Nevada Athletic Director Tried To Pressure Own Team To Play Volleyball Against SJSU, Trans Blaire Fleming

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Despite pressure from the University of Nevada athletics administration, the volleyball team stuck to its guns and refused to compete against San Jose State over the weekend due to the presence of transgender player Blaire Fleming, according to one of the team’s captains. 

While the school said the match would not be forfeited, all the Nevada players declined to show up at the contest and, thus, it was ultimately forfeited following a venue change. 

But what happened behind-the-scenes prior to those decisions being made public is where the story gets even more interesting. 

After deciding, as a team, that they wanted to forfeit against San Jose State, the players and coaching staff met with Nevada athletics director Stephanie Rempe and deputy athletics director Merlene Aitken-Smith.

According to team captain Sia Liilii, the players believed the meeting was the time for them to express their thoughts and opinions to the administration. 

However, that’s not what happened. 

The players had written a statement and planned to read it to Rempe but never got the chance. The statement was later sent exclusively to OutKick.

Instead, Rempe took control of the meeting and told the players that they were not “educated” on the issue, and they needed to hear “the other side.” 

“She told us that she wanted us to have the full picture because every story has two sides,” Liilii told OutKick. 

Rempe then claimed that because Blaire Fleming takes testosterone blockers and estrogen supplements, Fleming is actually “at a disadvantage [competing against] cis-women.” 

“She told us that it’s harder for [Fleming] to play against [women] than it is for [women] to play against a male athlete,” Liilii said of Rempe’s comments. 

From both a scientific and common sense perspective, this simply isn’t true. 

Testosterone level is not the sole deciding factor in whether a person has a biological advantage in sports. The science is very clear that men who go through puberty have major advantages over women, athletically. 

In fact, a study done by Emma N. Hilton and Tommy R. Lundberg in Sports Medicine states “current evidence shows the biological advantage, most notably in terms of muscle mass and strength, conferred by male puberty and thus enjoyed by most transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed as per current sporting guidelines for transgender athletes.”

Their data showed that men have a minimum of a 10 percent advantage in sport-related actions and as much as a 50 percent advantage in some categories.

When it comes to “volleyball serve,” which is one of the categories they tested, they found that biological males have between a 29 percent to 34 percent advantage compared to women. 

Nevada athletic director Stephanie Rempe used several tactics to try and convince the volleyball team to play against San Jose State and transgender Blaire Fleming. 

Stating that the women of the team weren’t educated wasn’t the only reason Rempe implored the players to “reconsider their position” on the issue. 

Rempe also said they might face legal consequences.

“She went on to say that we would be liable for a lawsuit because we would be taking an opportunity away from San Jose State to play a game,” Liilii told OutKick. 

“But, before [Rempe] said that, [Rempe said], ‘I don’t mean this as a threat or anything.” 

Well, as long as she didn’t mean it as a threat. 

This is something that OutKick’s Riley Gaines has spoken about many times. She was forced to compete against biological male Lia (formerly William) Thomas in swimming back in 2022. 

Gaines often calls this pressure that athletic administrators put on women “emotional blackmail.” 

“They told me I would lose my scholarship,” Gaines said previously. “I was terrified. But I realize now that it was all gaslighting. It was emotional blackmail and that’s how they force so many of us into submission.”

Liilii was emotional when she spoke to OutKick, and it was clear that this meeting had taken an toll on her mental health. 

She said that Rempe offered to have a Bay Area “scientist,” who had already spoken to the UNLV volleyball team, come to Nevada and “educate” the team on the “science” behind transgender athletes. 

The entire meeting took a toll on the Nevada volleyball team, which had practice scheduled immediately after this one-hour conference. 

“It was just an off practice,” Liilii recalled. “You could feel the fake energy because we were all trying to band together and … just put this on the shelf and not think about it for a week. But honestly, as a woman, I don’t know how to shut anything down.” 

OutKick previously reached out to Nevada with a request to interview Stephanie Rempe. The school told us that is was “not making Stephanie available for interviews at this time.” 

Despite the attempts by the athletic director to push the women into reconsidering, they ultimately stuck together as a team and did not travel to San Jose State for the scheduled match. 

Many people have praised the Nevada players for their bravery without even knowing what they were going through in regard to the pressure they were getting from their own athletic director. 

Knowing that part of the story truly illustrates how much courage it took for them to go through with the forfeit. 

UPDATE: After OutKick published this story, the University of Nevada emailed us a statement from athletic director Stephanie Rempe: 

“The deputy athletics director and I met with the volleyball team and coaching staff on October 7, where every member of the team had an opportunity to share their feelings about the situation, ask questions, give their input on next steps, and we provided the opportunity for resources. 

“I did not tell, and am unaware of any member of the athletics administrative team telling, members of our women’s volleyball team that they ‘weren’t educated enough,’ that they ‘didn’t understand the science,’ that they should reconsider their position or that they should ‘stay quiet’ regarding their participation in an Oct. 26 match that was scheduled against San Jose State University.

“On October 14 and October 22, I spoke with the team for less than five minutes each time and those gatherings were operational in nature. At all three meetings, I shared our genuine apology for not sharing the statement released on October 3 in advance of their match against UNLV. As has been stated on multiple occasions, we continue to support the rights of the volleyball players who choose and choose not to participate.

“The focus of our athletic department has always been on the well-being and success of our student-athletes, including their ability to learn and grow from their personal and competitive experiences at our University. This remains our overriding priority regarding all the members of our women’s volleyball team.”