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Sunday marked exactly one year since Blaire Fleming and Brooke Slusser last played college volleyball for San Jose State University.
They had been playing together, traveling together and doing team bonding activities for months, even after Slusser filed a lawsuit alleging he was never told that Fleming was a biological transgender athlete. Before that, they had already shared hotel rooms and locker rooms for an entire season in 2023 before Slusser even said she found out.
Slusser now says the panic and stress of that period of her life caused her to develop an eating disorder, which led to severe anorexia that became so severe that she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months.
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Brooke Slusser #10 and Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans call a play during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“Because of the stress and my daily anxiety, I wasn’t really eating at all,” Slusser told PK Press Club Digital.
“I went from about 160 to 128 [lbs] during this semester. It’s definitely not healthy for someone my size to be that weight, and I ended up losing my menstrual cycle for nine months. So it was definitely serious.”
Slusser is 5 feet 11 inches tall.
People at home began to realize the problem.
“When I got home, some of my friends and family were very worried about me,” she added. “Some of my friends would tell me, ‘You always look tired all the time. You always look dead… I got to go home for three days that fall semester of my senior year, and a friend told me later that when I saw her, she went home and cried to her mom, because she was so worried about me, just because she could see that I looked so skinny.’
She said that some days she only ate 400 calories, then went to court to compete with her teammates, and some days she went out to give newspaper interviews about her fight to “save women’s sports.”
“Every day was really hard…the hardest thing about it was some days I would wake up and have to do two or three phone interviews with the media…and then get ready, go to practice, go take an elevator…be dragged into meetings with my coaches about how I’m such a horrible person and all these things, and then go straight from there to interviews,” she said.
But once the season and semester ended, her parents saw the physical impact the situation was having on her and demanded she return to Texas.
“As soon as the season was over, she came home for Christmas and we told her, ‘You’re not going back,'” her father, Paul Slusser, told PK Press Club Digital. He told his daughter, “You can go get your stuff next summer, when your lease is up, and stay here.” »
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Former SJSU volleyball star Brooke Slusser and her parents Paul and Kim Slusser at a game Sept. 8, which Kim said is “the last good memory we have of her playing.” (Courtesy of Kim Slusser)
The father was particularly concerned about the way the media portrayed his daughter and how this influenced her peers’ perceptions of her.
“She was the enemy. The news slandered her. All the media slandered her. And students were reading that stuff about her.”
Her mother, Kim Slusser, said she was “devastated” when she saw her daughter’s physical condition last Christmas.
“When I found out how bad everything really was and I actually saw her at Christmas when she was coming home…I was devastated. I couldn’t sleep. I had nightmares,” Kim Slusser said.
Brooke herself also began having recurring nightmares when she returned to her parents’ house.
In a dream, Brooke imagined himself back practicing at the San Jose State gym, then calling himself head coach Todd Kress in a private meeting.
“I woke up sobbing in the middle of the night,” she said.
“I was really having trouble sleeping and being able to fall asleep and stay asleep through the night. I was taking melatonin to help me sleep. At that time, I was only sleeping two to four hours a night.”
Once winter break ended and what was supposed to be her final semester began, Brooke attempted to complete her online course.
Her parents said she started online classes, but dropped them soon after. As a Division I scholarship athlete, dropping classes meant she lost the scholarship and her family had to pay the full semester’s tuition and housing out of pocket.
“We had to basically pay his mortgage and his apartment for the rest of the semester, so it was a pretty significant financial burden on us when this happened,” Paul Slusser said.
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The family will once again have to pay additional tuition fees out of pocket, as Brooke still has not completed her studies. She is no longer a student at SJSU and will complete her degree at another school.
A former scholarship athlete, Slusser previously imagined that at this point in her life she would have a degree and license in dietetics, preparing to start her own business in the dietetics field.
But instead, she had to focus on self-repair.
The family says they did not see any doctors and the girl did not use any medications except melatonin to help her sleep.
“My family, and I, too, don’t really believe in the usefulness of medication for this sort of thing,” Brooke said. “The reason I was able to recover from everything is because of God.”
On one of her last Sundays in San Jose last fall, she accidentally decided to go to church on a Sunday, simply because she wanted to get out of the house.
“I burst into tears during the service, and that was the day I decided to surrender my life to Christ,” Slusser said.
She started going to church more when she was back home, then was officially baptized the last week of June. Last summer, she also moved to North Carolina and works as a youth girls volleyball coach.
Kim Slusser said her daughter also became romantically involved with a guy she went to high school with, which also helped her recovery.
“He was a high school friend, and now they’re dating, and he was someone she leaned on during tough times in San Jose,” Kim Slusser said.
On this Thanksgiving, Slusser and her parents say she has recovered physically and mentally, as they move toward earning their college degree.
“She just got back into her comfort zone, the weight came back, she got back into her comfort zone, she got her period back,” Paul Slusser said.
None of the physical and mental damage suffered over the last year has deterred Brooke from fighting in the national conflict to “save women’s sport”.
She is a plaintiff in two Title IX lawsuits, citing her experience at SJSU, including Riley Gaines’ lawsuit against the NCAA, which partially advanced motions to dismiss passed in September. Slusser is leading a lawsuit against Mountain West and representatives of SJSU as well as 10 other current and former women’s volleyball players.
SJSU athletic director Jeff Konya responded to PK Press Club Digital in July about whether he was “satisfied” with how the university handled the controversy involving Flemming and Slusser in 2024.
“I think everyone acted in the best way possible, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education (ED) is in the midst of an investigation into the university over its handling. The department launched the investigation on February 6, concurrent with a similar investigation against the University of Pennsylvania for its handling of the 2022 incident involving trans swimmer Lia Thomas.
ED reached a resolution with UPenn on this issue on July 1. U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon told PK Press Club Digital that day that the department’s investigation into SJSU “will continue.”
Slusser is eager to see the potential results of this investigation and its impacts on university officials who oversaw the situation she was involved in at San Jose State.
“These people need to face consequences,” Slusser said.
And Blaire?
Blaire Fleming of the San Jose State Spartans watches the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
Fleming has rarely been active on social media over the past year. The athlete posted an Instagram Story appearing to celebrate his graduation from SJSU in May, and posted two posts appearing to show an exotic vacation.
In a New York Times Magazine profile article in April, Fleming admitted to feeling “suicidal,” saying the season was “the darkest time of my life.”
Slusser told PK Press Club Digital of Fleming’s suicidal thoughts: “If that’s what [Fleming] What I was going through was terrible.”
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The outlet also reported that Fleming often received hateful or threatening messages and cried “almost every night.”
Fleming is not named as a defendant in any of the lawsuits filed by Slusser. PK Press Club Digital contacted Fleming to request an interview and a direct response to Slusser’s statements.
PK Press Club Digital has reached out to SJSU for a response.
