San Jose State volleyball’s Brooke Slusser gave Fox News Digital the inside story of her team’s Thanksgiving week trip to Las Vegas amid a national controversy.
EXCLUSIVE: Blaire Fleming and Brooke Slusser arrived in Las Vegas the Monday before Thanksgiving for their last trip as volleyball teammates.
The very next night, they went to a magic show downtown with their other teammates. A security escort stood guard over them in the auditorium. Fleming, Slusser and the rest of the players watched magicians invite audience members on stage and try to magically reveal their deepest secrets.
“They were guessing people’s secrets,” Slusser told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
Slusser said no one from their team went up on stage.
“If someone would have got called up, maybe, but it just didn’t happen,” she said.
The magicians who skipped over them avoided a daunting task.
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Slusser is engaged in two lawsuits over Fleming’s presence on the team. She joined the suit headed by former college swimmer Riley Gaines against the NCAA over its policies on gender identity back in September. Slusser alleged she had been made to share a bedroom and changing spaces for an entire season with Fleming without knowing that Fleming was a biological male.
She filed a second lawsuit of her own against the Mountain West Conference in November. That lawsuit alleged Fleming conspired with a Colorado State volleyball player to have Slusser spiked in the face with a ball during a game on Oct. 3 between the two teams. A conference investigation into that allegation did not find sufficient evidence to assign discipline.
Slusser never did get spiked in the face in that game. She told Fox News Digital she had been spiked in the face before by a volleyball, and that the experience “stings, but you kind of just brush it off.” However, Slusser has also experienced the different pain of a volleyball’s impact against her skin when spiked by her teammate Fleming. That one came with way more than a sting.
In their first season together in 2023, Slusser said she took one of Fleming’s signature spikes to her thigh. She had to nurse dark bruises on her thigh for an entire week after that. Slusser did not even know that Fleming was a trans athlete back then when it happened.
She found out months later, alleging her coaches and other school administrators had kept the truth from her. Then she still had to go to practice with Blaire, travel with Blaire and set up Blaire for spikes against other female players in matches.
“This season has been so traumatizing that I don’t even have a proudest moment,” Slusser said.
Slusser even had to spend Thanksgiving with Blaire this past Thursday.
Two days after their security escort to the magic show in downtown Las Vegas, Fleming and Slusser enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast in the same dining room. Slusser’s parents were there, and she recalled seeing Fleming’s family members there too. The team ordered takeout from a local Las Vegas restaurant, sharing trays of typical Thanksgiving food. Slusser made an effort to avoid dairy, as she often does, out of consciousness of sports science advantages and overall wellness.
“It ended up being pretty good actually,” Slusser happily said of the meal.
“I sat with my group of people, there were a bunch of different tables in the room, I just enjoyed myself with my friends.”
She added that the table conversations were “all non-volleyball” topics.
At that point, the team was aware of the fact that they were advancing to the Mountain West Tournament final after Boise State announced it would forfeit its semifinal match against SJSU and Fleming. However, it was not a topic they spoke of at the table, according to Slusser.
The night before, Slusser said the team watched the quarterfinal match between Boise State and Utah State and scouted both teams. Later that night, Slusser said they were all in their hotel rooms when they were called for a team meeting, where their coaches told them they were going right to the finals.
“It was always in the back of our heads that we might not even play in the semifinals,” Slusser said.
They were all aware that both Boise State and Utah State, who played in the quarterfinal for the right to face the Spartans, had already forfeited to them in the regular season amid the controversy. They did the scouting anyway.
It was the third time Boise State forfeited against SJSU this year. So, while the Spartans sat in a Las Vegas hotel eating takeout turkey and green beans, the Broncos players spent the holiday being hailed as heroes by Republican figures, including their home-state Gov. Brad Little, for refusing to face Fleming.
Still, Slusser was not too upset about the opportunity to play in the final with a chance to earn a trip to the NCAA tournament. She knew it was her last year playing volleyball before she embarked on her professional career goal of working in sports science.
So, on the court, she embraced Fleming as much as she could, just as she had all season.
