Ex-SJSU volleyball player speaks out on alleged scholarship deception by coach during trans scandal

Elle Patterson never planned to go to San Jose State and end up as a figure in a federal Title IX investigation.

Patterson originally committed to Fairfield on a full scholarship for women's volleyball.

But then she found out the coach who recruited her, Todd Kress, was leaving Fairfield to take the job at San Jose State.

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Patterson was then already looking to find a new place to play now that the coach who recruited her was switching jobs. Then Kress came calling with a similar offer that made her choose Fairfield to begin with.

"I had a phone call with Todd and he said, 'yes, it will be a full ride again,'" Patterson told Fox News Digital of why she decided to follow Kress to San Jose.

"I was an out of state kid, so I didn't want to have to be paying a lot for my school when I went somewhere to get it paid for. So he confirmed that to me verbally."

But she claims she never saw a single penny of that scholarship. Instead, she says her family paid out of pocket for one full year, while Patterson played a back-up role behind a trans athlete in her freshman season.

She said her family was "not prepared" to take on that financial burden at the time, because she had three siblings they also had to provide for. But they found a way to make it work, believing the scholarship would go into effect the next year.

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She claims she was told by Kress, "We will not be covering your first year. But we will be covering your last three."

Patterson agreed in the moment. And then once the first year passed, she never ended up getting the scholarship for those last three years, she claims.

In 2023, as a true freshman, right out of high school, Patterson found herself suddenly as a non-scholarship backup, rehabbing an injury and sharing playing time at right-side hitter with junior Blaire Fleming.

At the time, she didn't even know Fleming was transgender. Patterson says her locker was just three away from Fleming's in the locker room, and she had changed in front of the trans teammate multiple times. "I felt pretty betrayed especially since I was in the same position as the man that was on my team," she said.

And as she started to play more for Kress at SJSU in 2023, she came to believe he was not quite the coach she thought she was getting based on her recruitment experience.

"He didn't seem like the type of coach and the person who recruited me when he was actually coaching at San Jose," Patterson said.

"The way in which he went about certain situations and just playing was more along the lines of just completely tearing you down as a person and not building you back up. But it definitely felt like he had certain people, one being the man on our team, that he would have done anything for... but it didn't feel like he had the support and belief in some of the other girls on our team."

SJSU 'wrongfully refused' Patterson her scholarship, per a federal Title IX investigation

Fox News Digital obtained the Education Department's written findings of its Title IX investigation into SJSU in 2025 and 2026. The findings were provided by SJSU in response to a public records request. SJSU and CSU have filed a lawsuit to challenge the Education Department's investigation.

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Most individuals referenced in the findings are identified only by anonymous titles. Fox News Digital reasonably believes those individuals to be Patterson (Student 2), Kress (Coach 2) and Fleming (Student 1).

Patterson recounted to Fox News Digital the moment she was told she wouldn't get her scholarship, and claims the excuse she was given was an injury she suffered, as she missed a few games rehabbing her freshman year.

"We go through the entire season. I get to my end of the year meeting with them. And that is when I was sitting in the office with him and the assistant coach at the time and they said that they weren't going to give me a scholarship anymore," Patterson said.

"They tried to say that it was because of [my injury]. And because I wasn't like back to where I had been before."

However, Fleming, who was also injured that year, missed even more games, only playing in 17 while Patterson played in 20.

The findings reference this fact.

"Student 2, a woman on the volleyball team, lost her scholarship when she was injured during the 2023 season, yet Student 1, a man on the women’s volleyball team, was permitted to retain his scholarship when he was also injured during the 2023 season, despite Student 1 missing more games than Student 2," the findings state.

"Student 2 was wrongfully refused a women’s volleyball scholarship while Student 1 was permitted to maintain a women’s volleyball scholarship."

The findings go on to state that SJSU has not provided additional information related to the matter requested by the Education Department.

"OCR (Education Department's Office for Civil Rights) has requested additional information regarding these matters from the University in order to make an informed determination, but, despite having ample opportunity to provide it, the University refused to provide all of the requested information," the findings state.

