LAS VEGAS — Colorado State coach Emily Kohan is never overly boisterous. She paces the sideline during each rally, head tilted down in concentration. That composure was especially evident on Friday, as Kohan led the Rams to the conference championship game of a volleyball tournament that quickly became the epicenter of the fraught debate over the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports.
“It’s been a really complex and emotional situation this whole season,” said Kohan, the Mountain West Conference coach of the year. “Unless you’re in those rooms having those hard conversations and making those hard decisions, I don’t think you truly know how this feels.”
Each maneuver surrounding this week’s Mountain West women’s volleyball tournament, held at UNLV, was fodder for a broader ongoing political fight and culture war. Athletes and a coach from several schools attempted to force San Jose State to exclude a player that they assert is a transgender woman. Their push for a court injunction failed twice, prompting the tournament to be held largely as planned, with the Spartans using their whole roster. San Jose State and the player have neither confirmed nor denied the player’s gender identity.
San Jose State did not play its semifinal as…
