UW Volleyball Team Will Play San Jose State Despite Transgender Controversy

 

After hearing that the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team has a transgender player in its lineup, the University of Wyoming women’s volleyball team discussed the matter and decided to play its Oct. 5 match against the undefeated California school anyway.

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 and numerous other women, including women’s rights activist Riley Gaines, allege 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.

Fleming did not immediately respond to a Tuesday message request for comment.  

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.