While the 2024 NCAA volleyball season ended last month, the streak of bad luck for San Jose State refuses to abate. Despite making it to the Mountain West tournament finals against Colorado State, SJSU failed to make it to the NCAA Championships. And just days after Penn State lifted the national title, seven players on the 2024 Spartans roster took a fateful decision.

With the college volleyball transfer window opening even before the NCAA Championship concluded, some of the SJSU players opted to leave the team. The school’s spokesperson gave the names of those seven players to The National News Desk. Now the first player among Nayeli Ti’a, Mari Lawton, Ava Martin, Laurel Barsocchini, Kiyana Faupula, Jade Epps, and Teya Nguyen has officially committed to another team.

SJSU volleyball has lost a setter

After spending her freshman year in San Jose, Setter Ava Martin has officially moved on. The official College VBall Transfers page reported that Ava Martin had committed to the Iowa State Cyclones. Martin’s departure marks the first of seven possible transfers after a season marred with controversy surrounding the presence of an alleged trans athlete.

Trouble started in the first week of September 2024, when former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines called out SJSU volleyball for hiding that outside hitter Blaire Fleming was a trans athlete. Soon the post ignited into a full-fledged controversy, and many teams refused to play against SJSU volleyball. One such team was Nevada. “When the news broke, I was stunned, as many of my teammates were. This is not what we signed up for,” said Nevada’s captain, Sia Liilii, in November 2024, as per ESPN.

Multiple Mountain West Conference universities started canceling matches, halting SJSU’s momentum. Soon, the season that started with a historic 9-game undefeated streak for the Spartans turned into a difficult trudge. Schools like Boise State and Wyoming forfeited multiple matches with SJUS, and while every forfeit gave them a win, it took a huge toll on morale.

The Spartans’ coach even expressed his concerns in an interview with Fox News Digital. “I know that mental health is a real thing, and I know that my kids get through it,” Todd Kress confessed in October 2024. However, another by-product of the trans athlete controversy may have played an even bigger role in seven players choosing to leave the Spartans.

The internal division within the Spartans

Soon after Riley Gaines made the post and the first of the forfeits hit the SJSU volleyball squad, the team’s co-captain Brooke Slusser took a shocking step. While the university never officially confirmed Blaire Fleming as a trans athlete, Slusser agreed with Gaines and took legal action. In fact, her initial legal filing was an addition to Gaines’s own lawsuit against the NCAA.

Riley Gaines and a dozen other athletes originally took legal action against the NCAA in March 2024, arguing that they had violated their own Title IX law. Gaines’s lawsuit argued against the NCAA for allowing Thomas to compete against women. However, Slusser’s addition came in late September, also arguing along the lines of the safety of the women competing against a trans athlete.

“One thing that’s important in this case is really the physical safety issues in volleyball,” Slusser’s lawyer, Bill Bock, told Outkick. The volleyball player herself stated that she had seen a woman’s spikes/kills “traveling upward of 80 mph” during practice or competition. And while this initial lawsuit didn’t move the needle, it sowed the seeds of unease within the team.

The issue once again came to the surface when SJSU volleyball suspended their assistant coach, Melissa Batie-Smoose, ahead of their November 2nd match against New Mexico. By the end of November, Batie-Smoose and Slusser joined several other Mountain West players to file a federal lawsuit against San Jose. And while their bid to prevent Fleming from playing in the MW Tournament failed, SJSU lost in the finals anyway.

So after such a tumultuous season and watching multiple SJSU volleyball members take legal action against their team, it’s not surprising that the opening of the transfer portal sparked a mass exodus. Despite the controversial season, SJSU’s coach felt hopeful about 2025. “We’ll move forward, we’ll have a great spring season, got a great group coming in,” said Kress after their regional final loss in December 2024. However, 2025 has started with Ava Martin’s departure.