{"id":220000,"date":"2026-03-14T22:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T22:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/220000\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T22:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T22:07:08","slug":"san-jose-state-university-trans-scandal-victim-caught-off-guard-by-dem-lawmakers-comments-about-her-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/220000\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose State University trans scandal victim ‘caught off guard’\u00a0by Dem lawmaker’s comments about her body"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former\u00a0Utah State\u00a0star athlete Kaylie Ray tried to share her experience as a victim of the San Jose State volleyball scandal<\/a> with lawmakers.<\/p>\n

In response, she was given comments about\u00a0her body.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Arizona Democrat state senator Catherine Miranda told Ray, \u201cI mean, you look pretty healthy\u2026 You look very much in shape and strong,\u201d after Ray spoke about having to forfeit a game in protest of a trans athlete, at a senate education hearing on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen she started saying those words, the only thing I was thinking is, \u2018Where could she possibly be going with this?\u2019\u201d Ray told Fox News Digital. \u201cFor whatever reason, my physical appearance or stature should have some type of effect on how competitive I am with men. So I was definitely caught off guard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ray said she would accept an apology from Miranda, if she were given one. Miranda\u2019s office has not responded to repeated requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ray showed up to the state house that day to share deep personal trauma from her\u00a0college volleyball career.<\/p>\n

Former\u00a0Utah State\u00a0star athlete Kaylie Ray tried to share her experience as a victim of the San Jose State volleyball scandal with lawmakers. Utah State University<\/p>\n

At Utah State, she was an opponent of former San Jose State transgender volleyball player Blaire Fleming<\/a> for two years in 2022 and 2023, all before having confirmed knowledge that Fleming was male. During that time, Ray said she saw teammates suffer finger injuries from taking Fleming\u2019s signature spikes to the hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had teammates who had seriously jammed their fingers, luckily not broken, but a handful of girls who had sustained minor injuries from the male player,\u201d Ray said, adding that it happened way more often from Fleming\u2019s spikes than those from female players.<\/p>\n

She added that all of her teammates had their suspicions about Fleming from the moment they watched film ahead of their first matchup on Oct. 1, 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen this player was presented to us, even on film, the immediate reaction is \u2018whoa,\u2019\u201d Ray said. \u201cIt\u2019s so obvious to the naked eye that this athlete has athleticism, explosiveness, and a power that is just not matched by any of the other athletes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Utah State lost that first match against Fleming, three sets to one.<\/p>\n

Ray said there were some people on her team who were making comments about Fleming being a male.<\/p>\n

Arizona Democrat state senator Catherine Miranda told Ray, \u201cI mean, you look pretty healthy\u2026 You look very much in shape and strong,\u201d after Ray spoke about having to forfeit a game in protest of a trans athlete. Arizona State Legislature<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter watching this player compete, it was so obvious to us, but obviously we don\u2019t want to speculate,\u201d Ray said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said her team had to come up with a new strategy that they simply had no need for prior to Fleming\u2019s arrival in the Mountain West.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause Blaire attacked from such a high point of contact\u2026 the goal is to just get your hands over the net as far as you can,\u201d she said. \u201cGet your hands low and over, and if Blaire hits over the top of you, it\u2019s a good swing by that player. There was kind of like a helplessness of, \u2018Let\u2019s just do everything we can to force them to set other players.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Utah State won the rematch against SJSU in November, three sets to two. Then they met in the 2022 conference final, and Ray\u2019s team emerged victorious for the second of what would be three straight Mountain West titles. But Ray says they were ultimately at the mercy of how well Fleming played that day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe knew that if the male athlete had a phenomenal game, there was nothing we could do to stop that person\u2026 and to be quite honest with you, Blaire did not have a great game,\u201d Ray said. \u201cTo be fair, I think you go into any match hoping that their best player doesn\u2019t have their best night. I won\u2019t say that it was total helplessness because we had beaten them before and we knew we were capable of doing it again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The following season, Utah State won both matches against SJSU, both in straight sets. Fleming only played in the second of those two games, missing time due to injury. In that second game, Fleming led SJSU in points, but Utah State had answers, and won the game en route to a third-straight conference title.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was the last time Ray would ever play Fleming.<\/p>\n

