Former Utah State star athlete Kaylie Ray tried to share her expertise as a sufferer of the San Jose State volleyball scandal with lawmakers.
In response, she was given feedback about her physique.
Arizona Democrat state senator Catherine Miranda instructed Ray, “I imply, you look fairly wholesome… You look very a lot in form and robust,” after Ray spoke about having to forfeit a sport in protest of a trans athlete, at a senate training listening to on Tuesday.
“When she began saying these phrases, the one factor I used to be considering is, ‘The place might she presumably be going with this?’” Ray instructed Fox Information Digital. “For no matter cause, my bodily look or stature ought to have some kind of impact on how aggressive I’m with males. So I used to be undoubtedly caught off guard.”
Ray mentioned she would settle for an apology from Miranda, if she got one. Miranda’s workplace has not responded to repeated requests for remark.
Ray confirmed as much as the state home that day to share deep private trauma from her school volleyball profession.
At Utah State, she was an opponent of former San Jose State transgender volleyball participant Blaire Fleming for 2 years in 2022 and 2023, all earlier than having confirmed information that Fleming was male. Throughout that point, Ray mentioned she noticed teammates endure finger accidents from taking Fleming’s signature spikes to the palms.
“I had teammates who had severely jammed their fingers, fortunately not damaged, however a handful of ladies who had sustained minor accidents from the male participant,” Ray mentioned, including that it occurred far more typically from Fleming’s spikes than these from feminine gamers.
She added that every one of her teammates had their suspicions about Fleming from the second they watched movie forward of their first matchup on Oct. 1, 2022.
“When this participant was introduced to us, even on movie, the fast response is ‘whoa,’” Ray mentioned. “It’s so apparent to the bare eye that this athlete has athleticism, explosiveness, and an influence that’s simply not matched by any of the opposite athletes.”
Utah State misplaced that first match towards Fleming, three units to at least one.
Ray mentioned there have been some individuals on her group who had been making feedback about Fleming being a male.
“After watching this participant compete, it was so apparent to us, however clearly we don’t wish to speculate,” Ray mentioned.
She mentioned her group needed to give you a brand new technique that they merely had no want for previous to Fleming’s arrival within the Mountain West.
“As a result of Blaire attacked from such a excessive level of contact… the objective is to only get your palms over the web so far as you’ll be able to,” she mentioned. “Get your palms low and over, and if Blaire hits excessive of you, it’s swing by that participant. There was type of like a helplessness of, ‘Let’s simply do all the things we will to drive them to set different gamers.’”
Utah State gained the rematch towards SJSU in November, three units to 2. Then they met within the 2022 convention remaining, and Ray’s group emerged victorious for the second of what could be three straight Mountain West titles. However Ray says they had been in the end on the mercy of how properly Fleming performed that day.
“We knew that if the male athlete had an exceptional sport, there was nothing we might do to cease that particular person… and to be fairly trustworthy with you, Blaire didn’t have an excellent sport,” Ray mentioned. “To be honest, I feel you go into any match hoping that their greatest participant doesn’t have their greatest evening. I gained’t say that it was whole helplessness as a result of we had overwhelmed them earlier than and we knew we had been able to doing it once more.”
The next season, Utah State gained each matches towards SJSU, each in straight units. Fleming solely performed within the second of these two video games, lacking time resulting from damage. In that second sport, Fleming led SJSU in factors, however Utah State had solutions, and gained the sport en path to a third-straight convention title.
It was the final time Ray would ever play Fleming.
When the scandal went nationwide in 2024, Ray, as a captain, was making an attempt to steer her group to a fourth straight Mountain West championship.
“I wished it so dangerous,” she mentioned.
However then, official information of Fleming’s delivery intercourse reached their locker room.
“I felt sick. I felt nauseousness in my abdomen,” Ray mentioned.
Her group needed to put competitors apart.
“[Utah State administrators] ended up sending an nameless survey to our women after we had been on a street journey… merely to explain our ideas and emotions about competing towards San Jose, and our directors took that info and allowed us to forfeit,” Ray mentioned.
It was the primary of seven whole forfeited matches the Spartans noticed that season, with every one bringing increasingly scrutiny and threat to this system. However for Utah State, the forfeit additionally reverberated all through their season, behind closed doorways.
“Women had been so sick about it… to have that loss on our file, it was actually disappointing,” she mentioned. “We had been very distracted throughout the season.”
Ray joined the lawsuit led by former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser towards the Mountain West later that season, they usually even challenged in court docket to have the results of the forfeited sport reversed. However a Biden-appointed choose didn’t grant the reversal.
And due to that forfeit, Ray’s group completed behind SJSU within the standings. When the brackets got here out, they confronted the nervousness of figuring out for sure that in the event that they had been to make it again to the championship sport, they must play SJSU.
“The one factor that anybody might concentrate on, was ‘properly, if we win, we have now to play San Jose, do we have now to forfeit once more?’” Ray mentioned of the group’s mindset earlier than its first-round sport towards Boise State that event. “That was very a lot the perspective of my group… we had been already defeated coming into the event.”
Ray and her teammates didn’t make it out of the primary spherical. They misplaced to Boise State, who then went on to forfeit to SJSU within the semifinal.
Ray nonetheless hasn’t gotten over not profitable that fourth convention title, which she believes her group would have gained had circumstances been regular. Nevertheless it wasn’t regular, in any sense.
“We wished it so dangerous, coupled with the trauma and the nervousness, and simply the horrible, horrible feelings that occurred throughout the season, it was so exhausting to maintain that objective in sight.”
Ray is finished with school volleyball now. She performed yet another season at Weber State final fall and has graduated with a graduate diploma. Now, a lot of her consideration is put towards combating to “save girls’s sports activities,” simply as she tried to do at her state’s capital constructing this previous week.
In January, she spoke alongside Slusser exterior the US Supreme Court docket at a rally throughout oral arguments for 2 circumstances associated to males in girls’s sports activities. That day, Ray obtained her first up-close take a look at the forces opposing her objective, with a passionate pro-transgender rally going down proper subsequent to theirs.
“It was the primary time in my life seeing that assortment of individuals. What struck me most is that up subsequent to their audio system, they had been waiving a flag, a transgender flag, however on the middle of the flag there was a satanic image, it mentioned ‘The Church of Devil,’” Ray mentioned.
“It was so clearly a battle between good and evil… Whenever you upset a celebration of Satanic individuals, they don’t care what it’s a must to say… once you’re combating towards evil, it’s going to be uncomfortable.”
SJSU is the newest battleground in that combat.
The US Schooling Division’s Workplace for Civil Rights (OCR) decided that SJSU violated Title IX in its dealing with of Fleming on the finish of January. However SJSU and the California State College (CSU) system are suing the federal authorities to problem that investigation.
“San Jose State is disgusting,” Ray mentioned of the lawsuit. “It’s so despicable, and it’s so weird.”
Fox Information Digital has reached out to SJSU and CSU for a response to Ray’s feedback.
US Schooling Secretary Linda McMahon responded Wednesday, giving the establishments a deadline of 10 days to return to an settlement or threat federal funding cuts and a referral to the US Division of Justice.
“President Trump, you recognize what to do,” Ray added.
