This is all insanely stupid. I haven't been following along very much because I just don't care about politics; but once I got caught up, this isn't about sports or fairness, it's just politics and stupidity.
HIPPA laws prevent anyone from confirming medical history of a player without their consent; but everyone knows who it is via process of elimination.
The individual played high school girls volleyball for three seasons; and now in college, she's a SENIOR; meaning everyone in the Mountain West has faced her at least 4 times, some teams seven times... and it was so "unfair" that they didn't even notice.
The person who started the whole online campaign about it being "unfair" and "dangerous" was a FORMER SWIMMER who's been on an anti-trans crusade since she finished 5th in the NCAA Championship behind Lia Thomas. She's the one who started the social media campaign, set meetings with college administrators and politicians and has been showing up to press conferences in Nevada and orchestrating lawsuits.
If anyone knows anything about volleyball, a 6-1 player with a .251 hitting percentage is no where near "unfair" or "dangerous." That's incredibly mediocre. ESPN analyzed how hard she hits the ball compared to women's college games they had at their disposal (aka SEC games) and found she's low-end to average at best. All the traditional power programs of women's volleyball have 6-5 outsides who hit .400. You can't even pick her out of the San Jose State team picture if you don't know who you're looking for.
BYU a decade ago had a player who's parents were both BYU All-Americans in basketball and volleyball, and she played both. She was 6-7 and 3x All-American who hit like .350 and took BYU to the Final Four. BYU was MWC then went to the WCC, they're still mid-major.
A former Penn St player (PSU being a perennial powerhouse) saw the online crusade and laughed at the sour-grapes activist saying that is nothing because they have MEN'S players and coaches hitting at them all the time in practice; every volleyball team does it.
Which I can attest to; my team back 17 years ago had two 6-4 Croatian dudes blasting away at our blockers and liberos in practice. We went to a tournament in Minnesota and our libero faced two teams with All-American hitters, and we beat them because our all-tourney team libero owned them, as they were easier to defend that the Hrvatska Hitters she faced in practice. This is just normal.
San Jose State is ranked #130 in the RPI. They're were 13-18 last year. The only reason they're second in the MWC is because they've been handed nine paper victories by idiots politicizing a non-issue via forfeits.
IF they win today, San Jose State is gonna get like a "13 seed" in their bracket (aka, team 49-52 in the field), play someone like USC, Utah, Oklahoma, Baylor, BYU, etc, and get totally smoked in three sets.
nevadasportsnet.com
