The University of Nevada women’s volleyball team has officially forfeited their game against San Jose State due to the Nevadan’s objection to competing against a transgender player.
The university announced that the team would forfeit Saturday’s game against SJSU, making Nevada the fifth team to forfeit a game against SJSU after the California team quietly added transgender player Blaire Fleming to the team.
Nevada had initially announced that the team would play its game against San Jose State. But that was before the players even met to discuss the issue. And after they met, they vowed not to play against a transgender player.
On Friday, the Nevada athletic department announced that the team did not have enough players to complete a team for Saturday.
“Due to not having enough players to compete, the University of Nevada women’s volleyball team will not play its scheduled Mountain West Conference match at San José State on Saturday, Oct. 26. Per Mountain West Conference policy, the match will be recorded as a conference loss for Nevada,” the school said in its statement, according to Fox News.
For its part, San Jose State insisted that including a man who identifies as a woman on its volleyball team is just following the law.
“Our athletes all comply with NCAA and Mountain West Conference policies, and they are eligible to play under the rules of those organizations. We will continue to take measures to prioritize the health and safety of our students while they pursue their earned opportunities to compete,” SJSU said in a statement.
Nevada and SJSU had agreed to move the game to the Bay Area in California, Fox News added. However, the Nevadans could refuse to travel for the game, which would automatically give SJSU the forfeit.
SJSU has also claimed that threats against its volleyball team have made travel for games difficult.
One of the SJSU team members is also reporting that she has faced threats. San Jose State player Brooke Slusser has joined a lawsuit against her team for not telling her that Blaire Fleming was transgender.
“One of my teammates got a DM, basically saying that she, and then my team, needed to keep my distance from me on gameday against Colorado State because it wasn’t going to be a good situation for me to be in and that my team needed to keep their distance,” Slusser told Fox News. “They needed to keep their distance from me during the game because something was going to happen to me.”
She added, “This was the first physical threat when we could easily see that they wanted to physically harm one of us.”
This week, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalen, delivered a report that suggested that men identifying as women should not be allowed to play on teams as women in women’s sports.
In his report, Alsalen said that men who identify as women have won 890 medals, shutting out more than 600 female athletes across 29 sports since so many sports leagues have decided to allow men to compete as women. And one of the report’s recommendations is that women’s sports should be relegated to women only.
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