Over the last few months, a student-athlete on the San Jose State women’s volleyball team has been accused of being transgender. As a result, some teams have withdrawn from matches against the SJSU team in protest.
Neither the school nor the player, whom First and Pen won’t name, have released any information on the player’s sexuality, but to some programs caught up in cultural politics, it doesn’t matter.
But these politically fueled decisions have only hurt the protesting programs and their athletes.
On Wednesday night, no.6 Boise State, which withdrew from two previous matches against SJSU this season, did it again, only this time it was in Friday’s Mountain West women’s volleyball tournament semifinals against the no.2 Spartans.
That automatically advanced the Spartans to the MWC Championship game on Saturday, where they will face the winner of no.1 Colorado State vs no.5 San Diego State.
So now Boise State players, who led the team to a 19-10 record overall (10-8 in the conference), go home without the chance to compete for a title.
Even more significantly, they miss out on the chance to defeat the “big, bad” transgender player and earn a victory over the entire transgender community (sarcasm, of course), and as a result, all Boise St volleyball players suffer.
So let’s look at the impact this one player has made for the Spartans over their three-year tenure on the team.
In 2022, the team finished 21-9 overall but lost to no.4 Utah State in the MWC Championship. The Spartans also beat Boise twice that season.
In 2023, the Spartans finished 13-18 and didn’t even make the MWC tournament. They also lost twice to Boise St that season.
This season, two years after this player started playing without controversy, SJSU is currently 14-5 overall. The team also faced six no-contests against Boise (2), Wyoming (2), Utah St and Nevada.
Those schools had the chance to compete against and beat the Spartans and their “difference maker”, but withdrew instead.
“The decision to not continue to play in the 2024 Mountain West Volleyball Championship tournament was not an easy one,” wrote Boise St. in a statement. “Our team overcame forfeitures to earn a spot in the tournament field and fought for the win over Utah State in the first round on Wednesday. They should not have to forgo this opportunity while waiting for a more thoughtful and better system that serves all athletes.”
They earned a spot in the tournament and the chance to play for a championship but decided to forgo the opportunity over a fight that other teams readily accepted and, in some cases, won.
Earlier this season, players for Nevada stated they “refuse to participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes,” in justifying their decision to withdraw from games against the Spartans.
Yet Nevada (12-17, 5-13 in the MWC) and Wyoming (15-12, 7-11 in the MWC) didn’t even qualify for the MWC tournament this season.
Maybe they both should have focused more on practicing than on what a single player looks like underneath their uniform.
In three years the player in question has been part of a 48-32 program that had one losing season and no conference championship titles.
San Jose State volleyball hasn’t been a dominant dynasty over the last three years. And win or lose, plenty of other programs aren’t letting this one player dissuade them from taking the court.
Recently, 12 plaintiffs, including a co-captain and the associate head coach from SJSU, filed a motion to bar the SJSU player from participating, but a Denver court denied the motion, which the university cheered.
“All San Jose State University student-athletes are eligible to participate in their sports under NCAA and Mountain West Conference rules,” said the university in a statement. “We are gratified that the court rejected an eleventh-hour attempt to change those rules. Our team looks forward to competing in the Mountain West volleyball tournament this week.”
This issue has plagued the sport and its athletes the entire season, even injecting politics into the fray as Utah Governor Spencer Cox got involved to have Utah St. join the lawsuit.
It exemplifies the larger issue of culture wars gone wrong that America is experiencing, and the ones who are truly suffering yet don’t see it, are those continuing to suppress, limit, obstruct and persecute over issues that had no real significance until a hot-button topic was needed to inflame and rally crowds to a faux-cause.
So while the Spartans prepare for the championship game, Boise decision-makers can stand proudly in their boycott and refusal to back down while Broncos players are left wondering “What if we had played them?”
Thanks to the feelings of a small minority, they will never know.
