NCAA Mountain West Conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez said she isn’t familiar with the language or the science surrounding issues and problems with a transgender athlete playing on a women’s team in her conference.
San Jose State University has garnered international attention because the school’s women’s volleyball team features a 6’1″ male athlete named Blaire Fleming, born Brayden.
‘We have an election year. It’s political, so yeah, it feels like a no-win …’
Four teams have issued forfeitures since the controversy began: Boise State, Southern Utah, Utah State, and Wyoming. The ladies at Nevada have also declared they do not wish to play Fleming, but school administrators decided the game would go on.
Nevarez said in a recent press conference that the situation breaks her heart because “they’re human beings, young people, student athletes on both sides of this issue that are getting a lot of national negative attention.”
“It just doesn’t feel right to me,” she continued, according to the Associated Press.
The MWC commissioner then explained she isn’t very educated on the topic — presumably men playing in women’s sports — and said she isn’t sure about the “language” or the “science” surrounding the issue.
“I’m learning a lot about the issue. … I don’t know a lot of the language yet or the science or the understanding nationally of how this issue plays out,” Nevarez said. “The external influences are so far on either side. We have an election year. It’s political, so yeah, it feels like a no-win based on all the external pressure.”
Nevarez did not appear to directly address the root of the problem and avoided referring to the player, Fleming, as a male or female: “The student athlete [in question] meets the eligibility standard, so if a team does not play them, it’s a forfeit, meaning they take a loss.”
SJSU coach Todd Kress has displayed a similar attitude, addressing the fact that his players are receiving hate messages without explaining why: “I know that it’s definitely taken a toll on many of them. They’re receiving messages of hate, which is completely ridiculous to me.”
Kress added that “when we had our first forfeit, there was a lot of heartbreak. And now, we’ve kind of, not come to expect it, but we know the certain programs that may forfeit. It still does hurt our student athletes when we don’t play a match, but I think they’ve come to accept it a little more, and I think that’s a very unfortunate thing to say.”
What Kress seems not to address is that allegedly most of his female volleyball players are against having a male on their team — and are receiving hate for speaking out against his presence.
One SJSU player, Brooke Slusser, spoke to Blaze News and said everyone involved knows exactly the reason why opposing teams have forfeited games.
She added that the school has largely ignored the feelings of the female athletes and has instead focused on the male athlete and whether he’s comfortable playing among the women.
“What I’m going through … is something, to my bones, I don’t agree with. It’s not right,” Slusser said.
Nevada’s captain, Sia Liilii, has echoed the same sentiments.
She told Blaze News that her school hasn’t supported the team and spoke about administrators ignoring her team’s vote to forfeit: “Unfortunately our university decided not to back us, and they decided they’re going to have the match as scheduled.”
Liilii added that “the vast majority of us decided that this isn’t right, [and] we need to protect women’s sports, and we’re going to forfeit.”
It appears as though many coaches and administrators continue to ignore the elephant in the room and have shown no signs of going against state or NCAA rules.
A group of women including attorneys and former athletes recently met with the United Nations to plead for international governing bodies to disqualify men from playing in women’s sports.
One of the representatives declared that women’s achievements that have been affected by male participation in sports can “no longer be ignored.”
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