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Sunday marked exactly one year since Blaire Fleming and Brooke Slusser’s last college volleyball game for San Jose State University.
They had been playing together, traveling together and doing team bonding activities for months, even after Slusser took legal action, claiming he was never told Fleming was a biological male transgender athlete. Before that, they had already shared hotel rooms and locker rooms for an entire season in 2023 before Slusser said he found out.
Slusser now says that the panic and stress of that period of her life caused her to develop an eating disorder, which 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 during the first set against the Air Force Falcons on Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“Because of the stress and how anxious I was every day, I just wouldn’t eat anything,” Slusser told Pak Gazette Digital.
“I went from around 160 to 128 [lbs] in that 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 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,” he added. “Some of my friends told me, ‘You always looked tired all the time. You always looked dead… I was able to go home for three days that fall semester my senior year, and later a friend told me that when I saw her, she went home and cried to her mom, because she was so worried about me, just because she realized I looked so sickeningly skinny.'”
She said some days she ate as little as 400 calories, then she still went to the court to compete with her teammates, and some days she went out to do news interviews about her battle to “save women’s sports.”
“Every day was very difficult… the hardest thing to do was some days I would wake up and have to take two or three media interview calls… then get ready, go to practice, go lift weights… participate in meetings with my coaches about how I’m a terrible person and all that stuff, and then go straight from there to the interviews,” he said.
But once the season and semester ended, her parents saw the physical impact the situation had on her and demanded she return to their home in Texas.
“As soon as the season ended, she came home for Christmas and we told her, ‘You’re not coming back,'” her father, Paul Slusser, told Pak Gazette Digital. He told his daughter: “‘You can go get your things 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 on September 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 his daughter was portrayed in the media and how that influenced her peers’ perception of her.
“She was the enemy. The news vilified her. Every media outlet vilified her. And students read those kinds of things 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 saw her on Christmas when she came 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 herself back at practice at the San Jose State gym and then being summoned for a private meeting with head coach Todd Kress.
“I woke up sobbing in the middle of the night,” she said.
“I definitely had a lot of difficulty sleeping and being able to fall asleep and stay asleep through 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.”
Once winter break ended and what was supposed to be her last semester began, Brooke attempted to complete her course online.
Her parents said she started taking online classes, but dropped out soon after. As a Division I scholarship athlete, dropping classes caused her to lose her scholarship and her family had to pay out of pocket for the entire semester’s tuition and housing.
“We had to basically pay for his mortgage and his apartment for the rest of the semester. So it was a pretty big financial burden for us when that happened,” Paul Slusser said.
FORMER SJSU VOLLEYBALL COACH FILES LAWSUIT AFTER LOSING JOB AMID TRANS ATHLETES SCANDAL
The family will have to pay the additional tuition out of pocket again, since Brooke has not yet finished her studies. He is no longer a student at SJSU and will finish his education at another school.
A former scholarship athlete, Slusser previously imagined that, at that point in her life, she would have a degree and license in dietetics, preparing to start her own business in the field of dietetics.
But instead, he had to focus on self-repair.
The family claims they did not consult a doctor and the daughter did not use any medication except melatonin to help her sleep.
“My family, and I too, don’t really believe in relying on medication for that kind of thing,” Brooke said. “The reason I was able to heal from everything is because of God.”
On one of his last Sundays in San Jose last fall, he randomly decided to go to church on a Sunday, just because he wanted to get out of the house.
“I burst into tears during the service and that was the day I decided to give my life back to Christ,” Slusser said.
He started going to church more when he returned home and then was officially baptized in the last week of June. Last summer, she also moved to North Carolina and works as a women’s volleyball coach.
Kim Slusser said her daughter also formed a romantic relationship with a boy she went to high school with, which also helped her recovery.
“He was a friend from high school and now they’re dating, and he was someone she leaned on during tough 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 she moves toward completing her college degree.
“She just went back to her comfort zone, gained weight again, went back to her comfort zone and got her period back,” Paul Slusser said.
None of the physical and mental damage of the last year has deterred 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’ lawsuit against the NCAA, which she partially advanced in previous motions to dismiss in September. Slusser is the leader of a lawsuit against Mountain West and SJSU representatives along with 10 other current and former women’s volleyball players.
SJSU athletic director Jeff Konya responded to Pak Gazette Digital in July if he is “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 middle of an investigation against the university over its handling. The department launched the investigation on February 6, simultaneously with a similar investigation against the University of Pennsylvania for its handling of the incident involving trans swimmer Lia Thomas in 2022.
The ED reached a resolution with UPenn on that issue on July 1. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told Pak Gazette Digital that day that the department’s investigation into SJSU “will continue.”
Slusser is eager to see the potential outcome of that investigation and its impacts on university officials who oversaw the situation she was involved in at San Jose State.
“Those people need to have some consequences,” Slusser said.
What’s up with Blaire?
Blaire Fleming of the San Jose State Spartans watches during the third set against the Air Force Falcons on 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 that appeared to celebrate SJSU’s graduation in May, and made two posts that appeared to show exotic vacations.
In a New York Times Magazine profile piece in April, Fleming admitted to feeling “suicidal,” saying the season was “the darkest time of my life.”
Slusser told Pak Gazette Digital about Fleming’s suicidal thoughts: “If that’s what [Fleming] was happening, that’s 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 Slusser’s lawsuits. Pak Gazette Digital reached out to Fleming for an interview and a direct response to Slusser’s statements.
Pak Gazette Digital reached out to SJSU for a response.
