In slightly more normal times a Group of Five conference tournament for a secondary women’s sport would be wholly unworthy of any sort of spotlight. The Mountain West Conference women’s volleyball tournament final that was held yesterday wasn’t even worthy of a tile on ESPN+, and the report from a local beat writer, Kevin Lytle of the Fort Collins COLORADOAN that was filed last night was appropriately terse:
The Colorado State volleyball team is back to the NCAA women’s volleyball tournament. The Rams secured the automatic Mountain West bid Saturday by defeating San Jose State, 3-1 (27-25, 25-20, 23-25, 25-16), to win the conference tournament championship game in Las Vegas.
CSU dominated the Mountain West tournament, becoming the first No. 1 seed to win since the conference tournament was re-instated in 2021. The Rams had a bye to thesemifinals, where they beat San Diego State 3-1 and then toppled No. 2-seed San Jose State in the title match. Malaya Jones had a match-high 26 kills, extending her CSU single-season record (modern scoring format) to 541 and counting. Karina Leber had 11 kills and Naeemah Weathers had 10.
But these are not normal times, so therefore the tag-team of THE ATHLETIC’s Jayna Bardahl and Tess DeMeyer were also on hand to file a more detailed and contextual report of why apparent so many people who couldn’t even tell you what color an NCAA volleyball is were obsessed with knowing yesterday’s results:
Colorado State coach Emily Kohan is never overly boisterous. She paces the sideline during each rally, head tilted down in concentration. That composure was especially evident on Friday, as Kohan led the Rams to the conference championship game of a volleyball tournament that quickly became the epicenter of the fraught debate over the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
“It’s been a really complex and emotional situation this whole season,” said Kohan, the Mountain West Conference coach of the year. “Unless you’re in those rooms having those hard conversations and making those hard decisions, I don’t think you truly know how this feels.”
Each maneuver surrounding this week’s Mountain West women’s volleyball tournament, held at UNLV, was fodder for a broader ongoing political fight and culture war. Athletes and a coach from several schools attempted to force San Jose State to exclude a player that they assert is a transgender woman. Their push for a court injunction failed twice, prompting the tournament to be held largely as planned, with the Spartans using their whole roster.
The fact that the Spartans even had a chance to play for a title against a school that ranked 71 places ahead of them in the most recent RPI poll for the sport was a function of the sort of ridiculous and politically charged rhetoric that has become a flashpoint, the idea that somehow the presence of a transgender, that crucial 0.5 percent of America that can statistically make or break–well, virtually nothing–is enough of a threat to safety and morality that schools whose players work all year, and have had years of development on teams they played on in their K-12 years, that it would be worth blowing up their season. As CNN’s Taylor Romaine explained:
San Jose State effectively advanced to Saturday’s final match when Boise State announced Wednesday it was withdrawing from its semifinal match against the Spartans. In a statement, Boise State officials said its team “should not have to forgo this opportunity while waiting for a more thoughtful and better system that serves all athletes.”
But the Broncos were apparently as much of a presence as were any of the literal dozens of people who actually turned out for this, as Bardahl and DeMeyer expounded:
At Friday’s semifinals, only a few specks of blue — some for San Jose State, others for Boise State — could be found in the stands as their match was removed from the agenda. The Spartans sat as spectators on the far side of the gym in a section of bleachers closed to fans, sizing up their competition for the championship game. University officials said no further comments would be given from Broncos players, coaches or athletic director Jeramiah Dickey, who has publicly supported the Broncos’ decision on social media.
The specific player in question hasn’t been all that much of a factor for a team that finished a mediocre 14-6 in an abbreviated schedule. Most media are now refusing to identify her, but previous reports did, and all I’ll add is that she did lead her team in kills in the finals, but also was second in errors, which resulted in points for her opponents. And she had nine fewer kills and four more errors than the aforementioned Malaya Jones.
Who is Barbara Ehardt? She’s a former women’s college basketball coach who became a state representative and authored the country’s first bill banning transgender athletes in women’s sports.
I met and interviewed Ehardt in March 2022 outside of the Georgia Tech aquatic center, which had briefly become the center of the sports world as Penn’s Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Div. 1 national championship.
