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SAN JOSE, Calif. – On the court, they look like any other college women’s volleyball team. At a recent game, players moved around the court in a staccato rhythm, setting and spiking the ball and leaping into the air like pogo sticks to block offensive shots, all in their blue and gold San Jose State University Spartans uniforms .

But off the field, the team is doing its best not to crumble during an unexpected season full of tension, tears, confusion and anger. The players are at the center of a drama unfolding 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 seeking to bar the transgender athlete from participating in this week’s Mountain West Conference tournament, claiming they violated Title IX rights to gender equality at federally funded institutions.

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

In the meantime, the transgender volleyball player remains silent. Teammates other than Brooke Slusser, the co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, also declined interview requests. The New York Times is not naming the player because she has not publicly confirmed her identity and declined an interview request through a university spokesperson.

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

“But when I also imagined myself with children and saw whether they had to play against a man or play on a team with a man and knowing that I had the place to make a change for that, I couldn’t live with myself,” she says . said.

Because of the complicated mess, some Spartans no longer talk to each other during practice or outside of games. Todd Kress, the head coach, supports the transgender athlete’s participation and also no longer talks to some players off the field. During matches, fans wave signs and wear T-shirts in support of or against the transgender player. If problems arise, campus police have been called in in recent weeks.

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

“I think they are good people at heart who have been put in a very unique situation that challenges them at their core,” he said.

A federal judge this week dismissed the player’s lawsuit, allowing the athlete to participate 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 prepared to play a semifinal in the tournament scheduled for Friday, but the other team – Boise State University – declined to play the Spartans for the third time this season due to their transgender player. Four other teams had forfeited games against San Jose State in a stand against transgender women playing on women’s teams.

In a statement, Boise State said the decision not to play “was not an easy one,” adding that the team “should not pass up this opportunity pending a more thoughtful and better 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 a boycotted game away from advancing to next month’s NCAA tournament, where 64 teams will play and the Spartans will draw even more attention.

“There are a lot of people in the community who have supported the athlete, regardless of what her identity is, because she has been targeted,” 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’re doing is playing a game and playing by the rules?”

Inconsistent rules

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

Maintaining that fairness in women’s sports while honoring athletes who identify as women has become an ongoing struggle for sports organizations. So far, there’s no surefire way to ensure that trans women don’t maintain an advantage over athletes assigned female at birth, and the debate continues over whether trans women have an advantage by increasing their testosterone production for suppress for a certain period of 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 these rules.

USA Volleyball’s website says that androgenic hormones, including testosterone, may give trans athletes an “unfair competitive advantage.” Therefore, the organization requires documentation that athletes assigned male at birth undergo hormone therapy in order to compete in the women’s category. On its website, the NCAA says trans volleyball players are eligible to play if their testosterone levels are below 10 nanomoles per liter — that’s at least four times more than what many experts say is best for non-transgender women, and within the typical range for adult men.

Some lawmakers have gotten involved in the debate. During the recent campaign, President-elect Donald Trump and other conservative politicians made clear that they oppose 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 in-state teams that suffered their losses. Some Utah lawmakers later attended a Utah state volleyball game wearing T-shirts that read “BOY-cott.”

Kevin O’Sullivan, a retired firefighter from Pleasanton, California, whose daughter is on the Spartans, said the situation has been 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 over this and just come together and try to win?’” he said, adding that he feels empathy for the transgender player.

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

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

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

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

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

Honesty and safety

Bill Bock, an attorney in that case and someone who had challenged the 2020 election results in Wisconsin for Trump, had persuaded Slusser to file another lawsuit against the Mountain West, she said. Bock has an extensive background in sports: As general counsel to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, he helped expose cyclist Lance Armstrong for using performance-enhancing drugs.

In a telephone interview, Bock said that everyone, regardless of political affiliation, should be concerned about trans athletes competing with women because fairness is at the heart of Title IX.

“If you don’t have fair play, you don’t really have a sport that’s meaningful,” he said, adding that the NCAA and university administrators have “willfully neglected their duty” to keep the sport 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 wasn’t told anything about the transgender player. But she remembered watching the athlete play beach volleyball and telling Kress, “Oh man, she hits and blocks like a dude,” because the player jumped so high and stayed in the air for so long. She also said the player avoided lifting weights for fear of becoming too muscular.

Soon after, the administration told her the player was transgender, Batie-Smoose said in an interview, adding that she would not have taken the job if she had known. She said women should not lose playing slots or scholarships to transgender players, adding that she could not 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 about the player, Batie-Smoose said .

“Since this came out, he hasn’t been playing at the same level, he’s dialing it back a little bit,” she said before describing the tremendous force with which the athlete had hit the ball to Slusser when she first filed the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that some Spartans were concerned about being hit and injured by balls hit by the player. Still, University of Wyoming athletic director Tom Burman wrote that his team felt safe playing against her and that she was “not the best or most dominant hitter” on the team, but “after she said it wasn’t OK was,” 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 endured “the pain, the conflict and the relentless negativity” of the season, adding that “this had us could break, but that didn’t happen’. T.”

After the match, the players left the gym one by one. Slusser met her aunt, who traveled from Alabama to watch her play. Two relatives of the transgender player were also present.

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

“It’s her story to tell,” one said.