CSU Volleyball's Play Speaks Louder Than Controversy as Rams Win Conference Championship

The Colorado State University volleyball team is heading to its first NCAA tournament appearance since 2019 after winning the Mountain West Conference championship tournament on November 30.

The Rams last won the MWC tournament in 2011, but the program has been a consistent winner, reaching the NCAA tournament for 25 years before its streak ended in 2020. Coach Emily Kohan said returning to the tournament was a priority when she began her tenure in 2023.

Despite CSU’s 20-10 record and a conference title on the line, off-court controversy was the focus going into Saturday’s championship match, when CSU played the San Jose State University Spartans, a team that experienced a rocky season after SJSU setter Brooke Slusser claimed one of her teammates is transgender.

That athlete and SJSU have never spoken publicly about the athlete's gender, but five teams forfeited games against the Spartans throughout the season. Those teams — Wyoming, Utah State, Nevada, Southern Utah and Boise State, which forfeited before a conference semifinal match with SJSU on November 29 — never specifically named a transgender athlete as the reason for their forfeits, but athletes from Nevada held a rally against transgender athletes being able to participate in sports at the time of its scheduled game against SJSU.

The upheaval comes after Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif was accused without basis of being a biological male while competing in the women’s division. Khelif, who won a gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics, is now suing those who spread the rumors for cyberbullying and harassment.

CSU wasn’t willing to play into that anger, Kohan said before the matchup.

“We get an opportunity to play for another championship tomorrow, but we also are showing some courage to be the team that says, ‘Hey, we’re going to go out there and we’re going to show courage in the way we play and that this can stop with us,’” she said on November 29.

Not everyone felt the same, including Slusser, who filed a federal lawsuit on November 13 with ten other women who currently or previously played in the Mountain West Conference. The lawsuit attempted to ban Slusser’s alleged transgender teammate from participating in the tournament and eliminate losses from the records of teams that forfeited matches against SJSU.

U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Kato Crews ruled on November 25 that the SJSU athlete is allowed to play, and a federal appeals court agreed on November 26.

On November 30, CSU athletes spoke with their play on the court, beating the Spartans in four sets. CSU notched 64 kills to SJSU’s 57 and made significantly fewer errors, with a .409 hitting percentage compared to SJSU’s .193.

Malaya Jones had 26 kills, nine digs and three blocks in the championship game as she, Emery Herman, Naeemah Weathers and Karina Leber were all named to the Mountain West All-Tournament team; Herman, CSU's setter, was named tournament MVP thanks to her 34 assists, four kills and seven digs. Jones was named the Mountain West Player of the Year at the end of the regular season, while Kohan took home the Mountain West Coach of the Year title.

“Our team, individually and collectively, decided to stay a group and to show courage in the way we were going to play and the way we were going to make our statement by controlling our own destiny,” Kohan said after the title game.

Still, controversy overshadowed the on-court action between the two schools this season. Following the teams' October 3 matchup in the regular season, SJSU associate head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose filed a Title IX complaint claiming that a player from CSU conspired with the allegedly transgender Spartans athlete to gang up on Slusser during the match. Mountain West officials found insufficient evidence of that claim and closed its investigation. Batie-Smoose hasn’t been on the bench since the claim became public and was also part of the federal lawsuit. The Rams went 1-1 against SJSU before the conference title game.

Through it all, Kohan stood up for her team, protecting players by not allowing members of the media to speak to them after the semifinal or finals victories.

“There’s been a lot of focus on my players, and, maybe, people trying to pick at them and picking on these young humans,” Kohan said. “You couldn’t ask for them to be better humans, and people are still trying to come at them and try to make them pretty vulnerable. So I’m here to make sure I try to protect my players.”

Three Black athletes on the team also knelt during the national anthem at the tournament, something they have been doing since their freshman year in 2020 — but with people tuning in because of SJSU's controversy, this led to a firestorm, too.

“In this program, we raise critical thinkers to be able to make decisions for what’s important to them, and for those three, they’re Black players,” Kohan said after the team's semifinal win over San Diego State. “It’s been important to them for five years, and they’ve stood their ground for saying that this is something that they believe in, and we’ve all supported them.”

As CSU heads to the NCAA tournament, the spotlight on the Mountain West has largely focused on social and political issues instead of yet another championship-winning team from Colorado, but Kohan is proud of her team on both fronts.

“We stuck together through a lot and against a lot of odds and a lot of negative energy, and we controlled our own destiny,” she said after winning a conference championship. "We made a statement in the process. … We’ve been able to stay about the Rams — about the ‘Ramily’ — and not be nasty humans.”

CSU will play against six-seed Texas A&M in the first round of the NCAA tournament on December 6 at 4:30 p.m. in Tempe, Arizona.