Ehardt had come to take part in protests along with several others from all corners of the country and even a couple from overseas. She was asked what she would say to Thomas.
“You’re the one who is discriminating,” Ehardt said. “You had your opportunity.”
Thomas’ success occurred in an individual sport, as was the case with the Olympic boxers whose hormonal composition was open to question as they fought their way to gold medals in Paris this past summer. They were collectively world class competitors. But as Wolken underscores, the player in question this week was hardly in their class, gender notwithstanding:
While people like Ehardt and former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who has made a media career out of the grievance of tying with Thomas for fifth place in one of their races back in 2022, would tell you that this story proves they were right all along, I see it the opposite way.
The fact that a mid-major volleyball player who went unnoticed for three seasons has now blown up into a raging controversy shows how wrong they are.
This is really what they were worried about? This needs federal government intervention? This is so important that a group of young women at Boise State had to sacrifice their season to make a statement?
But Boise State is a school that is funded by the state of Idaho with elected officials like Ehardt in power. Not to mention a whole lot of donors who share her feelings. And the same is true with schools like Wyoming, Utah State and Southern Utah State who were among the other schools who forfeited regular season matches to San Jose State, which while they did not count among the Spartans’ actual victory totals did deny them the chance to hand San Jose State more losses and perhaps not give them as direct a route as they had to the championship match.
And as for anyone who actually wants to stand up on a soapbox and start invoking how they think G-d is so deeply invested in all of this, according to the ATHLETIC’s duo an announced crowd of 312 turned out yesterday on the campus of UNLV on a picture-perfect holiday weekend. If indeed Jesus is a sports fan, I’d offer He was probably a lot more focused on more consequential events. And if it pleases the likes of Ms. Ehardt, she can choose to believe He was invested in the Boise State football team’s crucial season-ending football win that is forging a path to next month’s playoffs.
A sport, incidentally, where biological women have competed on the same field as men on the college level. A contact sport, no less. Funny how those looking to protect the integrity of a gender have had no significant concerns with that.
I honestly can’t imagine what goes through the minds of such deeply disturbed transphobics. I honestly don’t know what drives folks like Nancy Mace to literally post more than 200 times on social media about her deep fear of seeing a penis in her bathroom. I honestly can’t fathom what drove the Spartan who outed the woman in question why she felt so strongly about doing so. Maybe the fact that that teammate had 13 fewer kills than the woman in question in a winner-take-all match might have had something to do it? You know how jealous some mean girls can get.
Thankfully, after all of this noise and denialism, the Spartans’ season is over, and so too will likely be the college career of the woman in question. She competed and she lost. And she got beat by a bunch of girls.
One can only hope the likes of Ehardt, Dickey and even Mace suffer similar fates.
Until next time…
1 thought on “She Got The Right To Lose”
Pervert,
What do you suppose the outcome would be if the top WNBA team were to play against the worst NBA team? The way I understand it, the patriarchy would prevent the women from succeeding, and NOT the difference between men and women.
So tell me “sports guy”? Why does the WNBA use a smaller, lighter ball than the NBA? Perhaps it’s to save money on material as the WNBA can’t really afford real basketballs?
You’re a pervert. A DISGUSTING pervert!!! Is your being in women’s spaces the only way (other than hookers you can’t afford) you can see a naked woman?
Nancy Mace is a rape survivor. Like your rapist pal, the incestuous pedophile Joe Biden, you want men to undress in front of women, and women to undress in front of men, even if they’re not Demo-whores that don’t care.
“I honestly can’t imagine what goes through the minds of such deeply disturbed transphobics. I honestly don’t know what drives folks like Nancy Mace to literally post more than 200 times on social media about her deep fear of seeing a penis in her bathroom.” SHE’S A RAPE SURVIVOR, YOU FUCKING PERVERT!!!
What do you say to Riley? To Nancy? To any other woman that doesn’t want Demo-pervs in their private spaces?
I suspect you’ll tell me to go to Gaza (again), where you hope I’ll be killed by your colleagues.
Peace,
Noah