'Oh my gosh, I've been changing in front of a man'

Patterson said she shared some good memories with Fleming as a teammate. She met Fleming the first day she got to campus in summer of 2023.

"Very nice, great person... very outgoing," Patterson said of her first impressions of Fleming.

"I was never really around Blaire, that much outside of practices and stuff. But as a person definitely warm, like the first couple months of being there, I had fun. I enjoyed being around Blaire, nothing against Blaire as a person."

Fleming lived in a four-bedroom apartment alongside three female teammates, which included former co-captain Brooke Slusser, who leads a lawsuit over the experience against SJSU and the California State University system (CSU), that Patterson is also a plaintiff in.

The apartment, nicknamed "the villa," has since become a key location in the scandal, as Slusser lived alongside Fleming there for multiple months before learning Fleming was a biological male. Slusser previously told Fox News Digital that Kress suggested that she live in the apartment with Fleming without informing her that Fleming was male.

Patterson said she only visited "the villa" once, when she first arrived on campus in July 2023.

"I enjoyed it, it was fun. We were all just teammates hanging out. It was summertime when we'd been over there because the apartment that they lived in had a pool, so that's kind of we'd go over there," she said.

Patterson competed with Fleming for playing time throughout that 2023 season. It was a challenge she wasn't used to.

"I was definitely kind of like taken aback for a second just at the pure like athletic ability that Blaire had. And I just felt like I had a lot of work to do to get to that point at where Blaire was at," Patterson said.

"'How am I going to get there?'"

Then came the day when Patterson heard the chants from the crowd.

"I remember going to play at [Sacramento State] in like a preseason tournament, and there were people on their bench there that had been yelling all these random things at us," she said. "They were yelling about boys on our team, and as us freshman, we had no clue why these things were being said."

Patterson said she and other freshmen then asked the upperclassmen about the chants after the game.

"'People are saying random stuff, just ignore it,'" Patterson claims the older players told her.

Patterson said she learned of Fleming's biological sex early in that 2023 season, months before Slusser knew for sure, when one of the older players finally told her in September.

"One of the older players was like, 'Yes, but don't really say anything about it,'" Patterson said.

"We were not supposed to bring light to it, make Blaire feel uncomfortable, even though that might have made me feel uncomfortable. I know it made some of my other teammates uncomfortable."

Patterson said she and the other freshman who found out followed those instructions.

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"We're not trying to get in trouble, as the freshman on the team that had just gotten there and like, make people turn against us," she said.

Patterson said the locker room became a different place for her and the other freshman after that.

"The couple of us freshmen, would kind of just go in there, keep to ourselves," she said.

Still, at that point, Patterson said she changed in front of Fleming "more times than I can count," and that their lockers were only three lockers away.

"I was like, 'oh my gosh, I've been changing in front of a man for the past two months,'" she said. "I didn't know how to feel about it because it wasn't something that I had ever thought I'd be in that situation."

Still, Patterson kept her head down, played her backup role, and her family continued paying all the bills for it.

What's next?

Once she found out she wasn't getting the scholarship she was allegedly verbally promised, Patterson made the quick decision to transfer, without much thought.

She returned home to Indiana to play for Division I Indiana University, Indianapolis. She has been a regular starter there since 2024, and will return for her senior season later this fall.

Patterson even spoke about her experience at an event hosted by Indiana Gov. Mike Braun in March 2025, when Braun signed a state executive order to ban trans athletes from women's sports.

And as a plaintiff in Slusser's lawsuit against SJSU and CSU, Patterson and the other women fighting back will get an update this month, when the U.S. Supreme Court rules on two other cases related to trans athletes in women's sports.

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In March, Colorado District Judge Kato Crews dismissed all the plaintiffs' claims against the Mountain West Conference, but did not dismiss claims of Title IX violations against CSU.

Crews deferred his ruling on whether to dismiss those claims to after the decision in the ongoing B.P.J. v. West Virginia case in the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of trans athletes in women’s sports and the Title IX implications, which is expected to come this month.

Fox News Digital has reached out to SJSU, CSU, Kress and Fleming for comment, but has not received a response.