A bid by the co-captain of the San Jose State women’s volleyball team to get a transgender teammate banned from the Mountain West Conference tournament has failed -- for now.

Co-captain Brooke Slusser and her co-plaintiffs waited too long to seek an emergency court order barring the player from the tournament, which starts Wednesday, Colorado federal court judge S. Kato Crews ruled Monday.

Slusser -- along with former Spartan volleyball players Alyssa Sugai and Elle Patterson, San Jose State associate head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose and eight players from four schools that have forfeited games against the Spartans -- asked the court Nov. 15 for an emergency injunction. They had requested a court order banning the player from future games, including the tournament, and that the conference’s policy allowing transgender players be rescinded. They also wanted Spartan wins that occurred via forfeit canceled, plus a recalculation of conference standings.

Slusser and the others sued San Jose State officials, the conference and other defendants in Colorado federal court Nov. 13.

Crews said an emergency injunction “is an extraordinary remedy,” and should only be granted if clearly shown to be necessary to prevent irreparable harm, and that if it were considered in a trial, would have a “substantial likelihood of success.”

Teams started forfeiting against San Jose State in late September, the judge noted. The “delay” by Slusser and the others in filing a lawsuit and seeking the emergency order related to the tournament “weakens their arguments regarding irreparable harm,” Crews wrote. The player’s transgender status was revealed via news coverage this spring, and the plaintiffs “certainly had knowledge of this alleged player when the string of member institutions started forfeiting matches” in September, the judge added.

The Spartans over the weekend secured the No. 2 seed spot in the six-team tournament, with a bye in the first round. Then they are scheduled to face the winner of a match between Utah State and Boise State -- two of the five teams that have forfeited against San Jose State.

“Utah State is reviewing the court’s order,” Utah State athletics spokesperson Doug Hoffman said in a statement. “Right now, our women’s volleyball program is focused on the game this Wednesday, and we’ll be cheering them on.”

Boise State did not respond to questions about whether it would compete against the Spartans in the tournament.

San Jose State noted in a statement that all its athletes are eligible to play sports under NCAA and Mountain West Conference rules, and said school officials are “gratified that the court rejected an eleventh-hour attempt to change those rules.”

The lawyer for Slusser and her co-plaintiffs filed an appeal of the order Monday shortly after it was released. The filing did not detail the grounds for appeal.

Kim Jones, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, which funded the lawsuit, said the appeal offered a slight hope, but, “everyone is well aware that this is just a tiny part of the lawsuit that’s going forward.”

Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington, D.C., group advocating for transgender athletes, said that while the judge’s order affirmed federal protections for such players, other courts are weighing whether a key federal anti-discrimination law, Title IX, protects transgender students.

“It’s still a live issue,” Shiwali said.

This news organization is not naming the Spartan player, as she has not confirmed her status. Crews noted that no defendants in the lawsuit dispute that a transgender woman is on the Spartan team.

Slusser earlier joined a similar lawsuit, in Georgia federal court, against the NCAA over its rules allowing certain transgender women to play women’s sports.

Crews also said that the requested injunction would have led to an “eleventh-hour shake-up” for the conference tournament.

The court has ordered both sides in the lawsuit to submit a proposed schedule for the case by Jan. 6.