When the scandal<\/a> went national in 2024, Ray, as a captain, was trying to lead her team to a fourth straight Mountain West championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted it so bad,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But then, official news of Fleming\u2019s birth sex reached their locker room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt sick. I felt nauseousness in my stomach,\u201d Ray said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blaire Fleming, #3 of the San Jose State Spartans, reacts during the second set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Her team had to put competition aside.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[Utah State administrators] ended up sending an anonymous survey to our girls when we were on a road trip\u2026 simply to describe our thoughts and feelings about competing against San Jose, and our administrators took that information and allowed us to forfeit,\u201d Ray said.<\/p>\n

It was the first of seven total forfeited matches the Spartans saw that season, with each one bringing more and more scrutiny and risk to the program. But for Utah State, the forfeit also reverberated throughout their season, behind closed doors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGirls were so sick about it\u2026 to have that loss on our record, it was really disappointing,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were very distracted during the season.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ray joined the lawsuit led by former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser<\/a> against the Mountain West later that season, and they even challenged in court to have the result of the forfeited game reversed. But a Biden-appointed judge did not grant the reversal.<\/p>\n

And because of that forfeit, Ray\u2019s team finished behind SJSU in the standings. When the brackets came out, they faced the anxiety of knowing for certain that if they were to make it back to the championship game, they would have to play SJSU.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that anyone could focus on, was \u2018well, if we win, we have to play San Jose, do we have to forfeit again?\u2019\u201d Ray said of the team\u2019s mindset before its first-round game against\u00a0Boise State\u00a0that tournament. \u201cThat was very much the attitude of my team\u2026 we were already defeated coming into the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray and her teammates didn\u2019t make it out of the first round. They lost to Boise State, who then went on to forfeit to SJSU in the semifinal.<\/p>\n

Ray said she saw teammates suffer finger injuries from taking Fleming\u2019s signature spikes to the hands.\u00a0 Getty Images<\/p>\n

Ray still hasn\u2019t gotten over not winning that fourth conference title, which she believes her team would have won had circumstances been normal. But it wasn\u2019t normal, in any sense. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted it so bad, coupled with the trauma and the anxiety, and just the horrible, horrible emotions that occurred during the season, it was so hard to keep that goal in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray is done with college volleyball now. She played one more season at Weber State last fall and has graduated with a graduate degree. Now, much of her attention is put toward fighting to \u201csave women\u2019s sports,\u201d just as she tried to do at her state\u2019s capital building this past week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In January, she spoke alongside Slusser outside the US Supreme Court at a rally during oral arguments for two cases related to males in women\u2019s sports<\/a>. That day, Ray got her first up-close look at the forces opposing her goal, with a passionate pro-transgender rally taking place right next to theirs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first time in my life seeing that collection of people. What struck me most is that up next to their speakers, they were waiving a flag, a transgender flag, but at the center of the flag there was a satanic symbol, it said \u2018The Church of Satan,\u2019\u201d Ray said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so clearly a battle between good and evil\u2026 When you upset a party of Satanic people, they don\u2019t care what you have to say\u2026 when you\u2019re fighting against evil, it\u2019s going to be uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

SJSU is the latest battleground in that fight.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0US Education Department\u2019s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) determined that SJSU violated Title IX<\/a> in its handling of Fleming at the end of January. But SJSU and the California State University (CSU) system\u00a0are suing<\/a>\u00a0the federal government to challenge that investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSan Jose State is disgusting,\u201d Ray said of the lawsuit. \u201cIt\u2019s so despicable, and it\u2019s so bizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital has reached out to SJSU and CSU for a response to Ray\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

US Education Secretary Linda McMahon responded Wednesday, giving the institutions a deadline of 10 days to come to an agreement or risk federal funding cuts and a referral to the US Department of Justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump<\/a>, you know what to do,\u201d Ray added.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former\u00a0Utah State\u00a0star athlete Kaylie Ray tried to share her experience as a victim of the San Jose State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[48714,7,4228,1525,1751,15717,88,90,89,30980,39643,40284,48635,3586,4591],"class_list":["post-220000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-athletes","tag-california","tag-colleges-and-universities","tag-democratic-party","tag-democrats","tag-lawmakers","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-scandal","tag-scandals","tag-transgender","tag-transgender-athletes","tag-us-news","tag-utah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}