San Jose State University volleyball coach Todd Kress didn’t know what to expect when he and his team arrived for their match at Colorado State on Thursday.
As he approached the opposing coach, “I was like, ‘should I say thank you for playing us tonight?’ And I seriously meant that,” Kress told reporters.
In the past few weeks, four college teams in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah have forfeited games against San Jose State, protesting the participation of a transgender athlete who has been on the team for three years, but was only recently outed by critics who say the player doesn’t belong in women’s sports.
When the player’s own teammate, Brooke Slusser, joined a class action lawsuit Sept. 23 against the NCAA, claiming the college athletics association is violating Title IX by allowing transgender athletes to compete at San Jose State and elsewhere, the controversy exploded onto the national debate stage and has become as much a topic of conservative politicians as women’s equality forums.
Governors of two states weighed in. Tennis legend and LGBTQ activist Martina Navratilova, who sided against transgender athletes during the Paris Olympics last summer, tweeted praise for Slusser. And anonymous online trolls have been spewing what Coach Kress calls “disgusting” remarks to his players.
All this has hurled the 19 San Jose State volleyball players into the maelstrom, positioning them between friendship, teamwork and their own senses of fairness as drama swirls around them. They are watched over by armed guards, their winning record is being questioned and their season ahead is evaporating one game after another.
Coach Kress has started sending them daily affirmations.
“This season,” he said, “we’re more parents than coaches.”
It’s unclear how many teammates support Slusser or the transgender player, or whether their concerns are mainly focused on the controversy’s impact on the game and their lives. Most players, discouraged by San Jose State officials, have been reluctant to discuss it, the lawsuit says.
“These girls all love and care about each other. All of them. But they’re kind of like, ‘what are we supposed to do?’” said one player’s mother, who didn’t want to be identified for fear her daughter would lose her standing on the team. “This was supposed to be their best season ever and now teams won’t even play us. It just negates the efforts of everybody.”
Because the player hasn’t come out publicly as transgender, San Jose State has not confirmed that a transgender athlete is on the team. The Bay Area News Group isn’t identifying her, either, and the story has not been refuted.
In an interview Saturday, Spartan Athletic Director Jeffrey Konya and Peter Lim, interim vice president of San Jose State’s Title IX and Equal Opportunity office, said its sports teams adhere to the university’s non-discrimination policy and, specifically, that everyone on the volleyball team satisfies NCAA eligibility requirements.
“We believe in fostering equity and gender equity in athletics,” Lim said, “and we want to ensure that every player who’s eligible to play plays.”
The two also said SJSU conforms to NCAA rules, which defers to USA Volleyball requirements. Those rules say that all athletes must submit appropriate documents “upon request” and that levels of testosterone “must not exceed the upper limit of the normal female reference range” for their age group. Transgender athletes often inject testosterone blockers to qualify as part of their medical treatment, although studies are unsettled on whether doing so adequately diminishes a natural male physical advantage.
Tom Temprano, of Equality California, a statewide LGBTQ civil rights group, said the controversy over the San Jose State player is “rooted in transphobia not reality.” Only about 1.6% of all collegiate athletes identify as transgender or nonbinary, he said, and rules are in place — including limiting testosterone levels — to level the playing field.
“A very vocal group of extremists has really been able to gin up an unreasonable amount of hatred and concern,” Temprano said. “But the reality is that this just is not a widespread problem.”
In 2016, there was little backlash when transfer student Chloe Anderson became one of the first transgender athletes to join a Division III volleyball team at UC Santa Cruz. The university even sent out a press release about it.
Times have changed.
North Carolina high school volleyballer Payton McNabb was knocked out from a spike by a high school opponent who identified as transgender in 2022 and has since spoken out against transgender athletes in women’s sports, as has Macy Petty, a volleyball player at Lee University in Tennessee who’s claimed she faced unfair competition.
San Jose State’s Saturday game against the University of Wyoming was canceled after the group backing the class action lawsuit against the NCAA — the Independent Council on Women’s Sports — sent a letter Sept. 24 to every NCAA Mountain West conference president saying student athletes were “distraught” at the thought of playing San Jose State, and a Wyoming state legislator circulated a letter saying the Cowboy State “should not participate in the extremist agenda of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or propagate the lie that biological sex can be changed.”
The transgender Spartan player is not the tallest on the team or considered the best athlete. Last season, with the player on the court, San Jose State lost to two of the teams — Utah State and Boise State — that are forfeiting now, ostensibly because of an unfair advantage and risk to their players.
“She has a strong hit. But you know what? I think some of the other teammates are just as strong, honestly,” said the mother of another Spartan volleyball, who also didn’t want to be identified as she worried about her daughter’s standing on the team.
A growing chorus of athletes and their parents have expressed fears that the NCAA rules will mean more coveted scholarships going to transgender players and more injuries on the court. As another Spartan parent put it, “what if the next trans player who wants to come in is 6’5″ and 250 lbs?”
Slusser contends in the lawsuit that her transgender teammate hits harder and jumps higher than the rest of those on the team and during a recent tournament “smashed the ball into the face of a woman on the University of Delaware team’s back line, knocking the opposing player to the ground.”
In the lawsuit she joined with a dozen other athletes, Slusser said she didn’t know for months that her teammate was transgender even though they were housemates and shared a room on road trips. Slusser had heard whispers on campus, but not until a conservative news story published last April did her teammate invite her out for a sandwich to reveal she was transgender.
Slusser didn’t want the player “to be bullied,” she responded, but “questioned whether it was safe or fair for the other women on the team and for opposing teams” to compete against a transgender athlete.
Soon after, San Jose State officials convened a meeting with the players, the lawsuit says, where they were told not to discuss the issue outside the team, that it was the player’s “information alone.” NCAA rules prevented the school from treating the player any differently than any other woman on the team, the lawsuit said, and Slusser said she feared she could be disciplined or removed from the squad if she spoke out.
Lim, who oversees the university’s Title IX operations, refuted the lawsuit claims that the players were told to keep quiet or were threatened with discipline. Instead, he said, after Southern Utah canceled in mid-September, school communications officials “suggested strategies for how players might respond,” keeping in mind teammates’ privacy and safety.
The Spartans lost their match Thursday against Colorado State in three straight sets, dropping their undefeated record to 9-1. With ESPN, The AP and the Denver Post in the hallway outside the locker rooms of Moby Arena, Slusser tried to stick to the topic of volleyball.
“When we walk into that gym, it doesn’t matter what’s happening in your personal life, what’s happening with a teammate,” she said. “You go in there and you work your butt off for each other.”
Still, she said, “at the end of the day, everyone has their own personal morals, their own personal opinions.”
Coach Kress described the forfeitures as “unfortunate” and said he’s disappointed that volleyball has become politicized. He said he’s focused on supporting his players and riding out the firestorm.
“We really try not to let any of that outside noise impact us so much,” Kress said. “It’s easier said than done.”
Bay Area News Group sports writers Christian Babcock and Joseph Dycus and researcher Veronica Martinez contributed.