Setting things right

As a setter for San José State University’s women’s volleyball team, Brooke Slusser’s job is to push the ball high enough that teammates can slam it downward over the net with tremendous force. When that happens, the ball can sometimes ricochet off an opponent’s face or head.

Among the hitters Slusser must set for is Blaire (formerly Brayden) Fleming, a male athlete who is the reason several college volleyball teams have recently declined to play against San José State. From the outset, Slusser noticed Fleming can leap higher and strike the ball significantly harder than female players can. At times in practice, Slusser has faced shots Fleming sent hurtling toward the floor at speeds, she estimates, of roughly 80 mph—and found herself fleeing in terror.

“Sometimes I have to play a game of dodgeball,” Slusser told me. “There are situations in practice where a lot of times I’ll have to move out of the way—I’m not going to be able to handle it or dig that ball. There have been a lot of moments where I’ve done that.”

Slusser, 21, is aware of the spiked ball that ended North Carolina high school volleyball player Payton McNabb’s career in 2022 at the hands of a male opponent who identified as “transgender.” The thought that Slusser would be an accomplice if Fleming, a 6-foot-1 senior outside hitter, were to spike one of her set balls off an opponent’s face “has crossed my mind many times,” she said.

It’s perhaps the biggest reason why Slusser has added her name to a class-action lawsuit that seeks to stop the NCAA, the governing body for major college sports, from allowing male athletes to compete against women moving forward. (Read the lawsuit here.)

Slusser realizes the timing isn’t great, and her participation in the lawsuit, originally filed in March, has implications for herself and her team both on and off the volleyball court.

San José State’s winning record this year has been helped by the forfeiture of several opposing teams that seem to share Slusser’s concern about the dangers of a male player on the court. Southern Utah declined to play a nonconference match against SJSU at a tournament hosted by Santa Clara University in September, and three of San José State’s Mountain West Conference opponents—Boise State, Utah State, and Wyoming—have also forfeited in recent days.

Slusser has mixed emotions about so many teams announcing decisions to forfeit. When she first learned of Boise State’s decision to forfeit, for example, “I broke into tears, to be honest with you.”

“This is my last season of volleyball, ever,” the senior said last week. “For one of my opponents to take one of my last games away is just soul-crushing. … Props to Boise State for standing up and saying, ‘No, we’re not going to play.’ Still, it’s one less game I get to play in my career.”

Despite the forfeitures, SJSU had won nine times on the court this season as of this writing. San José State remained unbeaten until Oct. 3, when it fell to Colorado State in three sets. The Spartans played that match with a beefed-up police presence in Fort Collins, Colo., after Slusser received death threats for her stance.

“I’ve gotten a lot of hateful emails and comments on social media,” said the senior from Denton, Texas. “But 99 percent of the attention I am getting is so much love and support that it cancels out the negative things people are trying to say about me.”

Concerned Women for America (CWA), an organization that supports keeping women’s sports off-limits for male athletes, has taken credit for convincing Mountain West schools not to compete against San José State. CWA also filed a complaint against SJSU with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights asserting that the school is violating Title IX by allowing a male athlete to compete and change clothes alongside actual women.

“We’ve been reaching out to schools and informing them of the increased risk of harm to their athletes,” said Macy Petty, a legislative strategist for CWA and a former college volleyball player herself at Lee University, an NCAA Division II school in Tennessee. “We’re making schools aware of a male’s presence on the court because the NCAA has not done its due diligence.”

Slusser doesn’t just have to deal with her male teammate’s presence on the court: She shares an off-campus house with Fleming and two of her volleyball teammates and was also assigned to room with Fleming on the road. (That assignment came at Fleming’s request, according to OutKick. Slusser declined to speculate as to why. She did not know Fleming was male when campus officials recommended the housing situation.)

When Slusser transferred to San José State from the University of Alabama following the 2022 season, officials involved with SJSU’s volleyball program recommended that she room with Fleming. Slusser said school officials concealed Fleming’s self-proclaimed transgender status at the time. She also said she would not have transferred to San José State had she known.

Slusser’s predicament shows why legal protections are needed, according to Petty, the CWA legislative strategist. “Men and women should not be forced to change in front of each other,” she said.

Slusser said that while she recognizes the potential for her stance to cause friction within her team—including with Fleming—she quoted Esther 4:14 from the Bible to assert that God called her to SJSU “for such a time as this.”

“Why else of all places would I end up here?” the senior said. “God knew I’d be able to handle the battle. He knew I’d be able to stand up and speak out—not everyone is able to.

“I’m here to stand up for little girls’ future.”

A shorter version of this story appears in the November print issue.