VICTOR JOECKS: To save women’s sports, UNLV volleyball should forfeit this match
Men shouldn’t be playing in women’s sports. Some courageous college volleyball players are doing what they can to block that injustice.
The UNLV women’s volleyball team is scheduled to play San Jose State on Oct. 12. Normally, that wouldn’t be particularly newsworthy. But there’s something different about this opponent. San Jose State has a man playing on its team.
As you can probably guess, the man, Blaire Fleming, claims to be a woman. His teammate Brooke Slusser knows the truth. The school assigned her to room with Fleming on road trips without informing her of his biological sex. She later learned Fleming had asked to room with her.
Slusser contends that school officials told the team that anyone publicly objecting could lose their spot on the team. She also worried the school would take away her scholarship if she protested.
She did it anyway, recently joining a lawsuit against the NCAA for violating Title IX. The indispensable Independent Council on Women’s Sports is funding the effort.
The concern isn’t just privacy, although that’s problem enough. Slusser contends that Fleming can spike the ball at 80 mph — “faster than she had ever seen a woman hit a volleyball,” according to the complaint. Slusser described it as “scary.” She and her teammates have been worried about Fleming giving one of them a concussion in practice.
In a recent game against the University of Delaware, a teammate “set Fleming for a spike, and Fleming 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,” the lawsuit says. The teammate later came to Slusser racked with guilt that — by setting to a man — she was responsible for the other player’s injury.
This isn’t right. It undermines Title IX. If left unchecked, women’s sports will soon be dominated by mediocre male athletes.
Some volleyball teams are taking action.
Last month, the Southern Utah University team refused to play San Jose State. Rather than participate in the charade that men can be women and endanger the safety of their players, the team forfeited.
For its Sept. 28 match, Boise State did the same. On Saturday, Wyoming was supposed to play San Jose State, but the school has already announced that it will forfeit the match. Utah State recently said that it won’t compete in its upcoming match against San Jose State. Along with San Jose State, these three schools are in the Mountain West.
Forfeiting these matches is costly. These women have trained for years for a chance to compete. But their courageous sacrifice could be a powerful catalyst for change.
If female athletes refused en masse to compete against males, this charade would come crashing down.
That’s where UNLV comes in. On Wednesday, UNLV told the Review-Journal that its volleyball team plans to play an Oct. 12 match against San Jose State. Pathetic. This approach doesn’t only endanger UNLV’s players, it undercuts the vital movement to save women’s sports.
For this game, UNLV needs to take its volleyball and stay home.
Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.