Volleyball uprising: Female players seek to spike incursion of transgender athletes

It turns out that San Jose State athlete Blaire Fleming isn’t the only male-born volleyball player raising hackles for competing on a female team.

A growing number of volleyball programs across the country are drawing a line in the sand when it comes to competing against biological males, sparking a rebellion this season at both the collegiate and high school levels despite the threat of penalties from sports’ governing bodies.

That includes Stone Ridge Christian Academy in Merced, California which forfeited its Nov. 16 girls’ high school volleyball playoff match against the San Francisco Waldorf School after learning that team includes a male-to-female transgender player.

“We do not believe sex is changeable and we do not intend to participate in events that send a different message,” said Stone Ridge in a Nov. 15 memo. “We also have a duty and responsibility to care for the health and safety of our athletes. So after consulting with our students, coaches, and staff, we have made the difficult decision to forfeit Saturday’s game.”

Since then, the California Interscholastic Federation has acknowledged that Stone Ridge could face sanctions for forfeiting the match — and the school has lawyered up.

Representing the Christian academy is the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative Christian legal foundation with 15 Supreme Court wins under its belt.

“Alliance Defending Freedom will always stand with Christian schools and ministries for biblical truth,” the ADF told The Washington Times. “Girls teams should be for girls, and we will always defend the right for schools to protect their students. No girl should be forced to choose between competing against a male athlete or not competing at all.”

Courage begets courage—and it’s happening right now in women’s college volleyball. After years of being pressured to pretend sex differences aren’t real, female athletes are beginning to stand up and say “no more.”

We applaud @icons_women for coming alongside these brave young… pic.twitter.com/ox1aLTsldh

— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) November 27, 2024

Another private religious school in California, Notre Dame High School Belmont, may also face penalties after canceling a nonleague match against Half Moon Bay over its transgender player, according to Steve Sell, Aragon athletic director and co-chair of the Peninsula Athletic League Athletic Directors.

That wasn’t the only issue. Some Notre Dame Belmont fans booed a transgender player on the Half Moon Bay High School team at an Oct. 12 girls’ volleyball tournament hosted by Aragon High School in San Mateo.

Notre Dame Belmont sent a letter apologizing for the fans’ “unsporting behavior,” as shown on ABC7 in Los Angeles.

Mr. Sell said he was “appalled” by the booing. He also took issue with Notre Dame’s decision to cancel the match.

“I thought that was a serious error in judgment by the leadership of Notre Dame Belmont because I think it sent a message to their community that it was okay to treat kids in a discriminatory fashion,” Mr. Sell said in a Friday interview with ABC7.

All-male volleyball teams?

The growing tensions come with the women’s sports world watching as Fleming prepares to compete for the Mountain West Conference championship in Las Vegas.

The redshirt senior is expected to take the court Friday after the conference beat back a legal challenge filed by 11 female players, a coach, and Utah State University seeking to prevent the male-born player from competing in the finals.

Four Mountain West teams took losses this season after forfeiting matches against San Jose State, helping the university capture the #2 seed in the NCAA Division I conference tournament.

SJSU athletic director Jeff Konya said that the “team looks forward to starting Mountain West Conference tournament competition on Friday” after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in the conference’s favor.

“The university maintains an unwavering commitment to the participation, safety and privacy of all students at San Jose State and ensuring they are able to compete in an inclusive, fair and respectful environment,” Mr. Konya said in a statement.

For those keeping score, that makes at least three male-born players in girls’ and women’s scholastic volleyball in California, but Mr. Sell said that such athletes aren’t common enough to raise concerns.

“We’re not seeing a prevalence of it,” he said. “It’s still happening at a very low level and very rarely, and it certainly is not happening enough to justify excluding transgender girls from athletics.”

California has some of the most transgender-friendly laws in the nation — the state requires public schools to allow students to compete in sports based on gender identity — but at least one other state is also facing scrutiny over a biological male in girls’ volleyball.

The Massachusetts Volleyball Coaches Association was ripped by single-sex sports advocates for naming a male-to-female transgender player to its 2024 Girls All-State Team for Divisions 3, 4 and 5, which encompasses the state’s smaller high schools.

The student isn’t breaking any rules. The state bans discrimination in education based on gender identity, while the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association allows boys who identify as girls to play in girls’ sports.

Even so, advocates for single-sex female sports blasted the association for awarding all-state honors to the player.

The transgender athlete “led the team in just about every stat possible, bagged them a conference championship title this year, and just recently stole a Massachusetts Volleyball All-State award from a real female athlete,” said He Cheated, a website that tracks male-born athletes in female sports, on X. “This is shameful.”

The Washington Times has reached out to the association for comment.

The NCAA has deferred the transgender-eligibility issue to the individual sports governing bodies, including USA Volleyball, which allows biological males to compete based on gender identity as long as they keep their testosterone in serum below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least a year before competition.

That’s still as much as 20 times higher than the testosterone level for women, which ranges from 0.5-2.4 nmol/L.

San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser, one of the 11 former and current players who sued to block Fleming’s eligibility, said the ultimate outcome is no more women in women’s volleyball.

“If we keep going at the rate we’re going, what’s to stop people just from not recruiting women anymore?” she said on OutKick. “If they’re allowed to have men on their teams, obviously that’s the better option. They’re going to be stronger, they’re going to jump higher. So what’s to stop coaches from having a full team of men?”