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As San Jose State University approaches a critical deadline in its Title IX conflict against President Donald Trump’s administration, another woman who was affected by the school’s 2024 volleyball scandal has come forward.
Former University of Wyoming volleyball star Macey Boggs said her team was “torn” over the decision of whether or not to lose two matches to SJSU in 2024. The Spartans were embroiled in national controversy at the time due to the presence of a biological male transgender athlete on the roster.
Boggs said in a recent interview that the players learned about the trans player, against whom they competed two years earlier, in the spring of 2024. When fall arrived, the locker room became a hive of tension and nerves due to the two scheduled games between Wyoming and SJSU, and disagreements over whether to lose or not.
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Macey Boggs, former University of Wyoming volleyball star (Courtesy of Macey Boggs)
“You could tell things got a little hostile,” Boggs told Pak Gazette Digital.
“In the middle of the whispers between each other’s backs, and then we were no longer a team, a unit, we were like two separate islands.”
Friendships were permanently ruined for Boggs and the rest of the Cowgirls, she said.
“Yes,” Boggs said when asked if the situation “permanently ruined friendships.”
“There were some girls that I really enjoyed and we got along really well and then this situation came up, some conflict arose and we finally went separate directions because of that… as soon as we played in our last game, we all went separate directions… it was hard to maintain those relationships.”
How did you get to that point?
The first Mountain West team to lose to SJSU that year was Utah State, becoming the first of five teams in the conference to do so.
Former Utah State star Kaylie Ray previously told Pak Gazette Digital that the decision was left to a player poll, with the majority of players voting to resign.
Wyoming also left the decision up to a player vote, according to Boggs. But that vote had a worrying result for her.
“It was said it was up to the players. So we did an anonymous vote and in the end we were going to play because most of the girls on my team wanted to play,” Boggs said. But she and others weren’t going to play anyway, regardless of the vote.
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“There were a few of us who said, ‘We’re not going to play.’ So we decided we weren’t going to play… There was a lot of conflict within the team… and it wasn’t something you should have to deal with on your team… It just seems so silly and something that tore the team apart.”
The split came with several difficult conversations for Boggs.
But most of the conversations weren’t necessarily ideological, about whether men should be able to play in women’s sports. Boggs said the conversations mainly revolved around the pain of suffering two losses on their record, when everyone was working so hard to make the playoffs.
It was especially difficult for the older ones.
“One of the hardest conversations, there were two, one of them was a fellow senior and she said, ‘this is my fellow senior, I don’t want this to ruin it.’ And I totally resonated with that because it was my senior year too and that ruined it,” Boggs said.
“One girl was doing very well statistically in the Mountain West and in the NCAA and she mentioned, ‘How will this affect my stats?’ And that didn’t sit well with me because I thought, ‘Okay, that’s a little selfish.’
“I understood where he was coming from… but ultimately it’s a bigger problem.”
Boggs and the players who were determined not to play were preparing to tell the coaches of their intention.
But just then, before the first game between Wyoming and SJSU on Oct. 5 of that year, the players were called to another meeting, Boggs said.
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Boggs claims that Wyoming athletic director Tom Burman told them that the Wyoming state government had ordered them to abandon the game.
“When it came time to tell the coaches, we had another meeting and finally the administration decided that ‘hey, you’re not going to play,’ which was unbelievable,” Boggs said.
“Our AD Tom Burman told us about it, so he was the one who said, ‘this is the decision that’s been made, they’ve taken it out of their guys’ hands. And I’m very grateful for that.’
Pak Gazette Digital reached out to the University of Wyoming Atheltics and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon’s office for a response.
The dispute was resolved. But the consequences persist.
Wyoming finished the season 17-13, losing six of its last nine games. They finished two games out of last place in the conference tournament and would have made the tournament if they had won both of their games against SJSU. It was the last chance for Boggs and the other seniors to make the tournament in their careers at Wyoming.
Inside the locker room, disagreements over the initial vote left divisions. Boggs and the women on his side dug their heels in harder.
In November of that year, Boggs and teammates Sierra Grizzle and Jordan Sandy joined former SJSU volleyball star Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the Mountain West Conference. Slusser initially brought the scandal to national attention in September, when she joined Riley Gaines’ lawsuit against the NCAA, with Slusser citing her experience playing and rooming with trans teammate Blaire Fleming without ever being officially informed of Fleming’s birth sex.
Boggs, Grizzle and Sandy joined Slusser and seven other conference players in suing the Mountain West and the representative of SJSU and the California State University (CSU) system.
Boggs said the decision to make things earned him the respect of the teammates who initially voted to play the game.
Once they joined, Boggs said he told his other teammates, “‘Hey, can we talk to you guys? We’ve decided to join this lawsuit and here’s why.”
“And after that, they like to be totally understood… I think standing up for something can be extremely scary, and it’s something you have to be very brave and bold about.”
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The Slusser lawsuit against Mountain West was partially dismissed by federal judge Kato Crews in early March, and all charges against Mountain West were dismissed.
However, the Title IX claims and representatives of SJSU and CSU were not dismissed. Crews is reserving a ruling on those charges until after the ruling in the Supreme Court’s ongoing case of BPJ v. West Virginia over trans athletes in women’s sports and the implications of Title IX.
At the same time, SJSU and CSU are waging a legal war of resistance to the Trump administration’s efforts to get SJSU to address its alleged Title IX violations over its handling of Fleming.
After the U.S. Department of Education announced an investigation that found SJSU was in violation of Title IX and offered a series of enforcement points to resolve it, SJSU and CSU sued the federal government to challenge the findings.
“I laughed,” Boggs said when he heard the news of SJSU’s lawsuit. “That seems kind of silly. I really think we shouldn’t even have male-centric lawsuits in women’s sports.”
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon responded to the lawsuits on March 11, giving institutions 10 days to reach a settlement or risk federal funding cuts and a referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.
With that deadline a week away, Boggs is the latest woman affected by the scandal to speak out about the experience, joining Slusser and Ray.
Both Slusser and Ray have gone viral on social media in recent weeks after speaking out, prompting criticism and even insults online from people with pro-transgender views.
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Boggs said she has faced online attacks from the other side since her decision to resign and join the lawsuit in 2024, and that she is prepared to face more if necessary.
“I’ll bear the weight all day, I’ll take whatever hate has to come, because I truly believe in this. If you have to say these crazy things, I’d rather you say them to me than to those girls I’m fighting.”
