Last November, Saturday after Thanksgiving, the second or second best player in the third or fourth best team of the sixth or seventh best conference in women’s college took the court in Las Vegas. It was the center of attention – not only for the 300 people in the stands, but also for countless others.
Balaire Fleming, an elderly person, was a starter for the Spartans of the State University of San Jose. For most of her university career, she had been a good but banal player without haste. Fleming was one of about 6,000 players talented enough to participate in the NCAA Division I in women’s volleyball, but it was largely indistinguishable in this cohort. She did not play for a powerful school like Penn State or Nebraska; She had never received a conference, even less in America, the honors. In the evaluation of Lee Feinswog, a veteran volleyball journalist who writes the 900 square foot newsletter, she was “a player in the middle of the pack”.
Then, suddenly, she was much more than that. A few months before the senior season of Fleming, Reduxx, an online magazine “Pro-wife, pro-child pro-child”, published an article claiming that Fleming was “a female man”-in other words, that she was a transgender woman. Reduxx reported that he had found old Facebook photographs of Fleming in which she seems to be a boy, as well as an old Facebook comment of the Fleming grandmother in which she called Fleming as “grandson”. The article also quoted the anonymous mother of an opposing player who watched Fleming rival with her daughter and discouraged the publication that she suspected Fleming was transgender: “He jumped higher and struck stronger than any woman on the field.”
Fleming refused to speak with the media throughout the season. But earlier this year, during a series of written exchanges and a zoom interview, she spoke for the first time with a journalist, confirming that she is in fact transgender. The coaches and administrators of the state of San Jose already knew it. The same is true for NCAA officials, whose rules of Fleming Time as an adherence allowed Trans women to participate in most female sports, including volleyball, provided they undergo hormone therapy and submitted the results of the tests which showed that their testosterone remained below a certain level. Many Fleming teammates, and even some of her opponents, were also aware that she was trans. “I would not really call her as a policeman’s secret,” said a former volleyball player from San Jose’s state, who asked for anonymity to discuss the team’s dynamics. “It was just more like a known wrong.”
