San Jose State women's volleyball team featuring trans player set to play semi-final against team that boycotted them

San Jose State University's inclusion of trans player Blaire Fleming on their NCAA women's volleyball team had caused nothing but problems in the Mountain West Division. Several universities in the conference have forfeited matches rather than play against the team due to the perceived unfairness of Fleming's male presence on the team and now San Jose State will face one of the teams that forfeited matches in the semi-finals. Boise State and Utah State will play in a semi-final round to see who will face San Jose State. The winner of that team will then go to the finals.

Now, San Jose State is going to the semi-finals after a 12-6 conference record and they will compete against a team that refused to play them during the regular season. Boise State and Utah State will face off on November 27 in the quarterfinal round. The winner will go on to face San Jose State's Spartans. San Jose State's record of wins includes forfeitures made by competing teams that count as wins in the Mountain West Conference. That policy itself is in dispute by forfeiting players, who said they did not know that a forfeiture due to a trans player would be counted as a loss. Those players have brought suit against the conference, saying that the policy was put in place but not actually made known to athletes.


Mountain West Women's Volleyball bracket

If a team forfeits a match against San Jose State in the finals, the Mountain West will award San Jose State the championship. "If we get to a championship game, and it's San Jose State vs. whoever, if that institution forfeits the game, then San Jose State wins that match, and then they are tournament champions. And they would be the automatic qualifier out of the Mountain West," a conference spokesperson told Fox News digital.

However, after a lawsuit was brought against the Mountain West Conference over the forfeiture aspect of their trans inclusion policy, a judge has yet to decide if it was appropriate for the Mountain West Conference to record those forfeitures as losses in this case. Colorado Judge Crews said that he rejected a bid from challengers to have Fleming sat during the games, citing federal changes to Title IX. Gender identity was conflated with biological sex in changes from the Biden-Harris administration that retroactively gave protections allocated just for women to men who claimed to be women, as well.

Spartans captain Brooke Slusser, who has joined in a complaint against the NCAA over the inclusion of Fleming in women's volleyball at all, said that there is currently confusion as to how the playoffs will go. "We're just mostly wondering, are teams even gonna play us, period, if we go there? Because of just everything that's happened this season," she said. "It seems like every few days it looks like it'll be a fine day and everything's normal and then something else happens. So, I truly do think everyone's just kind of taking things day by day and taking the punches as they come."

An assistant coach for San Jose State was fired after criticizing the policy of allowing males to compete on women's teams. Colorado State will play Fresno State and San Diego State, all teams that were willing to play Fleming and San Jose State during the regular season. Colorado State and San Jose State played twice against each other, splitting victories.