A girls’ volleyball player for the San Jose State Spartans said they are “distraught” that their assistant coach was fired so quickly after speaking out against having a transgender player on the team.
Melissa Batie-Smoose, the associate head coach of the San Jose State Spartans women’s volleyball team, was suspended indefinitely after she filed a Title IX complaint against the school.
In it, she said that Blaire Fleming, the transgender player on the team, worked with an opponent to help the team lose a match and hurt Brooke Slusser, a teammate.
Slusser said on “America Reports” Tuesday that Batie-Smoose’s firing surprised the female athletes who seen her as the only person they could talk to about how they felt about playing with a biological man on their all-female team.
“I think you can imagine, she was that one person that everyone felt like they could voice their opinion [to] and truly speak how they felt with the whole situation and feel comforted,” said Slusser. “And when they took that away from us, everyone was upset.” The fact that they found out minutes before the game was especially bad.
OutKick previously reported that Batie-Smoose was told not to talk to the media after being fired. She said that the school was trying to “silence people that are speaking up for their First Amendment rights and for what’s right.”
It was important to her that she stood firm on the idea that only women should be able to play women’s sports. After Batie-Smoose was banned, San Jose State told OutKick in a statement.
“The associate head coach of the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team is not with the team at this time, and we will not provide further information on this matter,” the group said.
In a very political year like this, the school was thrust into the national spotlight of a discussion about gender identity rights and the honor of women’s sports.
After suing the NCAA, Slusser got a lot of attention because she said that San Jose State hadn’t told any of its recruits that it had a transgender player on the team.
Slusser says she played two full seasons with Fleming and that they shared a locker room and roomed together on long trips without being told that Fleming was a man.
Seven games this season have been canceled because of the national debate.
“It’s sad that the school is still willing to put one man’s needs ahead of those of the whole team and take away half of our season because of it,” Slusser said on “America Reports.”
The fact that other teams in the conference can say, “No, we’re not doing this,” is great. But our school is okay with having one person on our team who is causing all of these problems and won’t leave.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the volleyball team leader said that the way the university is treating the situation makes her feel “unsafe” and like she is not being protected after receiving multiple death threats.
“No matter what people think—whether they want to support not letting transgender people into the NCAA or if they do support that—there are two sides to having Blaire on the team and me on the team, so it’s just this fear that you never know what people are going to do these days,” Slusser said.
The team now travels with armed protection because it continues to be at the center of the national conversation about transgender athletes playing on female teams.
