The University of Wyoming’s decision to forfeit its women’s volleyball game against San José State came after a wave of pressure and protest over a transgender athlete on the Spartans.
But the Cowgirls twice played against San José and the same volleyball player, Blaire Fleming, in 2022, athletic records show, without controversy. The Cowgirls also played against the Spartans last year, though Fleming did not participate.
University of Wyoming spokesman Chad Baldwin did not offer a comment when asked Wednesday why the Cowgirls, after participating in games involving Fleming in 2022, changed course this year. When the university announced Tuesday that it was forfeiting the game against San José, it did not offer an explanation.
It’s unclear whether the university was aware that Fleming was a transgender woman at the time of the earlier games. Her gender identity became subject to news media reports earlier this year.
For some, the controversy involves the safety of UW’s Cowgirls. Fleming can spike the ball at an estimated 80 miles an hour, according to a lawsuit her teammate Brooke Slusser joined against the NCAA over allowing trans athletes.
If true, the claim would place Fleming among the world record holders, which are currently held by athletes out of college. The women’s world record is around 70 miles an hour, while the fastest spike recorded for men in the Volleyball Nations League was about 84 miles per hour.
Fleming’s stats show she didn’t compete against Wyoming in 2023. Fleming was a leader for kills in both games against UW in 2022, though she had fewer kills than teammate Amethyst Harper in Laramie. UW lost both games 1-3.
Regardless of a trans athlete’s talent, several lawmakers backed UW’s decision to bow out of the game. Not doing so would have been to participate in “the extremist agenda of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or propagate the lie that biological sex can be changed,” according to a letter signed by Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) and circulated earlier this week among fellow Republican lawmakers. She later told WyoFile in an email she commended UW on its actions.
When asked about the earlier games involving Fleming, Steinmetz referred WyoFile back to the letter for her thoughts on the matter.
“It is important that we protect females and women’s sports,” she added.
Minority Floor Leader Rep. Mike Yin (D-Jackson), in contrast, said he felt legislators were using the forfeit for political gain.
“[T]he team should make their own choices without politicians telling them what they should and shouldn’t do,” he said. “I think the Freedom Caucus has yet again decided that they know what is best for women and that the team could not have the freedom to decide for themselves what to do without undue influence from politicians.”
Originally, after consulting with the team, coaches and administrators, UW said it would compete against San José at a match set for this weekend. That changed Tuesday, but the university hasn’t said why it changed its mind or who was consulted, pointing to the statement it already published.
In response to UW’s decision Tuesday, San José State University released its own statement saying, “It is disappointing that our SJSU student athletes, who are in full compliance with NCAA and Mountain West rules and regulations, are being denied opportunities to compete.”
“We are committed to supporting our student-athletes through these challenges and in their ability to compete in an inclusive, fair, safe and respectful environment.”
San José State is scheduled to play Colorado State University on Thursday evening in Fort Collins, which will serve as the annual inclusive excellence game.
“This game is a collaboration between the Office of Inclusive Excellence and Athletics, with a special highlight on DEI efforts and history in the world of volleyball,” according to CSU’s website.
Yet another instance of the University surrendering to right wing extremists in the legislature. I’m not some billionaire heir to the goretex or Walmart fortunes, so they probably don’t care, but this is part of why I don’t support UW anymore
If the UW players and coaches were consulted and they chose to go forward with the game, then they should have been congratulated and allowed to play. Volleyball is a team sport; rarely does one individual player on either side determine a difference in the fair and equitable outcome. Is anyone else tired of the Freedom Caucus, spoon-fed by their national supervisors, trying to eradicate the equality in the Equality State?
The concerns about women athletes’ safety takes me back to the days of half court basketball for girls and no women allowed in marathons. The “authorities” should ask the female athletes whether they want to play this game or forfeit it. I’m guessing they would say “let us play!”
Kudos to San Jose State for finding a clever way to win games without even taking to the court. That makes 4 now. Well played.
Amazing isn’t it
This is why we have womens sports separate from men’s. Men are generally bigger, stronger, and faster. If not, they should just have sports without a difference in gender. Otherwise if I’m a womens coach and this is allowed, why not recruit as many transgender women as possible?
2022 wasn’t an election year.
Interesting U of WY is looking to allow guns on campus, but are really concerned about the safety of players and a record-breaking spiked volleyball. Bullets versus volleyballs. I didn’t have “mass shooter hits several with record volleyball spikes” on my “things WY’s freedom caucus is scared of” bingo card.
My gosh, what bigotry in the mal-captioned “Equality State.”
Same is good ? Different is bad? The equality state, really?
And you wonder why young people leave the state after graduation?
I realize the university is stonewalling, but there seems to be more to this story. For instance, is there a connection between the provost’s abrupt departure and the university’s decision to forfeit this volleyball match?
My thoughts (and my fears) exactly Mike. Does anyone out there happen to know how we can accurately test the continuity of this circuit?
If all want a LBGTQ PRESIDENT OF USA. Vote TRUMP 24!!! DJT was most LBGTQ friendly President EVER!! His record proves it!!
Leave it to the far right-wing politicians to make UW and Wyoming’s official motto (The Equality State) look more and more foolish and hypocritical. People, please wise up and quit voting for these morons. They are only interested in sewing hate, confusion, and backward thinking.
