Volleyball had 8 years to learn from trans star Tifanny Abreu. Instead, it banned her.

The sweetness came at the final point of the golden set of the Paulista finals.

Osasco setter Marta Bechis placed the ball where Tifanny Abreu could best deliver a spike that the Sesi Bauru Volei defense couldn’t handle.

When that last point was scored, Abreu jumped with explosive joy. Key Alves, one of her best friends on the club leapt into her arms.

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That moment underscored something bitter.

This was maybe Tifanny Abreu’s last game, through no choice of her own.

On August 14, the Confederação Brasileira de Voleibol (CBV) decided to be the latest sports organization to ban transgender women from women’s competition, ushering in an era of SRY gene testing.

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Fans and players don’t want Tifanny Abreu forced out

To Osasco fans it means losing a player they’ve grown to love since Abreu came to Osasco in 2021.

“In my opinion she cannot be banned from volleyball,” one fan stated to Olimpíada Todo Dia after the match. “In Osasco she represents so much, not just for the team, but for the fans too.”

“She’s a strong, hardworking woman,” a young Osasco fan said. “Through everything she’s going through she remains firm and strong.”

The support for her extended to her teammates. Prior to the start of the tournament, Alves said, “Your fight is ours, I love you. Thank you for always being this incredible woman!”

The support extended as high as the captain of the Brazilian national team and one of the faces of the sport in a volleyball-crazed nation, Gabi Guimaraes.

“In everything in life, there is common sense, there is timing, and there is a proper way to do things.” Guimaraes stated via Instagram. “There was no plausible explanation, since the international rule already existed before, and no consideration for a human being who has a history, who is in the middle of a season and who depends on her work to make a living.”

My frustrations echo hers.

I’m a trans woman engaged in sport as a journalist and as a competitive athlete. This situation is tiresome on many levels.

Being who I am and loving sports means you are constantly surrounded by “what ifs”

What if Lia Thomas ends up being faster than Katie Ledecky?

What if CeCe Telfer was 8 seconds faster?

What if AB Hernandez jumps 3 feet further to top most college jumpers?

Tifanny Abreu is not some ridiculous hypothetical. She has played hundreds of matches and sets over eight seasons.

The CBV has something most elite governing bodies don’t: eight years of real data on a real trans woman who played in real games. A multi-terabyte hard drive of hard data that could help build evidence-driven, sports-specific policy on this matter.

Instead of finding a path for this long-time veteran of women’s volleyball to compete, the governing body instituted a blanket ban in a massive policy about-face. In February, the CBV went to Brazil’s Supreme Court to protect Abreu from an anti-trans ordinance at the site of a Copa Brazil tournament match Osasco was scheduled to play in.

What happened between then and now to close the door for trans women at every level of the sport?

CBV officials say this was an effort to align policy with the International Olympic Committee, who banned trans women from women’s Olympic sport in March.

Where in 8 years of Abreu is their unfairness or a threat?

Fans and players are calling for the CBV to show their work here.

What did they learn from having an out transgender woman competing over the last eight years, and where are those lessons reflected in the rule now in effect?

The silence from the governing body sends a loud message: Governing is hard. Removing the pressure point is easier.

That disrespects the road Abreu travelled to get here. She met every eligibility requirement every year.

When she came into the Superliga in 2018, she was perceived as “unfair” and a “threat.” By 2021, she was a fan favorite and a high-profile free agent to the point that a coach who sought her got a player who was publicly against trans women in pro volleyball to recruit her.

That same coach sang her praises in a recent interview.

“I’m not going to take with me the titles that Tifanny helped us win,” Osasco Head Coach Luizomar De Moura told Web Volei October 1. “I’m going to take with me what Tifanny did to make me the human being I am.

“One of the greatest achievements I’ve had working with Tifanny was becoming a better human being.”

I’m thinking of a certain word in Portuguese: Possibilidades. Possibilities.

You heard that word throughout that iconic Adidas commercial Abreu did in 2022. Possibilidades.

Possibilidades beyond four Paulista titles, back-to-back Copa Brazil titles, and winning the Superliga in 2025. Tifanny Abreu represents possibility of a transgender woman’s face pitching products and being embraced in a country that is still considered one of the more dangerous places for trans people to be in the world.

You see a spark in how Osasco fans react to her she makes the heart shape with her hands towards the fans each match. You see it in the little girls who swoon when she signs their volleyball.

She’s such a fixture with those fans now that they pay her an ultimate sign of sporting respect in Brazil. She is known commonly by first name alone — “Tifanny”

That is the power of a possibility model, and I fear how it’s in peril.

Even if she comes to a deal where she could play in the upcoming Superliga season and then retire, the CBV plans to keep the ban.

Yet for some trans girl with a volleyball and a dream saying “I want to be like Tifanny”, the door stays shut.

Some have the idea that getting trans people out of sports also means erasing any trace of them having played. If that happens here, it would be an even bigger slap in the face to a woman who has given a lot to her sport in her country.

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Trans volleyball star Tifanny Abreu faces a ban. She just won a championship with the final spike.
If her career ends here, pro trans athlete Tifanny Abreu leaves behind a fierce farewell performance, taking home a championship.

The woman called “Tifanny” played, achieved, lost some but won more.

I promise Tifanny Abreu, and all transgender athletes this: As long as I can still type, speak and edit video, your accomplishments will never be erased even if the powers that be try to make it so.

Yet that is where we are as trans people in sports in 2026. Now we are seeing this happen to a player at the highest level in her sport. It’s disrespectful and shameful to me.

Tifanny Abreu has shown fierceness in the game and grace away from it. She deserves far better than a governing body cowering to pressure instead of governing the sport.

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