How a college women’s volleyball team became the center of the debate over transgender athletes

SAN JOSE, California – On the court, they look like any other college women’s volleyball team. In a recent game, the players moved around the court in a staccato rhythm, setting and spiking the ball, leaping into the air like jumpers to block attacking shots, all wearing their blue and gold University State Spartans uniforms. Saint Joseph.

Off the court, however, the team is doing everything it can not to fall apart during an unexpected season of tension, tears, confusion and anger. The players are at the center of an unfolding drama over one of the most explosive issues in American life: whether a transgender woman can play on a women’s sports team.

It all started in April, when a conservative website said one of San Jose State’s players was transgender, surprising some of the woman’s teammates.

This month, a Spartans senior co-captain and assistant coach filed a lawsuit to block the transgender athlete from playing in this week’s Mountain West Conference tournament, alleging it violates Title IX rights to gender equity. in federally funded institutions.

With a group of 10 volleyball players, most of the teams playing against the Spartans, they sued the head coach and two administrators of San Jose State. And the Mountain West Conference and its commissioner. And the entire board of directors of the California State University system. All to expel the player from the tournament, the Spartans program and women’s college sports.

Meanwhile, the transgender volleyball player has remained silent. Teammates other than Brooke Slusser, the co-captain plaintiff in the lawsuit, also declined interview requests. The New York Times is not naming the player because it did not publicly confirm her identity and declined an interview request through a university spokesperson.

“We just don’t think it’s fair for a man to be allowed to play,” Slusser said, referring to her transgender teammate, in an interview last week. She called it “a difficult decision” to file the lawsuit because she didn’t want to “put my team through more than they’re already going through.”

“But then imagining myself with kids and seeing if they had to play against a man or play on a team with a man and knowing that I had the room to make a change for that, I couldn’t live with myself,” she said. saying.

Because of the complicated mess, some of the Spartans no longer talk to each other in practice or outside of games. Todd Kress, the head coach, supports the transgender athlete’s participation and also stopped talking to some players off the court. During games, fans wave signs and wear t-shirts for or against the transgender player. Over the past few weeks, campus police have been called in case of problems.

Kress, who has coached at San Jose State for two years, said the turmoil has overwhelmed several players.

“I think deep down they are good people who have been caught up in a unique situation that has challenged them deeply,” he said.

A federal judge this week rejected the lawsuit against the player, authorizing the athlete to compete with her team in this week’s Mountain West Conference tournament. On Tuesday, another judge also rejected the plaintiffs’ appeal.

After a first-round bye, the Spartans were preparing to play a semifinal game in the tournament scheduled for Friday, but the opposing team, Boise State University, refused for the third time this season to play the Spartans because of their transgender player. Four other teams had lost games against San Jose State as a measure against transgender women playing on women’s teams.

In a statement, Boise State said the decision not to play “was not easy,” adding that the team “should not have to give up this opportunity while waiting for a better, more thoughtful system that serves all athletes.”

San Jose State said in an emailed statement: “While we are disappointed in Boise State’s decision, our women’s volleyball team is preparing for Saturday’s match and looks forward to competing for a championship.”

The Spartans are now one win or one boycotted game away from advancing to next month’s NCAA Tournament, where 64 teams will play and the Spartans will attract even more attention.

“There have been a lot of people in the community who have supported the athlete, regardless of what her identity is, because she is being attacked,” said Bonnie Sugiyama, director of the Pride Center and Gender Equity Center at San Jose State. “Can you imagine the pressure of being in the national spotlight and even being mentioned in a presidential campaign, when all you do is play the game and follow the rules?”

Inconsistent rules

Sports have separate categories for men and women because men have biological advantages that make them generally faster and stronger, and that division gives women a fair chance to succeed. Those advantages are minimal before puberty, experts say, but they multiply during puberty when testosterone levels increase in men.

Maintaining that equity in women’s sports while honoring the inclusion of athletes who identify as women has become an ongoing struggle for sports organizations. Until now, there has been no foolproof way to ensure that trans women do not maintain any advantage over athletes assigned female at birth, and debate continues over whether trans women have an advantage if they suppress their testosterone production for a period of time. certain time. Testosterone is the hormone known to increase strength, muscle mass and endurance.

The NCAA has given each sport’s national governing body the power to decide those rules.