Just another example of Trans Panic (TM). Ms. Steinmetz is following the playbook as written by Christopher Rufo. Perhaps Wyofile should write an article about him and how the FreeDumb Caucus are just his willing puppets.
Too many people cannot separate the social issues and acceptance of transgender individuals from the competition issue involving transgender athletes. Martina Navratilova and Caitlyn Jenner are obviously not homophobic or anti-LGBTQ but both are opposed to trans women competing against biological women. They know it’s a competition/fairness problem. Sometimes common sense is not very common.
Getting men out of women’s sports can only be accomplished by female athletes and it takes a brave woman to take this stand in today’s vicious cancel culture of social media.
Accepting biological men in women’s sports is also accepting the use of performance enhancing drugs. As JK Rowling recently stated if this is acceptable then let’s give Lance Armstrong back all of his trophies and move on.
Bob. Very good you brought up these 2 athletes. Both have condemned Trans athletes competing against females. Very nice of you to use those two as examples.
This transgender athlete thing is a non-issue. Nobody cares except for a bunch of right-wing Freedom Caucus morons who make an issue of these things so nobody will pay attention to the fact that these people cannot do the most basic tasks that they were elected to do. They have only one duty charged to them by the state constitution and that is to pass a budget every year, yet they turn that into a circus.
I encourage WyoFile and other news outlets to focus on the substantive issues facing our state and let the Freedom Caucus wallow in the muck of their own making.
Mr. Smith. It seems it is you liberals raising cane about the issue not the “right wingers”. You all can move to California if you wish. COWBOY UP ALL!
Interesting to learn SJSU is in full compliance with rules and regulations. I suppose it won’t be long before Cheri Steinmetz and her ilk try to force UW to withdraw from the “Woke Mountain West Conference “ and the “WOKE NCAA”.
They follow the rules but look it up. A trans player is allowed to have more testosterone than women players. Hmmm. Wonder why? Not only do men in women’s sports have an advantage, they are allowed more “drugs” in drug testing.
Our conservative Wyoming legislature is of many things afraid
including transgender athletes and the expansion of Medicaid.
If males are allowed to participate in women’s sports, what then is the purpose of sex-segregated sports? “Gender” is just a genteel way of saying “sex” when spoken or written. There are only 2 sexes, with some abnormalities called Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) or colloquially “intersex”. While untrained females may beat untrained males, among trained athletes, males are stronger, faster, etc. See http://www.shewon.org and http://www.boysvswomen.com
It is interesting that the first place the author goes is to blame the Freedom caucus. And the university has not said anything…
Suppose that the university consulted their attorney.
UW President: “Counsel, what kind of legal issues do we have if we play our volleyball team against SJSU?”
Counsel: “Did you know that the player on SJSU was a transgender student that can hit the ball 14% faster than than the female world record?” There is a lawsuit that has that allegation. Energy of the ball is proportional to the square of the velocity. That is an extraordinary increase in energy.
UW President: “Yes, we have seen the lawsuit.”
Counsel: “So you are aware that there could be the potential for injury, from being struck by the ball that is exceptionally higher in speed and energy.” “I suggest that if a cowgirl were to take a spiked ball to the face and experienced a concussion or some related type of injury, the player would have a good basis for a lawsuit against the university. It may even have the potential to be served on you and the Athletic Director personally, as you were aware of the situation.”
And after the conversation, the perspective of UW in regards to the game to be played changes.
Perhaps the conversations the athletic director with other universities that forfeited would have had perspectives that there was fundamental unfairness that could damage the sport.
Perhaps parents called the University and threatened to transfer their daughter to another University. This could end the season for UW.
Perhaps it really was political… but rather the governor had weighed in and suggested this would not be helpful if a UW player was injured. Or even politically damaging if the game were played.
Perhaps players on the team told the coach they would go on the court and simply sit down and not play. A replay of UW players protesting.
There could be innumerable situations and reasons to not play the game.
Perhaps the UW players wanted to play the game… did anyone ask?
This article says nothing. Instead it is simply a political article. And when politics enter sports, it ruins the game.
Because the journalist has no facts as to the change, has not interviewed UW players, the Athletic Director, the UW president, the coach of the team… all of this says nothing. And the headline is also misleading as nobody knew they were playing a transgendered player the last time SJSU met UW in Volleyball.
Work on the journalism. This article is simply commentary. Dig for the facts interview and ask questions beyond the spokesperson.
That’s nice fan fiction, but you can allege any farfetched thing you want in a lawsuit.
Great comments
We should have held the match with San Jose State! Had we won, as I would expect, we could have said we were not intimidated and were not scared to match up against a team with a trans female. Had we lost we could have complained that it was unfair to play against a team with a man on it. We could also have just played the match and let the chips fall as they may.
I do not think it makes any sense to any credibility to one player’s estimate of how fast another-player can spike a volleyball, and it seems highly unprofessional for this writer to include it in this article without any other corroboration. It might be barely ethical to include the claim, because the claim in the lawsuit. But this writer added false-credibility to the unsubstantiated-claim by comparing the estimated-speed to world-record speeds, falsely implying that the transgender-player can spike the ball faster than any woman, and comparable to the best men. I am also shocked and dismayed that coverage of this story by Wyofile is less-objective than coverage in CowboyStateDaily. At least the reporter for CSD makes it clear that the transgender-player is NOT EVEN THE BEST PLAYER ON HER OWN TEAM.