It’s all so mysterious.
Mountain West Conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez said Thursday that the forfeitures that women’s volleyball teams are willing to take to avoid playing San Jose State is “not what we celebrate in college athletics” and that she is heartbroken over what has transpired this season surrounding the Spartans and their opponents.
Four teams have canceled games against San Jose State: Boise State, Southern Utah, Utah State and Wyoming, with none of the schools explicitly saying why they were forfeiting.
Funnily enough, The Associated Press also doesn’t explicitly say why they’re forfeiting. The AP nowhere admits that the issue is a male player on the San Jose State women’s team.
A group of Nevada players issued a statement saying they would not take the court when the Wolf Pack were scheduled to host the Spartans on Oct. 26. The players cited their “right to safety and fair competition,” though their school reaffirmed Thursday that the match was still planned and that state law bars forfeiture “for reasons related to gender identity or expression.”
State law tells women they can’t refuse to play against men? What a horrific law if so.
“It breaks my heart because they’re human beings, young people, student-athletes on both sides of this issue that are getting a lot of national negative attention,” Nevarez told The Associated Press at Mountain West basketball media days. “It just doesn’t feel right to me.”
Yes, they’re human beings, some of whom are women and some are men. The teams are divided by sex. There’s a women’s team and a men’s team. Men shouldn’t be in the women’s team. San Jose State has a man in the women’s team.
San Jose State coach Todd Kress said playing was his team’s “safe haven” and noted that security and police escorts are now involved when his team takes the court. He has not discussed specific players publicly since the forfeits began.
“I know that it’s definitely taken a toll on many of them. They’re receiving messages of hate, which is completely ridiculous to me,” Kress said in Albuquerque. “Some of those people are the underbelly of society that you attack an 18-, 19-, 20-year-old female. And even more so if you’re a parent and you’re attacking 18-, 19- or 20-year-olds. Would you want your student-athlete, your daughter, to face the same kind of hate that you’re dishing out?”
But he’s not a female. He’s not anyone’s daughter. That’s the point.