USA Volleyball’s website says androgenic hormones, which include testosterone, can possibly give trans athletes an “unfair competitive advantage,” so the organization requires documentation that athletes assigned male at birth undergo testing. hormonal therapy to compete in the female category. On its website, the NCAA says trans volleyball players are eligible to play if their testosterone level is less than 10 nanomoles per liter; That’s at least four times what many experts consider the maximum level for non-transgender women, and in the typical range for adult men.

Some legislators have gotten involved in the debate. During the recent campaign, President-elect Donald Trump and other conservative politicians made clear that they were against transgender women competing in women’s athletics and vowed to try to ban them.

The Republican governors of Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho and Utah have publicly supported their losing state teams. Some Utah legislators later attended a Utah State volleyball game wearing T-shirts that said “BOY-cott.”

Kevin O’Sullivan, a retired firefighter from Pleasanton, California, whose daughter is with the Spartans, said the situation has become politicized at the expense of a team that just wants to play volleyball.

“The rules allow it and I told my daughter, ‘Can this team get through this and just come together and try to win?’” he said, adding that he empathizes with the transgender player.

“She’s a human and we’re not going to be part of a mob mentality and march to City Hall and burn her at the stake,” he said. “I feel like this is what this is becoming.”

Slusser, a senior from Denton, Texas, said she considers this fight “God’s plan” for her.

She said she didn’t initially realize that her teammate, who has played for the Spartans since 2022, was transgender, even when she lived with her for the first time and roomed with her for away games. The two had been good friends, he said.

But when the article about the teammate’s gender identity was published this spring, Slusser said she felt betrayed. She said, “I don’t really care how you want to live your life,” but a trans woman shouldn’t share a room with teammates or use a women’s locker room.

Earlier this fall, she joined a federal lawsuit against the NCAA that had been filed in Georgia by a group of female athletes in several sports, alleging that the NCAA discriminated against them based on their sex when it allowed transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete in the competition. Swimming Championships 2022.

Justice and security

Bill Bock, an attorney in that case who had challenged the 2020 election results in Wisconsin in favor of Trump, had persuaded Slusser to file a subsequent lawsuit against Mountain West, he said. Bock has extensive experience in sports: as general counsel for the US Anti-Doping Agency, he helped expose cyclist Lance Armstrong for his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

In a phone interview, Bock said everyone, regardless of political preferences, should be concerned about trans athletes competing among women because fairness is the crux of Title IX.

“If you don’t have fair play, you don’t really have a sport that’s meaningful,” she said, adding that the NCAA and university administrators “have intentionally neglected their duty” to keep sports safe and fair and “have failed women.”

When Melissa Batie-Smoose, the Spartans’ assistant coach, arrived on campus nearly two years ago, she said she had not been told about the transgender player. But he recalled watching the athlete play beach volleyball and telling Kress, “Oh, man, she hits and blocks like a guy,” because the player jumped so high and floated for a long time in the air. He also said that the player avoided lifting weights for fear of becoming too muscular.

Shortly afterward, management told him the player was transgender, Batie-Smoose said in an interview, adding that he wouldn’t have taken the job if he’d known that. She said women should not lose playing positions or scholarships to transgender players, adding that she couldn’t say a word about the player to anyone if she wanted to keep her job.

This month, the university suspended her after she filed a Title IX complaint alleging that San Jose State showed favoritism toward the transgender player and also tried to silence her from speaking about the player, Batie-Smoose said.

“Since this came to light, he hasn’t been playing at the same level, like he’s lowering the level a little bit,” she said before describing the immense power with which the athlete had spiked the ball to Slusser when she presented the demand for the first time.

The lawsuit claims that some Spartans were worried about being hit and injured by the player’s balls. However, University of Wyoming athletic director Tom Burman wrote that his team felt safe playing against her and that she “wasn’t the best or most dominant hitter” on the team, but “that said, that doesn’t mean say it’s okay,” according to university correspondence reviewed by the Times. The player does not lead any statistical category in her conference.

After the Spartans’ final regular-season game, Kress said he was proud to coach a team that overcame “the pain, the conflict and the relentless negativity” of the season, adding that “this might have broken us, but it didn’t.” It was like that.” “t.”

After the game, the players left the gym, one by one. Slusser met her aunt, who had traveled from Alabama to see her play. Two relatives of the transgender player were also there.

When asked about the team dynamic this season, those family members, including her mother, said they were just there to support their player.

“It’s their story to tell,” said one of them.