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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 state Sen. Catherine Miranda told Ray, “I mean, you look pretty healthy… You look very fit and strong,” after Ray talked about missing a game in protest of a trans athlete at a Senate education hearing Tuesday.
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“When she started saying those words, all I could think was, ‘where could she possibly be going with this?'” Ray told Pakinomist Digital. “For whatever reason, my physical appearance or stature should have some kind of 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 gets one. Miranda’s office has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Ray appeared at the statehouse that day to share deep personal trauma from her college volleyball career.
At Utah State, she was the opponent of former San Jose State transgender volleyball player Blaire Fleming for two years in 2022 and 2023, all before she had confirmed knowledge that Fleming was male. During that time, Ray said she saw teammates suffer finger injuries from taking Fleming’s signature spikes to their hands.
“I had teammates who had their fingers seriously stuck, thankfully not broken, but a handful of girls who had sustained minor injuries from the male player,” Ray said, adding that it happened far more often from Fleming’s spikes than those from female players.
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.
“When this player was introduced to us, even on film, the immediate reaction was ‘whoa,'” Ray said. “It’s so obvious to the naked eye that this athlete has athleticism, explosiveness and a power that just isn’t matched by any of the other athletes.”
Utah State lost the first match against Fleming, three sets to one.
Ray said there were some people on her team who made comments about Fleming being a man.
“After watching this player compete, it was so obvious to us, but of course we 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’s arrival 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 hands over the net as far as you can,” she said. “Get your hands low and over and if Blaire hits over the top of you, that’s a good swing by that player. There was a kind of helplessness of, ‘let’s just do everything we can to force them to put other players’.”
Ray said there were some people on her team who 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 conference finals in 2022, and Ray’s team won the second of what would be three consecutive Mountain West titles. But Ray says they were ultimately at the mercy of how well Fleming played that day.
“We knew that if the male athlete had a phenomenal match, there was nothing we could do to stop that person… and to be completely honest with you, Blaire didn’t have a fantastic match,” Ray said. “To be fair, I think you go into any game hoping their best player doesn’t have their best night. I wouldn’t say it was total helplessness because we had beaten them before and we knew we were capable of doing it again.”
The following season, Utah State won both games against SJSU, both in straight sets. Fleming only played in the second of those two games and missed time due to injury. In the second game, Fleming led SJSU in points, but Utah State had answers, winning the game en route to a third straight tournament title.
It was the last time Ray would ever play Fleming.
When the scandal went national in 2024, Ray, as captain, tried 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 reached their dressing room.
“I felt sick. I felt sick to my stomach,” Ray said.
Her team had to put the competition aside.
“[Utah State administrators] ended up sending out an anonymous survey to our girls when we were on the road trip… simply 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 complete game losses the Spartans saw that season, each bringing more and more control and risk to the program. But for Utah State, the loss also reverberated through their season, behind closed doors.
“Girls were so sick of it… to have that loss on our record, it was really disappointing,” she said. “We were very distracted during the season.”
Ray joined the lawsuit led by former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser against the Mountain West later in the season, and they even challenged in court to have the result of the lost game overturned. But a Biden-appointed judge did not reverse.
And because of that loss, the Rays finished behind SJSU in the standings. When the bracket came out, they faced the anxiety of knowing for sure that if they were going to get back to the championship game, they would have to play SJSU.
“The only thing anyone could focus on was ‘well, if we win, we’re going to play San Jose, are we going to forfeit again?'” Ray said of the team’s mindset before its first-round game against Boise State that tournament. “It was very much my team’s attitude… we were already defeated when we entered the tournament.”
FORMER SJSU VOLLEYBALL STAR OPENS UP ON LIVING WITH TRANS TEAM FOOD NOT KNOWING 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 on Falcon Court in the East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
Ray and her teammates did not make it out of the first round. They lost to Boise State, who then lost to SJSU in the semifinals.
Ray still hasn’t gotten over not winning the fourth conference title she believes her team would have won had circumstances been normal. But it wasn’t normal by any means.
“We wanted it so bad, combined with the trauma and the anxiety and just the horrible, horrible emotions that came up during the season, it was so hard to keep that goal in sight.”
Ray is done with college volleyball now. She played one more season at Weber State last fall and graduated with a master’s degree. Now, much of her attention is focused on fighting to “save women’s sports,” just as she tried to do at her state capitol building last week.
In January, she spoke with Slusser outside the U.S. Supreme Court at a hearing during oral arguments for two cases related to men in women’s sports. That day, Ray got her first up-close look at the forces opposing her goals, with an impassioned pro-transgender rally taking place right next to theirs.
“It was the first time in my life that I saw that gathering of people. The thing that struck me the most is that next to their speakers they gave up a flag, a transgender flag, but in the middle of the flag was a satanic symbol that said ‘The Church of Satan,'” Ray said.
“It was so clearly a battle between good and evil… When you disturb a party of satanic people, they don’t care what you have to say… when you fight evil, it’s going to be uncomfortable.”
SJSU is the latest battleground in that battle.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) determined that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of Fleming in late January. But SJSU and the California University (CSU) system plaintiff the federal government to challenge this investigation.
“San Jose State is disgusting,” Ray said of the lawsuit. “It’s so disgusting and it’s so bizarre.”
Pakinomist 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 the institutions 10 days to reach an agreement or risk cuts in federal funding and a referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.
“President Trump, you know what to do,” Ray added.
