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Sunday marked exactly one year since Blaire Fleming and Brooke Slusser’s final college volleyball match for San Jose State University.
They had played together, traveled together and done team bonding activities for months even after Slusser took the case, claiming she was never told Fleming was a biologically male transgender athlete. By then, they had already shared hotel rooms and locker rooms for an entire 2023 season before Slusser said she even found out.
Slusser now says that the panic and stress of that period in her life caused her to develop an eating disorder that led to severe anorexia that got so bad 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 against the Air Force Falcons on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“Because of the stress and how anxious I was every single day, I just didn’t eat at all,” Slusser told Pakinomist Digital.
“I went from about 160 to 128 [lbs] in one semester. It’s definitely not healthy for someone my size to be that weight, and I ended up missing my menstrual cycle for nine months. So it was definitely serious.”
Slusser is 5-foot-11.
People back home began to notice the problem.
“When I got home, some of my friends and family were very worried about me,” she added. “Some of my friends were just like, ‘You always looked tired all the time. You always look dead…I was able to come home three days that fall semester of my senior year, and I had a friend tell 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 tell I looked so unhealthy thin.'”
She said some days she ate as few as 400 calories, then went to court to compete with her teammates, and some days she went out to do news interviews about her fight to “save women’s sports.”
“Every day was really hard… the hardest thing to do was, some days I’d wake up and I’d have to jump on two to three interview calls with news media… then get ready, go to practice, go to lift… get pulled into meetings with my trainers about how I’m just such a horrible person and all these things, and then go straight from that, right back to interviews,” she said.
But as the season and semester ended, her parents saw the physical impact the situation was having on her and demanded she come home to Texas.
“As soon as the season ended, she came home for Christmas and we were like, ‘You’re not going back,'” her father, Paul Slusser, told Pakinomist Digital. He told his daughter, “You can pick up 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 match on Sept. 8, which Kim claims 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 it affected her peers’ perception of her.
“She was the enemy. The news vilified her. All the media vilified her. And the students read things like that 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 actually saw her at Christmas time when she came home … I was devastated. I couldn’t sleep. I had nightmares,” Kim Slusser said.
Brooke herself also started having recurring nightmares when she moved back into her parents’ house.
In a dream, Brooke imagined herself back at practice at San Jose State’s high school, then being called into a private meeting by head coach Todd Kress.
“I woke up sobbing in the middle of the night,” she said.
“I definitely struggled a lot with my sleep and being able to fall asleep and stay asleep during the night. I was taking melatonin to help me sleep. At the time, I was only getting two to four hours of sleep a night.”
As winter break ended and what would be her final semester began, Brooke attempted to complete her coursework online.
Her parents said she began online classes but dropped them soon after. As a Division I scholarship athlete, dropping classes resulted in her losing her scholarship and her family having to pay for the entire semester’s tuition out of pocket and her housing.
“We had to pay, basically, her mortgage and her apartment for the rest of the semester. So it was a pretty big financial burden for us when that happened,” Paul Slusser said.
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The family will have to pay out of pocket again for additional tuition as Brooke still has not completed her education. She is no longer an SJSU student, and will finish her education at another school.
A former scholarship athlete, Slusser previously envisioned that at that point in her life she would have a degree and license in dietetics and prepare to start her own dietetics business.
But instead she had to focus on self-repair.
The family claims they did not consult any doctors and the daughter did not use any medication except the melatonin for sleep aid.
“My family, and so do I, we don’t really believe in relying on medicine for that kind of thing,” Brooke said. “The reason I was able to heal from everything is because of God.”
On one of her last Sundays in San Jose last fall, she randomly decided to go to church on a Sunday just because she wanted to get out of the house.
“I just broke down in tears during the service and that was the day I decided to give my life back to Christ,” Slusser said.
She started going to church more when she was back home and was then officially baptized in the last week of June. This past summer she also moved to North Carolina and works as a volleyball coach for young girls.
Kim Slusser said her daughter also formed a romantic relationship with a guy she went to high school with, which has also helped her recover.
“He was a high school friend and now they’re dating and he was someone she leaned on during the hard times in San Jose,” Kim Slusser said.
By this Thanksgiving, Slusser and her parents say she has recovered physically and mentally from the situation as they navigate the completion of her college education.
“She just got back in her comfort zone, the weight came back on, she went back to her comfort zone, got her period back,” Paul Slusser said.
None of the physical and mental injuries over the past year have kept Brooke from fighting in the national conflict to “save women’s sports.”
She is a plaintiff in two Title IX lawsuits, citing her experience at SJSU, including Riley Gaines’ case against the NCAA, which partially set aside previous denials in September. Slusser is leading a lawsuit against the Mountain West and representatives of SJSU along with 10 other current and former women’s volleyball players.
SJSU athletic director Jeff Konya responded to Pakinomist Digital in July about whether he is “satisfied” with how the university handled the controversy involving Flemming and Slusser in 2024.
“I think everyone acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education (ED) is in the middle of an investigation against the university for its handling. The department launched the investigation on Feb. 6, concurrent with a similar investigation against the University of Pennsylvania over its handling of the incident involving trans swimmer Lia Thomas in 2022.
ED reached a resolution with UPenn on this issue on July 1st. U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon told Pakinomist Digital that day that the department’s investigation into SJSU “will continue.”
Slusser is eager to see the potential outcome of this investigation and its impact on the university officials who oversaw the situation she was involved in at San Jose State.
“Those people need to face some consequences,” Slusser said.
What about Blaire?
Blaire Fleming of the San Jose State Spartans during the third set against the Air Force Falcons on Oct. 19, 2024, in Colorado Springs. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
Fleming has rarely been active on social media in recent years. The athlete posted an Instagram story that appears to celebrate her graduation from SJSU in May, and has made two posts showing exotic vacations.
In a New York Times Magazine profile in April, Fleming admitted he felt “suicidal” and said the season was “the darkest time of my life.”
Slusser told Pakinomist Digital about Fleming’s suicidal thoughts: “If it is [Fleming] went through, it’s terrible.”
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The outlet also reported that Fleming often received hateful or threatening messages, cried “almost every night.”
Fleming is not named as a defendant in any of Slusser’s lawsuits. Pakinomist Digital has reached out to Fleming to request an interview and for a direct response to Slusser’s statements.
Pakinomist Digital has reached out to SJSU for a response.
