College volleyball serves up a woke final: Transgender athlete, BLM kneelers

Woke sports fans may have a tough time deciding which team to root for in the Mountain West Conference women’s volleyball tournament.

The Saturday final pits San Jose State, whose star player is a male-to-female transgender athlete, against Colorado State, which has three players who continue to take a knee during the national anthem, a protest made popular during the Black Lives Matter heyday.

The three athletes — identified by OutKick as Malaya Jones, Kennedy Stanford and Naeemah Weathers — kneeled ahead of Friday’s semifinal match against San Diego State. The Spartans defeated the Aztecs 3 sets to 1.

After the game, Colorado State coach Emily Kohan told reporters that the players had been kneeling during “The Star-Spangled Banner” since their first year on the team.

“They’ve knelt since their freshman year when the Black Lives Matter movement was going on,” said Kohan in a video posted by OutKick. “In this program, we raise critical thinkers to be able to make decisions for what’s important to them. For those three, right, they’re Black players, it’s been important to them for five years, and they’ve stood their ground.”

Kohan added that “we’ve all supported them along the way.”

Taking a knee during the national anthem became popular with athletes after NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began doing so in 2016 to protest racial inequality and police brutality, but the gesture has largely petered out.

Colorado State, the tournament’s No. 1 seed, faces second-seeded San Jose State in the championship match scheduled for 2 p.m. Pacific time Saturday in Las Vegas.

The event has drawn national attention over San Jose State redshirt senior Blaire Fleming, a biological male whose participation on the women’s team sparked a backlash that saw teams forfeit six regular-season matches. The forfeits were recorded as wins for the Spartans.

San Jose State advanced to the final after Boise State withdrew from the semifinals.

Colorado State didn’t forfeit any games during the season. Colorado law bars discrimination based on gender identity in education, and the Democrat-led state doesn’t have a law against male-born athletes competing in female scholastic sports.

Kohan confirmed that the Colorado State team will play in the final, adding that “this has been far from a regular season.”

“It’s been a really complex and emotional situation for us this season,” Kohan said. “Unless you’re in those rooms having those hard conversations and making those hard decisions, I don’t think you truly know how this feels. I also think that regardless of your opinion on it, there’s some room here to acknowledge that there’s been a lot of young people showing courage all season long in a lot of ways.”

Colorado State denied OutKick’s request to speak with the players who knelt during the National Anthem prior to win over San Diego State. pic.twitter.com/jmmBhp7ko2

— Dan Zaksheske (@RealDanZak) November 29, 2024

Adding yet more drama is that Colorado State’s Jones, the Mountain West Player of the Year, was accused in a Title IX complaint filed by a San Jose State associate coach of conspiring with Fleming to injure Spartans co-captain Brooke Slusser during their Oct. 3 game.

Slusser previously joined a lawsuit against the NCAA over its policy allowing biological males in women’s sports.

The conference this month said it conducted an investigation, but found insufficient evidence to support the claim and took no disciplinary action.

The winner of Saturday’s final receives an automatic spot in the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball tournament.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.