Slusser admitted that she believes Fleming has been an undeniable competitive advantage to the team this season and was “not sure” if they would have reached the championship round without the trans athlete.
“I think it definitely gives us a major advantage, because when Blaire is playing well, if he hits the ball it’s mostly just a kill every time,” Slusser said.
Slusser took the court next to Fleming for every match amid her ongoing lawsuits and national controversy this season. Fleming anchored the Spartans’ offense as one of the conference’s leader in kills, but Slusser dealt with a constant fear that lingered just behind her competitive instinct every time she set up Fleming for a kill against women opponents.
“I don’t really know,” Slusser said when asked how it felt every time she had to set up her 6 feet, 1 inch tall trans female teammate for a kill. “I’m just afraid I won’t hurt anyone by setting Blaire up with the ball. That’s my biggest fear.”
Slusser had to watch Fleming spike the ball into a few opponents this season. One viral clip of Fleming spiking the ball against San Diego State player Keira Herron on Oct. 10 even caught President-elect Donald Trump’s attention during a Fox News town hall interview the next day. Trump used the clip to advocate for a ban on trans inclusion in women’s sports.
Days later, during an Oct. 17 match, one of Fleming’s spikes knocked a New Mexico State player to the ground.
“I was terrified for them,” Slusser said. “I didn’t want anything to happen to them. I was just worried.”
That did not stop Slusser or any of the other teammates from setting up their trans female teammate to finish third in the entire conference in kills.
They rode that formula all the way to a conference championship, both despite and because of the scandal. Slusser and Fleming earned their team’s only two Mountain West honorable mentions. Fleming even finished second in the entire conference in kills.
They earned a first-round bye in the Mountain West tournament by virtue of six wins that came via forfeit from teams that refused to face them. They were guaranteed to play one of those teams that forfeited in the semifinal, when Utah State and Boise State were paired up in the quarterfinal.
However, the Thanksgiving takeout was not the good-luck meal they needed to win a conference title and advance to the NCAA tourney. After nearly a week in Las Vegas without playing a volleyball game and enjoying a heavy takeout meal, the Spartans came out sluggish in the championship game against Colorado State.
Fleming in particular made multiple errors and had a very poor hitting percentage in the first two sets of the match, as Colorado State fell behind two sets to none.
However, the Spartans went as Fleming went. When the athlete got hot in the third set, the Spartans avoided elimination. Fleming finished the game with 17 kills but committed nine errors, and after a competitive start to the fourth set, SJSU completely collapsed.
After the game, head coach Todd Kress provided a statement to Fox New Digital condemning the teams that forfeited to SJSU. He said those forfeits “unleashed appalling, hateful messages” at his team’s coaches and players.
Meanwhile, Slusser avoided the head coach. She went to go and find suspended associated head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, who had made the trip to Las Vegas to watch the team play even after the program suspended her for filing a Title IX complaint against SJSU, which contained the original allegations of Fleming conspiring with a Colorado State player to have Slusser spiked in the face.
Batie-Smoose’s suspension in early November was an emotional moment for Slusser and many of her teammates. Seeing her all the way in Las Vegas after everything they had gone through “meant a lot.”
Then, when Slusser walked off the court for the last time as a college athlete, she felt a sudden sense of relief.
She mostly felt a sense of relief that she would not be teammates with Fleming anymore. She has still walked away from it a very changed person, as she continues to fight legal battles against her university and the college sports establishment in court.
She said it has even affected her family.
“It’s made me change my perspective on a lot of things,” Slusser said. “I think if I have kids in the future that are going into college sports I’m going to be very wary of who I send them to and who I allow them to go and play for… and seeing how my parents were so angry after putting that trust into the staff that they sent me here to San Jose, and then all of it happening, I would just say that it’s going to change the way I view things as a parent for my kids.”
Slusser says this experience may even affect her future relationships and trust with others.
“In a way, yes,” Slusser said of the idea. “I’ve always looked at people, and I’ve never really been wary when I meet people until they show me there’s something I should trust. I trust them fully, but I think that’s definitely changed a lot. And now it’s like if anyone new is introduced to me here, I’m not going to trust you or tell you anything until I want, or I can.”
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