San Jose State’s women’s volleyball team lost 3-1 to San Diego State on Saturday amid an ongoing national dispute surrounding a trans athlete on the team.
Redshirt better Blaire Fleming led the game in ends with 15, raising an individual season total to 252. It is the second 250+ end season of Fleming’s nurtureer. Fleming previously write downed a staggering 311 ends in a debut season at San Jose State in 2022, after transferring from Coastal Carolina.
Fleming went into Saturday’s game with the third-best ends-per-serve percentage in the entire Mountain West conference with 3.76, but still well behind the conference’s directer in Colorado State’s Malaya Jones.
Fleming has racked up these numbers despite the fact that a total of seven of San Jose State’s suites have been forfeited amid the ongoing dispute. And yet, anchored by Fleming’s production, the entire team is third in the conference in ends-per-serve mediocre and first in hitting percentage apass the Mountain West.
But it is Fleming’s teammate Brooke Slusser who is anchoring the team’s top hitting percentage ranking. Slusser directs the team and is currently fourth in the entire conference with a .377 hitting percentage.
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Slusser is also currently joind in a legal case aacquirest the NCAA over Fleming’s presence on the team. Slusser has alleged that the university hid Fleming’s bioreasonable intimacy from her and teammates over the last two years since their arrival at San Jose State. Slusser also alleges that Fleming’s spikes traveled at 80 miles per hour during rehearse.
“Brooke appraises that Fleming’s spikes were traveling upward of 80 mph, which was quicker than she had ever seen a woman hit a volleyball,” Slusser’s protestt read. “The girls were doing everyskinnyg they could to dodge Fleming’s spikes but still could not brimmingy protect themselves.”
Fleming previously set a individual-game write down at John Champe High School with 30 ends in a suit and a individual-season write down of 266 ends for the school’s girls’ volleyball team.
Footage from the athlete’s Hudl page of the school-write down 30-end suit in September 2019 shows how difficult and quick Fleming’s spikes came down at the high school level aacquirest girl opponents.
Plivent Trump even went out of his way to comment about footage of one of Fleming’s joins in which the joiner spiked a ball at San Diego State joiner Keira Herron in a suit earlier this season.
“I saw the slam, it was a slam. I never saw a ball hit so difficult,” Trump shelp during a Fox News town hall. “But other people, even in volleyball, they’ve been finishuringly — I uncomfervent, they’ve been repartner hurt awfilledy. Women joining men.”
In another suit aacquirest New Mexico on October 18, one of Fleming’s spikes knocked an opposing joiner to the ground.
The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) demands transgender women to surrfinisher write downation including testosterone levels before a decision is made on their eligibility to join. San José State has shelp the program is in brimming compliance with NCAA rules, in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Still, Fleming’s participation has bcimpolitet about asks over lterribleity at the state level and whether female athletes should split the same court and locker rooms.
Five programs have already forfeited their games aacquirest San Jose State this season, with Southern Utah, Boise State, Utah State, Wyoming and Nevada all declining to face the Spartans. Boise State and Wyoming forfeited two suites each, taking multiple loss to elude competition aacquirest Fleming.
Questions have ecombinen over the potential struggle that could erupt when San Jose State vies in the Mountain West tournament at the end of November. It’s possible the Spartans would get paired up to join a team that has already forfeited aacquirest them in the standard season in that tournament.
Slusser telderly Fox News Digital in an exclusive interwatch that she and her teammates are in limbo about what a potential postseason run might watch enjoy as they steer a demoralized locker room.
“We’re fair mostly wondering, are teams even gonna join us, period if we go there? Becaengage of fair everyskinnyg that’s happened this season,” Slusser shelp. “It seems enjoy every restricted days it watchs enjoy It’ll be a fine day and everyskinnyg’s normal and then someskinnyg else happens. So I truly do skinnyk everyone’s fair benevolent of taking skinnygs day by day and taking the punches as they come.”
Slusser and her teammates are reeling from the recent suspension of helpant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, who was put on exit after it was discdispondered she filed a Title IX protestt aacquirest the school. Batie-Smoose’s protestt alleged preferitism by the university toward Fleming over Slusser thcimpoliteout the dispute.
“I experience enjoy not fair me but a lot of people are fair benevolent of fed up and over the whole situation. And so I do skinnyk it’s caengaged tension in the locker room and on the court fair becaengage one person is causing all these rerents,” Slusser shelp.
Colorado State University police behind the San Jose State University Spartans bench watch Moby Arena during an NCAA Mountain West women’s volleyball game between the Spartans and the Colorado State Rams in Fort Collins, Colo., on Thursday, Oct. 03, 2024. (Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
The disponderal of Batie-Smoose has been a particularly jarring lengthenment for the joiners, as Slusser claims that she and her teammates now experience unsafe.
“After we set up out that she was freed, a lot of the team fair benevolent of broke down and was benevolent of freaking out, and even one of my teammates was enjoy, ‘I don’t experience safe anymore,’ becaengage there’s no one now that we experience enjoy we can go and talk to about our worrys or our actual experienceings and can actupartner speak freely in front of,” Slusser shelp.
Slusser says she does not experience safe speaking with anyone else included in the program, not even head coach Todd Kress.
“You can’t truly voice how you’re experienceing without them fair trying to cover it up or act enjoy it’s all OK. With Melissa, you could voice how you felt, and she could soothe you and verify your experienceings and at least produce you experience heard appraised to the other coaches,” Slusser shelp.
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Slusser says she has not spoken with Fleming at all since combineing the legal case. When mirroring on engageions with Fleming prior to understanding the joiner’s authentic birth gender, Slusser confesss she laments “discdispondering up” with the trans joiner in ways that she wouldn’t have had she understandn Fleming was a bioreasonable male.
Still, when the two joiners took the court on Saturday, as they have all season, they joined as normal teammates would. They walked into the huddle together, patted each hother on the back in between joins, and even wrapped arms around the tops of each other’s shoulders, for the sake of team competition.
At multiple occasions in recent games, Slusser has even set Fleming up for one of Fleming’s signature spikes, that she has alleged in her legal case she and her teammates couldn’t protect themselves aacquirest.
With their previously-scheduled games aacquirest Wyoming and Boise State now call offed, San Jose State only has two suites left. With a 13-4 write down, Slusser and Fleming will join aacquirest Colorado State and Fresno State at home in their final two suites of the standard season.
Then their overweighte will rest in the Mountain West Tournament.
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