LAS VEGAS — Colorado State coach Emily Kohan is never overly boisterous. She paces the sideline during each rally, head tilted down in concentration. That composure was especially evident on Friday, as Kohan led the Rams to the conference championship game of a volleyball tournament that quickly became the epicenter of the fraught debate over the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
“It’s been a really complex and emotional situation this whole season,” said Kohan, the Mountain West Conference coach of the year. “Unless you’re in those rooms having those hard conversations and making those hard decisions, I don’t think you truly know how this feels.”
Each maneuver surrounding this week’s Mountain West women’s volleyball tournament, held at UNLV, was fodder for a broader ongoing political fight and culture war. Athletes and a coach from several schools attempted to force San Jose State to exclude a player that they assert is a transgender woman. Their push for a court injunction failed twice, prompting the tournament to be held largely as planned, with the Spartans using their whole roster. San Jose State and the player have neither confirmed nor denied the player’s gender identity.
San Jose State did not play its semifinal as expected when Boise State withdrew its participation after its win in the opening round. The forfeit mirrored a similar move on Sept. 28, when Boise State became the first of four Mountain West teams to forfeit to the Spartans during the regular season (Wyoming, Utah State and Nevada followed).
That put the Spartans in the final against top-seeded Colorado State on Saturday, their first match in 11 days. Though San Jose State found a spark in the third set to avoid getting swept, the Rams stifled that comeback effort with a dominant 25-16 victory in the fourth set to win 3-1, clinching the conference title and one of 31 automatic bids in next week’s NCAA tournament.
San Jose State is not likely to join them. It would need an at-large selection when the 64 teams in the NCAA tournament are announced Sunday, and the Spartans rank 130th out of 346 Division I volleyball programs in RPI, a key metric for the tournament.
On Saturday, in front of an announced crowd of 312 at UNLV’s Cox Pavilion, the championship match unfolded without interruption. San Jose State declined to make its coaches or players available after the game, but coach Todd Kress issued a statement addressing the backlash his team endured this season.
“I will not sugarcoat our reality for the last two months,” he said.“Our team prepared and was ready to play each match according to established Mountain West and NCAA rules of play. We did not take away anyone’s participation opportunities. Sadly, others who for years have played this same team without incident chose not to play us this season.
“To be clear, we did not celebrate a single win by forfeiture. Instead, we braced for the fallout. Each forfeiture announcement unleashed appalling, hateful messages individuals chose to send directly to our student-athletes, our coaching staff, and many associated with our program.”
Kress also thanked those who supported the team and expressed his pride in his athletes.
Because San Jose State had a bye in the first round, the championship game ended up being the only game the team played this week. Boise State said in a statement that its decision to withdraw “was not an easy one” for its team, though the university declined to offer more details on how the decision was made to forfeit. “They should not have to forgo this opportunity while waiting for a more thoughtful and better system that serves all athletes,” the team said in its statement.
University officials said no further comments would be given from Broncos players, coaches or athletic director Jeramiah Dickey, who has publicly supported the Broncos’ decision on social media.
At Friday’s semifinals, only a few specks of blue — some for San Jose State, others for Boise State — could be found in the stands as their match was removed from the agenda. The Spartans sat as spectators on the far side of the gym in a section of bleachers closed to fans, sizing up their competition for the championship game.
Two protesters stood outside Cox Pavilion, holding posters that read “Boise State should be here” and “Protect women’s sports. Thank you Boise State.” Security was present, but besides an updated spectator policy that included the banning of all signs and clothing with “derogatory or offensive language,” the wider debate was less of an active disruptor and more of an undercurrent for those in Las Vegas.
Earlier this month, 11 female volleyball players, led by San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser, and an assistant coach sued the Mountain West Conference and San Jose State University, alleging the defendants violated the U.S. Constitution and Title IX by allowing a transgender athlete to play for a women’s sports team.
The suit sought to exclude the player from competing in this week’s tournament, but a judge ruled Monday that the situation did not warrant an emergency injunction. An appeal request by the plaintiffs was denied on Tuesday.
San Jose State has said all of its athletes “are eligible to participate in their sports under NCAA and MWC conference rules.” An ongoing federal lawsuit is challenging the NCAA’s rules, which were updated in 2022 to follow guidance from the International Olympic Committee by taking a sport-by-sport approach and requiring transgender athletes to “document sport-specific testosterone levels.”
Slusser and the alleged transgender player, who has played for San Jose State since 2022, did not respond to requests for comment made through the team. The Athletic is not naming the player because the athlete has not publicly identified or spoken about gender.
In court documents, Slusser asserted that the player, who was also her roommate, came out to her as transgender in a direct conversation. In the Monday ruling, the judge wrote that “no Defendant disputed that SJSU rosters a trans woman volleyball player.”
When asked if Colorado State felt pressure to play – or to not play – amid the ongoing dispute, Kohan said: “Of course.”
“It’s easy to sit there and tweet at us what your opinion is,” Kohan said. “You’re never going to please everyone. We said that the first couple of times we played (San Jose State). I’ll probably get emails either way and the forfeit teams probably get emails either way.
“I’m not an expert on this. I didn’t get a lot of training to manage this situation. But here we are all trying to do our best,” she said.
In winning the Mountain West conference championship, Colorado State also won the rubber match after splitting two matches with San Jose State in the regular season.
“Regardless of your opinion on it, there’s some room here to acknowledge that there’s been a lot of young people showing courage all season long in a lot of ways,” Kohan said. “This team, we started this season, we didn’t think this would be the storyline. These fifth-year seniors had that COVID year screwed up and they wanted to come back to show that they can have a regular championship season.
“This has been far from a regular season.”
(Photo: David Buono / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
