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Former Utah State star athlete Kaylie Ray tried to share her experience as a victim of the San Jose State volleyball scandal with lawmakers.
In response, she received comments about her body.
Arizona Democratic Sen. Catherine Miranda told Ray, “I mean, you look pretty healthy… You look really fit and strong,” after Ray spoke about having to forfeit a game in protest against a trans athlete, during a Senate education hearing on Tuesday.
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“When she started saying those words, all I was thinking was, ‘Where could she possibly be going with this?'” Ray told PK Press Club Digital. “For some reason, my physical appearance or stature should have some effect on how competitive I am with men. So I was definitely caught off guard.”
Ray said she would accept an apology from Miranda, if she received one. Miranda’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Ray showed up at the State House that day to share the deep personal trauma of her college volleyball career.
At Utah State, she was an opponent of transgender former San Jose State volleyball player Blaire Fleming for two years in 2022 and 2023, all before he confirmed he knew Fleming was a man. During that time, Ray said he saw teammates suffer finger injuries while wearing Fleming’s iconic spikes on their hands.
“I had teammates who had badly injured fingers, luckily not broken ones, but a handful of girls had suffered minor injuries from the male player,” Ray said, adding that it happened much more often because of Fleming’s spikes than those of the female players.
She added that all of her teammates had suspicions about Fleming from the moment they watched the film before their first game on October 1, 2022.
“When this player was introduced to us, even on film, the immediate reaction was ‘whoa,’” Ray said. “It is so obvious to the naked eye that this athlete has athleticism, explosiveness and power that is unmatched by any of the other athletes.”
Utah State lost this first match against Fleming, three sets to one.
Ray said some people on his team made comments about Fleming being a man.
“After seeing this player compete, it was obvious to us, but we obviously don’t want to speculate,” Ray said.
She said her team had to come up with a new strategy that they simply didn’t need before Fleming arrived in the Mountain West.
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“Because Blaire attacked from such a high point of contact… the goal is just to get your hand over the net as far as possible,” she said. “Throw your hands down and over the top, and if Blaire hits you over the top, that’s a good swing on that player’s part. There was a kind of helplessness of, ‘Let’s do everything we can to force them to set up other players.'”
Ray said some people on his team made comments about Fleming being a man. (Courtesy of ICONS, Getty Images)
Utah State won the rematch against SJSU in November, three sets to two. Then they met in the 2022 conference finals, and Ray’s 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 Fleming played that day.
“We knew that if the male athlete had a phenomenal game, there was nothing we could do to stop him…and to be completely honest with you, Blaire didn’t have a great game,” Ray said. “To be honest, I think you go into any game hoping your best player doesn’t have his best night. I won’t say it was complete helplessness because we had beaten them before and we knew we could do it again.”
The following season, Utah State won both matches against SJSU, both in straight sets. Fleming only played 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.
This was the last time Ray played Fleming.
When the scandal went national in 2024, Ray, as captain, was attempting to lead his team to a fourth consecutive Mountain West championship.
“I wanted it so bad,” she said.
But then the official news of Fleming’s birth sex arrived in their locker room.
“I felt sick. I had nausea in my stomach,” Ray said.
His team had to put the competition aside.
“[Utah State administrators] I ended up sending an anonymous survey to our girls on a road trip… just to describe our thoughts and feelings about competing against San Jose, and our administrators took that information and allowed us to forfeit,” Ray said.
It was the first of seven losing games the Spartans have seen this season, each bringing more and more control and risk to the schedule. But for Utah State, the package also reverberated throughout its season, behind closed doors.
“The girls were so fed up… to have that loss on our record, it was really disappointing,” she said. “We were very distracted during the season.”
Ray joined former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the Mountain West later that season, and they even challenged in court the overturning of the lost game result. But a Biden-appointed judge did not grant the reversal.
And because of that forfeit, Ray’s team finished behind SJSU in the standings. When the brackets came out, they were faced with the anxiety of knowing for sure that if they wanted to get back to the championship game, they would have to play SJSU.
“The one thing everyone could focus on was ‘well if we win we have to play San Jose, do we have to forfeit again?’” Ray said of the team’s mindset heading into its first-round game against Boise State. “That was quite the attitude of my team…we were already defeated before the tournament.”
FORMER SJSU VOLLEYBALL STAR OPENS UP ABOUT LIVING WITH A TRANS TEAMMATE WITHOUT KNOWING THE ATHLETE’S BIOLOGICAL SEX
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)
Ray and her teammates failed to make it out of the first round. They lost to Boise State, who then forfeited to SJSU in the semifinals.
Ray still hasn’t gotten over not winning that fourth conference title, which she believes her team would have won if circumstances had been normal. But this was by no means normal.
“We wanted it so bad, coupled with the trauma and the anxiety and the horrible, horrible emotions that happened during the season, it was so hard to keep that goal in sight.”
Ray is done with college volleyball. She played one more season at Weber State last fall and earned a graduate degree. Today, much of her attention is focused on the fight to “save women’s sports,” just as she tried to do in her state capitol building last week.
In January, she spoke alongside Slusser before the U.S. Supreme Court at a gathering during oral arguments in two cases related to men in women’s sports. That day, Ray got his first close look at the forces opposing his goal, with a passionate pro-transgender rally happening right next to theirs.
“It was the first time in my life that I saw this group of people. What struck me the most was that next to their speakers they were waving a flag, a transgender flag, but in the center of the flag there was a satanic symbol, it said ‘The Church of Satan,'” Ray said.
“It was clearly a battle between good and evil… When you upset a group of satanics, they don’t care what you have to say… when you’re fighting evil, it’s going to be uncomfortable.”
SJSU is the final battleground in this fight.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) determined that SJSU violated Title IX in its treatment of Fleming in late January. But the SJSU system and the University of California (CSU) system continue the federal government to challenge this investigation.
“San Jose State is disgusting,” Ray said of the lawsuit. “It’s so despicable and so bizarre.”
PK Press Club Digital has reached out to SJSU and CSU for a response to Ray’s comments.
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U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon responded Wednesday, giving schools 10 days to reach an agreement or risk reducing federal funding and being referred to the U.S. Department of Justice.
“President Trump, you know what to do,” Ray added.
