ye7 A College Volleyball Team’s Season in the Spotlight Comes to an End
After months at the center of a debate over a transgender woman’s right to compete on a women’s team, San Jose State University lost its conference championship volleyball game on Saturday, bringing a close to a roller-coaster season upended by an issue that has transcended sports.
On a court not far from the Las Vegas Strip, the Spartans fell to Colorado State University in the Mountain West Conference tournament, failing to advance to next month’s N.C.A.A. tournament, where the spotlight on the Spartans would have grown even brighter.
The Spartans lost to Colorado State, the tournament favorite, three sets to one. The team had reached the final without having played a single game in the tournament: It had a first-round bye, and then had been scheduled to play Boise State in the semifinal, but, for the third time this season, Boise State boycotted the game in protest over the Spartans’ transgender player.
That player — who had been on the team for three seasons without complaints, until this year — did not publicly speak after the game, and has not all season. The New York Times is not naming her because she has not publicly confirmed her identity. The university also has not confirmed whether the volleyball team has a transgender player, citing educational privacy laws.
Along with Boise State, four other teams this season also forfeited matches against the Spartans because of the player, putting San Jose State front and center in one the most contentious issues in American life — one that brought people, both for and against the transgender player, to the Spartans’ games and uncommon attention to women’s college volleyball.
But the final on Saturday went on peacefully. Fans cheered every player as she was introduced, and no one interrupted the game with a protest. And in the Spartans’ last game together — and the final college game for the seniors — the players acted as if the controversy did not exist.
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