Selling out female athletes

It never fails to astound me who the universities that let male athletes compete on women’s teams will bend over backwards to protect and who they won’t.

Hint: The actual women on the teams aren’t the ones being protected. Shocking, I know.

Case in point: The ongoing saga of San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball program. According to findings by the Trump administration’s Department of Education, the university did everything possible to shield three central figures associated with the scandalous 2024 season from negative attention. One, of course, was Brayden (aka Blaire) Fleming, the 6-foot-1 male outside hitter whomfour Mountain West Conference opponents—Boise State, Nevada, Utah State, and Wyoming—forfeited a combined seven matches to avoid playing.

The other two figures were SJSU coaches: The Department of Education report refers to them as “Coach 1” and “Coach 2.” Fleming came to SJSU under head coach Trent Kersten—now the head coach at the University of Oregon—and continued to play for the Spartans under current head coach Todd Kress.

The College Fix, a website that covers university-related news—sports and otherwise—nationwide, furthermore reported that according to the Department of Education, “Coach 1” debated whether to tell his players that a male athlete would be joining their team. The coach ultimately chose not to, the report says, because he “did not want to relinquish decision-making power to the women on the team regarding whether a male player would be allowed.” The coach allegedly left it to Fleming to decide when it would be best to reveal his gender identity to his new teammates.

Several San Jose State players say Fleming never did: The players reportedly told the Department of Education they never learned Fleming is male “before spending extensive time with [him] either on the court, in the locker room, or in sleeping quarters.”

Kress, meanwhile, kept Fleming on SJSU’s roster after replacing Kersten. With Fleming on the court in 2024, Kress guided the Spartans to a 14-7 record and a berth in the Mountain West tournament final against Colorado State. But again, half of SJSU’s wins came by forfeit.

Making matters worse: Although players filed Title IX complaints against Kress, and Fleming filed one against former San Jose State assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose for allegedly violating a federal law protecting student privacy, the university gave the complaints against Kress short shrift, according to Fox News.

By contrast, San Jose State suspended Batie-Smoose indefinitely late in the 2024 season and ultimately did not renew her contract. “All along, they were looking to protect the male player, and anything that would not draw attention, that was all their decision-making in the process,” Batie-Smoose told Fox News.

A perhaps even more alarming allegation has made SJSU look even worse: Fox News reported on July 7 that in 2024—amid the Fleming controversy—a player from one of Kress’ previous coaching stops, Fairfield University in Connecticut, wrote to San Jose State and accused Kress of attacking her in a hotel room following a 1998 NCAA tournament loss.

“Emails show that SJSU officials acknowledged the receipt of the allegations, thanked the former player for coming forward and apologized for her experiences,” OutKick’s Jackson Thompson wrote.

The news prompted Martina Navratilova to weigh in on X, using colorful language to call for the university to fire Kress. San Jose State probably couldn’t discipline or even investigate Kress for an alleged incident at a different university from more than 25 years earlier. But the optics are still horrendous amid the LGBTQ controversy.

I’m just gonna say it: If women’s teams’ coaches need to recruit men to win, they’re effectively cheating. I don’t care whether a given state’s laws or an athletic conference’s rules allow it, if not mandate it. The fact is, those men aren’t women. And bending over backward to give self-deluding men their way and protecting their enablers—the coaches who recruited them, robbed females on both their own rosters and opposing teams of meaningful opportunities to compete, then bullied the women who dared object into silence—is both cowardly and reprehensible.