During the San Jose State University (SJSU) women’s volleyball team’s highly publicized and controversial 2024 season, the athletic department quietly received a deeply troubling letter regarding head coach Todd Kress. Sent on October 24, 2024, by a former player who competed under Kress at Fairfield University in the late 1990s, the correspondence detailed a harrowing account of an alleged physical and sexual assault. The incident reportedly occurred in a hotel room in December 1998 following a team loss in the NCAA Tournament. According to the former player, an intoxicated Kress smeared caramel across her face and hair, forcibly pinned her to a bed, pulled his pants down to place his backside in her face, and later threw her into a bathtub while threatening to turn on the water. She explained that she stayed silent for over two decades out of fear of losing her scholarship, but felt compelled to speak out after witnessing Kress’s current leadership at SJSU, where she felt he continued to abuse his significant power over young female athletes.
Internal emails obtained and verified by Fox News Digital reveal that SJSU administrators responded to the brave disclosure with apparent empathy and concern, yet ultimately took no public action. On the day the letter was received, Athletic Director Jeff Konya acknowledged the message and promised to forward it to the appropriate campus authorities. Weeks later, Peter Lim, the university’s interim Title IX and Gender Equity Officer, met with the former player and her attorney. In a follow-up email on November 7, Lim expressed his deep regrets for her past experiences and thanked her for highlighting the “safety threat” she believed Kress posed to the current volleyball team. Despite these serious discussions and assurances that the university was evaluating “appropriate next steps,” the correspondence abruptly ended, and Kress was never suspended. He continued to coach the team through the end of the 2024 season and throughout 2025, and he remains the head coach today.
The university’s decision to keep Kress on the sidelines aligns with findings from a broader federal Title IX investigation by the U.S. Department of Education. The federal probe revealed that during the height of the 2024 season—which was already engulfed in a media firestorm regarding a transgender player on the roster—university leadership actively chose not to suspend a figure identified as “Coach 2,” who matches Kress’s profile. According to federal documents, SJSU administrators, including the university president, worried that sidelining the coach would spark even more negative media attention and “unduly disrupt the team.” By prioritizing public relations and athletic continuity over student safety concerns, school officials allowed Kress—one of the winningest coaches in NCAA history—to continue leading the program uninterrupted.
This passive handling of misconduct allegations points to a much larger, systemic issue within San Jose State University’s athletic administration. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice handed down severe federal sanctions against SJSU after finding that the university had systematically ignored, downplayed, and mismanaged over a decade of sexual harassment and abuse complaints against its former director of sports medicine. That historic failure to protect student-athletes resulted in a $1.6 million settlement and mandated a overhaul of the school’s Title IX procedures. The administration’s quiet handling of the 2024 allegations against Kress suggests that despite federal oversight, the university’s institutional reflex to protect its brand over its students remains largely unchanged.
When journalists attempted to bring these oversight failures to light, SJSU blocked public access to the records. In June 2026, Fox News Digital filed a formal public records request under the California Public Records Act seeking the emails exchanged between the athletic department, the Title IX office, and Kress’s accuser. The university, represented by legal counsel J. Leah Castella, formally denied the request. The school argued that the communications implicated “substantial privacy interests” and asserted that the public interest in disclosing these safety warnings was “minimal” compared to the privacy rights of the individuals involved. This legal maneuvering effectively shielded the athletic department from public scrutiny while the university actively fights federal Title IX compliance findings in court.
To date, a wall of silence surrounds the allegations. Todd Kress, Athletic Director Jeff Konya, and the university’s legal representatives have refused to respond to detailed press inquiries regarding the 1998 incident, the subsequent Title IX meetings, or whether any safety assessments were ever conducted for the current roster. Similarly, Fairfield University declined to speak on the matter, citing strict policies against commenting on past or present personnel issues. As a result, the painful memories of a former player and the safety concerns of current student-athletes remain buried beneath administrative bureaucracy, highlighting the ongoing struggle for accountability and survivor justice in collegiate sports.
