By james art The University of Nevada, Reno officially announced Friday that its women’s volleyball team will forfeit its match against San Jose State on Saturday.
Nevada is the fifth team to forfeit the game against San Jose State amid an ongoing national controversy over a transgender player, Blair Fleming, on the team and another player involved in a lawsuit because he was never told the player was biologically male, according to court case.
Nevada indicated that it did not have enough players to compete in the game for a forfeit after its players expressed a desire and intention not to compete against San Jose State.
“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 Jose State on Saturday, October 26. Per Mountain West Conference rules, the game will be recorded as a conference loss for Nevada,” Nevada announced in a statement early Friday morning.
San Jose State responded to the seizure in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“All of our athletes comply with NCAA and Mountain West Conference rules and are eligible to play under those organizations’ rules.” We will continue to take measures to prioritize the health and safety of our students as they pursue their well-deserved opportunities to compete,” the statement said.
Nevada players, including team captain Sia Lilley, spoke out against the idea of competing against a transgender player in the weeks leading up to the repeal after voting to opt out on Oct. 14. The players even went so far as to schedule a press conference with OutKick contributor and female athlete activist Riley Gaines to go on at the same time as Saturday’s game.
“We were pretty upset after that statement came out of our university,” Liili told Yahoo Sports. “It just occurred to us that we should talk about what we want to do as a group, make a decision and stick with it.”
However, Nevada would not officially forfeit the game until Friday morning, citing state law.
“Most of our team decided this was something we wanted to take a stand on,” Liilii told the website. “We didn’t want to play against a male player.
“In all our team meetings, it just came back to the fact that men don’t belong in women’s sports. If you were born a biological male, you don’t belong in women’s sports. It’s not even about this individual athlete. It’s about fair competition and safety for everyone.”
The Nevada state constitution was revised in 2022 when Nevada voted to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment, which added gender identity to the list of protections. Nevada state Sen. Pat Spearman, a North Las Vegas Democrat who co-sponsored the bill to get it on the ballot, said the law helped transgender people maintain their identities.
“The university made the decision not to declare a forfeiture and to continue hosting the game as planned based on several factors. As a public university, the university is legally prohibited by Section 24 of the Nevada Constitution and other laws and regulations from declaring forfeiture for reasons related to gender identity or expression,” a Nevada spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital.
On Tuesday, both Nevada and San Jose State announced that the game would be moved from Nevada’s campus in Reno to San Jose State’s campus in California’s Bay Area, saying the location change was “in the best interest and of both programs, and of the student-athletes, coaches, sports personnel and spectators.”
However, San Jose State would have to be in the game position to get a walk-off win if Nevada ends up missing players. By moving the game to the San Jose State campus, then the Spartan players would not have to travel to Nevada to secure the loss. So by making this change, San Jose State will be able to claim a forfeit if none of Nevada’s players choose to play without leaving their home state.
Now that the match is officially over, no one will have to travel.
Nevada joins Southern Utah, Boise State, Wyoming and Utah State, who have all officially dropped their scheduled games against San Jose State.
San Jose State player Brooke Slusser has joined a lawsuit brought by OutKick host and former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines against the NCAA over its gender identity policy. Slusser joined the lawsuit because she claims she had to share a court, a locker room and even a room on overnight trips with her teammate Fleming, without ever being told that Fleming was a biological male.
Security concerns and threats against San Jose State players have made traveling to games a high-risk endeavor for the Lady Spartans. San Jose State previously confirmed to Fox News Digital that police security had been assigned to the team shortly after receiving the first news of losing a rival when Southern Utah announced it would not play its game against the Spartans in September.
“One of my teammates got a DM basically saying that she and then my team should keep their distance from me on the day of the Colorado State game because it wasn’t going to be a good situation for me and my team should to keep distance,” Slusser told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. “They had to stay away from me during the game because something was going to happen to me.
“This was the first physical threat where we could easily see that they wanted to physically harm one of us.”
In June, a survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago asked respondents to weigh in on whether transgender athletes of both genders should be allowed to participate in sports leagues that match their preferred gender identity instead of their biological sex.
Sixty-five percent said it should either never or rarely be allowed. When respondents were asked specifically about adult transgender athletes competing on women’s sports teams, 69% were opposed.
The United Nations has published the results of a study that found nearly 900 biological women did not reach the podium because they were beaten by transgender athletes.
The study, titled “Violence against women and girls in sport”, said more than 600 athletes did not win medals in more than 400 events in 29 different sports, totaling more than 890 medals, according to information received by March 30.
“Replacing the women’s sport category with a mixed-gender category has led to an increase in the number of female athletes losing out on opportunities, including medals, when competing against men,” the report said.
Former President Donald Trump went so far as to advocate for a ban on a recent Fox News town hall event.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Trump said of the matter. “We’re stopping it, we’re stopping it, we’re absolutely stopping it. We can’t have it.
“Just ban it. The president forbids it. You don’t let it happen. No big deal.”