San Jose State University women’s volleyball coach Todd Kress is lashing out at the criticism and “hate” he claims the team has faced this season for the school’s decision to allow transgender player Blaire Fleming to play on the women’s team.
As SJSU bows out of the Mountain West Conference volleyball tournament after losing to Colorado State, Kress spoke in a message to Fox News about the pressures he and the team faced this season.
In his message, Kress claimed that he and the women of the SJSU volleyball team were prepared to play every game in spite of five rival colleges’ repeated moves to boycott his team. He insisted, “We did not take away anyone’s participation opportunities.”
Kress went on to claim that each time a women’s team from a rival college forfeited a game to avoid playing against a man identifying as a woman, SJSU faced “appalling, hateful messages.”
The male-born player had joined SJSU’s women’s volleyball team in 2022, but the school did not alert the team’s players or the conference that Fleming was a transgender player, and that information did not fully leak out until this season.
Born Brayden Fleming, the transgender athlete has been playing as a girl since high school,l where he joined the girl’s volleyball team at John Champe High School in Loudoun County, Virginia — the same school system that has been under constant fire for radical transgender and DEI policies, and covering up sexual assaults of girls.
The hulking 6-foot-1 student, who is several inches taller than the average female player who stands 5-foot-9, has since been racking up a long series of “women’s” records in college Volleyball, first at Coastal Carolina but now at SJSU, where he transferred after the state of South Carolina passed a law in November 2021 limiting transgender athletes to playing on teams corresponding to their birth gender.
Now that Fleming’s actual gender is so widely known, though, the fact delivered a “most difficult season” for coach Kress.
“This has been one of the most difficult seasons I’ve ever experienced, and I know this is true as well for many of our players and the staff who have been supporting us all along. Maintaining our focus on the court and ensuring the overall safety and well-being of my players amid the external noise have been my priorities,” Kress told Fox News.
Indeed, it hasn’t just been pressure from without that SJSU has faced because SJSU team member Brooke Slusser is one of the many litigants suing the school for allowing Fleming to join the team. She also named Kress as one of those at fault for his efforts to stand up for Fleming and against the women.
Kress concluded his letter by thanking the team members—including Slusser—who helped SJSU reach the conference finals. However, he did not mention that the main reason they had such a high standing was the many games that were forfeited in their favor and counted as a “win” in the statistics.
“Our team played their hearts out today, the way they have done all season,” he said after the loss to Colorado State that booted SJSU out of the championship tournament.
The season may finally be over. But the lawsuits continue.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
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