Wyoming’s congressional delegation, and 10 more members of Congress, sent a letter Monday to the commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, urging her to keep males out of women’s sports.
The letter follows a two-month controversy in which five Mountain West Conference women’s volleyball teams have forfeited games against San Jose State University, which has a transgender player in its roster.
“Life isn’t fair, but sports should be,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, wrote in a Monday post to X, atop the letter itself. “I joined (Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho) in sending a letter to the Mountain West Commissioner, demanding the conference fix the inequities that women’s sports teams like the Wyoming Cowgirls faced this season.”
Addressed to Commissioner Gloria Nevarez, the letter says the delegates have serious concerns about safety and fair competition for female athletes in the conference, and urge the conference to update its student-athlete guidelines to prohibit males from competing against female students in women’s sports.
It cites federal education law Title IX, which was established more than 50 years ago to eliminate sex discrimination in education.
“Recent events have shown this is at risk,” says the letter, adding that schools have forfeited games, risking their competitive standings “to ensure the safety of their female athletes.”
The women suing the MWC say its investigation into the collusion claims was “inadequate,” according to a Sunday letter by the plaintiffs’ legal counsel and attorney for the Independent Council On Women’s Sports (ICONS), William Bock III.
“It is stunning,” says Bock’s letter, “that the MWC never sought to advise either Coach Batie-Smoose, the whistleblower, or Brooke Slusser, the victim, that the MWC had concluded its investigation and ‘consider(s) the matter closed.’”
Bock obtained the close-out letter when it was leaked to the media, he wrote.
“It appears that the MWC has simply decided to overlook the potential culpability of SJSU and Coach Kress for not complying with (a rule requiring quick reporting of misconduct allegations),” the letter says.
Bock’s letter calls MWC’s actions “an indication of bias.”
The leaked close-out letter, which MWC did not send to Cowboy State Daily at the outlet’s request (opting instead to send a statement), says that the conference spoke with head coaches at both SJSU and CSU, according to Bock’s letter. It also says both teams’ coaches reviewed video of the match; third-party volleyball subject matter experts reviewed the video as well; a third-party investigator conducted multiple interviews; and the conference also consulted its sports wagering compliance partner.
Bock calls each of these matters either inadequate or opaque allusions.
For example, the third-party investigator is MWC’s legal counsel, which means the investigator is not independent of the MWC, Bock’s letter argues.
More helpful than reviewing video of the match would have been “forensic testing and analysis of the electronic devices and social media accounts of Fleming and (the CSU player),” Bock’s letter continues.
