A CONCORD BRIDGE MOMENT IN THE MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE?

You might not be interested in Ivy League swimming, but the Culture Wars were.

Here, I thought the fun was going to come to women's college basketball.  "I have, however, long entertained a wicked thought that someday, somewhere, there is a basketball coach who will end the dominance of Connecticut, or perhaps Stanford or Notre Dame, by recruiting a few male-to-female crossers who can really crash the boards."

Apparently, it's Pennsylvania swimming where the fun has come.

In the aftermath of that brief moment of relevance for the Ivy league, Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines has taken up the cause of keeping crossers with residual male musculature out of women's sports.  That's having salutary effects on public perceptions of higher education.  "If you're going to deny coherent beliefs, everybody else has to be in on the con.  A gratifyingly large cohort of current students is not.  Nor should they respect anyone, holder of a terminal degree or not, who is condescending, disrespectful, or too full of himself."

It's encouraging that students are, well, engaging in critical thinking.

There are students who have to take a stand the hard way.  Thus the Concord Bridge moments.

Sometimes, it's the embattled farmers standing and firing the shot heard 'round the world.

Sometimes, it's the girl shotputters refusing to put their shots.  West Virginia Girls 'Step-Out' Of Track & Field Meet To Protest Transgender Competitor.  A boy started crossing in grade school; he still had a male enough upper body strength to have a clear advantage in the weight events.  The girls at the meet had none of it.

Now it's women's volleyball players in the Mountain West having none of it.

A current teammate of Blaire Fleming, a trans-identifying male on the undefeated San Jose State women's volleyball team, has joined more than a dozen other female athletes in suing the NCAA for Title IX violations.

The class-action lawsuit, originally filed in March states that the NCAA has knowingly violated Title IX, the federal statute that guarantees equal opportunity for men and women in college education and in sports. Brooke Slusser, the starting setter and co-captain of SJSU's team, says she was forced both to compete and to share a residence with Fleming without any prior notice that the athlete was male.

Blaire Fleming transferred from Coastal (North) Carolina and Brooke Slusser from Alabama.  Later came a surprise.

Upon transferring to SJSU from Alabama in the Fall of 2023, Slusser began sharing a residence with four of her teammates, including Fleming. At no point during her recruitment, nor during the 2023 season, was she informed that a male athlete was on the team.

Further, Slusser was frequently assigned by the SJSU athletic department to room with Fleming on road trips. She later found out that Fleming specifically requested her.

According to the complaint, Slusser had noticed that "Fleming played volleyball with jumping ability and power that surpassed that of any girl on the team." But it wasn't until she overheard a conversation among students who called Fleming a "guy" that she realized why that was.

Ms Slusser's participation in the lawsuit appears to be motivated by player safety.

Slusser said that while she did not want Fleming to be bullied, she was uncomfortable with the trans athlete's presence on the team. She questioned whether it was safe or fair for the other women on the team and for opposing teams. Slusser saw that Fleming was hitting the ball with more force and far harder than any woman she had ever played against.

"One thing that's important in this case is really the physical safety issues in volleyball," Slusser's attorney Bill Bock, told OutKick. "And that's what they're facing in practice every day. So it's just a crazy, misguided policy that steals athletic dreams from women and gives them to men, and at the same time, puts women's health and safety in danger."

University adminstrators, though, are cautioning the team to pipe down and enjoy their winning streak.

Once knowledge of Fleming's biological sex became public, SJSU officials told the women’s volleyball players that they should not speak about it with anyone outside the team. If they were to speak publicly about Fleming being male, they were warned "things would go badly for the team members," according to the complaint.

SJSU continued to hide the information, even from student-athletes who joined the team in 2024.

"Brooke became aware that upon learning that one of their teammates was a trans-identifying male, several of the new recruits became upset, as it was too late for them to transfer, and they felt they had been misled," the complaint reads.

Because of course that's how deanlets roll these days.

University administrations have for too long been stifling political discourse in the name of comity.  "Did anybody object to free speech zones or restrictions on distributing leaflets when those restrictions were used to stifle Normals?"

Recently, the Normal Who Must Be Silenced is Kentucky All-American swimmer Riley Gaines, who has put dental school on pause to perform root canal surgery on the alphabet people ruining women's sports.

Toward the end of the article, readers learn that San Jose State's record includes conference wins by forfeit.

San Jose State volleyball played its first game on Thursday night since three Mountain West schools announced they would forfeit rather than play the Spartans and transgender starter Blaire Fleming.

Colorado State hosted San Jose State at Moby Arena and the Rams soundly defeated the Spartans in straight sets. San Jose State played without its top player, Nayeli Ti'a.

The school told OutKick that Ti'a suffered an injury during a practice last week and was not available for the match.

That put Blaire Fleming in a position to serve as the team's top hitter, and Fleming struggled against the Rams.

Fleming led the team in kills with 14, but also committed nearly half (10) of the team's total hitting errors (22).

Colorado State's coach apparently had enough confidence in her team to play the game rather than tell San Jose to stay home and receive the win in the mail.

After the match, Spartans head coach Todd Kress said he was "disappointed" that his team was "losing opportunities to play" but did not reference why, exactly, schools don't want to face San Jose State.

"I walked up to [Colorado State head coach] Emily [Kohan], and I was like, ‘Should I say thank you for playing us tonight?’ And I seriously meant that," Kress said, according to The Denver Post.

"It’s not just us that are losing opportunities to play," Kress continued.

"It’s the people choosing not to play us, and that’s very unfortunate when it comes to these young women who have earned the right to step on the court and play."

Well, Coach Kress, people are "choosing not to play" your team because your team chooses to roster a biological male. You've made a choice, so they've made their own choice.

That's kind of how this works.

"And so I just think that we’re in a position where it appears that government and politics have kind of intertwined itself with college sports," Kress added.

An aside: this is the same Todd Kress who had some successful seasons with Northern Illinois before being recruited away by Florida State.  I suspect, though, that neither he nor the Colorado State coach would be happy if we ended the entanglement of government and politics with college sports by repealing Title Nine of the 1972 Civil Rights Act, which some unelected bureaucrat is using to make crossers a protected class.

Emily Kohan also bemoaned that politics were involved with collegiate women's volleyball.

"Wouldn’t it be nice if none of us had to get involved with politics?" Kohan said, according to The Denver Post.

"I don’t have a strong desire to be a politician in the future. But I do have a strong desire to raise critical thinkers in my program.

"And for them to understand their own selves and what’s important to them, and be able to make really conscious and mature decisions out of that. And to always make those decisions out of kindness, right?"

Unfortunately, notes Outkick reporter Dan Zaksheske, "When policies are led by feelings (like kindness) instead of by logic, reason and facts (like basic biology), then society comes apart."

Reality doesn't have to have empathy for your feelings.