser and many other teammates think their team has an unfair advantage, the document says.
A Sept. 22 score tally for the team says it is undefeated, but it characterizes Fleming as roughly the second-best player on the team. Fleming has 103 kills to a top player’s 124, and 118.5 points to a top player’s 146.
The NCAA countered an earlier version of the women’s lawsuit, saying the women can’t level a Title IX (sex discrimination) lawsuit against the NCAA because it’s a rulemaking group, not a state college; and that the women can’t penalize the various state organizations they’re also suing because those were just following the NCAA’s independently forged rules.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
