Since community sports non-profit Stonewall Sports founded an Indianapolis chapter, LGBTQ+ members and allies have joined the organization – looking to find different things.
Annie Nelson joined Stonewall Sports to seek another community outside of work. She found friends who helped her with her identity as a bisexual woman.
Chase Westby joined to try something new. He learned about diversity in the LGBTQ+ community.
Austin Crawford followed a friend to the kickball league. He has found a competitive environment that makes him excited to return each season.
Ernest Hanohano wanted to make deeper connections. He found a place that made him feel like a child again.
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Sidney Phillips needs a reason to get out of her house. Since joining, she has adjusted her work hours to attend games.
“Even if I had to make up hours,” she said, “I still made sure I was there.”
‘Making us stronger’
Stonewall Sports is a national organization that coordinates sports leagues for LGBTQ+ community members and allies with more than 20 locations around the U. This may interest you : United in the fight against food insecurity.S. Approximately 1,300 LGBTQ+ community members and allies have participated in the three leagues currently offered by the Indianapolis chapter, which was founded in 2020 .
Andrew Merkley, president of the board for Stonewall Sports Indianapolis, said the organization provides an athletic medium for a community that doesn’t have many designated safe spaces outside of the bar scene.
“Our community needs healthy competitive outlets where different parts of the community can come together without fear for their safety or fear for their property,” Merkley said.
Each of the Stonewall sports leagues is divided into two divisions: competitive, for people who are more aggressive, and recreational, for those who mainly want to socialize. There are Stonewall Sports members who have played sports for years and some who have never played before joining – some who swing for the fences and some who occasionally run through second base.
Some members sign up with fully formed teams, others join as free agents or with a few friends and are then placed on a team by Stonewall Sports. The best part of joining as a free agent is meeting new people on the team, Merkley said.
“It builds our community, it makes us stronger,” Merkley said. “It shows that a trans person, a gay person of color and a cis white man, we can all be on the same team together or play competitively against each other.”
The teams are not required to be divided by gender. Nelson said she likes this because it keeps everyone on the same competitive level and is inclusive of transgender and nonbinary people.
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Each division of each league competes in a championship tournament at the end of the season. The winners of each division will get to choose a philanthropic organization and Stonewall will make a donation to each. Last kickball season, the winners were chosen by Friends of Frederick Douglass Park and GenderNexus.
‘Not completely straight’
About two years ago, Nelson, 34, got involved in Stonewall Sports. To see also : 2022 Collegiate Women Sports Awards: Views, flow, forty-seven annual presentation.
She joined the organization to play a sport, kickball, and find another community outside of work. Now, Nelson is involved in all three leagues offered by the organization – softball, volleyball and kickball – and has made friends who not only love to compete, but are also similar and have helped her feel accepted in the LGBTQ+ community.
Nelson has been playing sports for 7 years, mainly softball. While she found camaraderie with her childhood teammates, Nelson said being teammates with people who have similar issues helped her with her struggles with her identity.
“Being a part of things like this where you can grow your circle of friends and actually be able to talk through things and find that identity,” she said, “it’s a lot different.”
While Nelson loves to compete and blow off steam by hitting a ball with a bat, her favorite thing about being involved in Stonewall Sports is hanging around the fields, tasting alcoholic seltzers and watching, talking with and sometimes the Players on and off their mock team.
Most days, these sideline conversations center around trivia spots and stories about fun nights out. But she also knows that she is free to talk about her issues as well. She is free to talk about how church leaders at her college would say it was okay to be gay but not act on it. She is free to discuss how she always knew she was “not completely straight” in a hometown where she felt wrong for being anything but.
‘In high school, you had to force me to play’
Westby, 28, didn’t like sports growing up. On the same subject : Sports Management Student Develops Marketing Plan for Professional Sports Team.
“In high school you had to force me to play,” he said. “I just hate them.”
Stonewall Sports, he said, changed his mind. He said he likes catching pop flies while playing kickball for his spring team, the Shady Pitches. He enjoys eating snacks and drinking White Claws, and sometimes Jell-O shots, brought by team supporters. Above all, he loves meeting people in the LGBTQ+ community, especially those who are different from him as a white cisgender gay man.
Westby grew up in a small town in Georgia, where he had to hide who he was.
“In high school and even in college, I just had to keep to myself,” he said. “You didn’t want to act a certain way.”
Because he kept his identity a secret for most of his life, he didn’t know much about gay culture until after he came out to his aunt at the Indy Pride Parade in 2017. Joining groups such as the Indianapolis Men’s Chorus and Stonewall Sports introduced him to experiences such as drag performances and important issues such as stigma in the LGBTQ+ community.
Westby said that through Stonewall Sports, he met people who taught him about the trans community and how the experiences for people of different races and ethnicities differed in the queer community.
“It gave me a better perspective on how diverse the community is,” he said.
‘Makes me want to come back every season’
Crawford, 32, said he likes Stonewall Sports more every season he plays.
Crawford was already involved with the Gay and Lesbian Tennis Alliance, an LGBTQ+ sports group that organizes international tennis tournaments, when one of the other members asked if Crawford would join the Stonewall Sports Kickball league.
Crawford thought kickball, a game he played as a child, was easy. He quickly discovered that it’s much more complicated when people actually want to win. But Crawford said he doesn’t mind because he likes the competitive nature of the league.
Sometimes it can get a little aggressive. During one game, one of his teammates dislocated his shoulder while running to get on a base. But Crawford said it was a freak accident that happened during tournament play. While players fall and slide to win, the league is primarily based on fun, he said.
“It’s just a fun atmosphere to be around,” he said. “It makes me want to come back every season.”
Crawford said he also likes the opportunity to connect with people outside the gay bar scene. He said it allows people who don’t enjoy bar hopping to find community.
“This gives everyone something to do,” he said. “It brings out people who want to try something new and it’s not tied to a nightlife scene.”
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‘A no-judgment zone’
Phillips, 31, said she started participating in Stonewall Sports because she wanted to be more active. She said she’s not super competitive, so it was more about having fun on the field, which is what she found her first season participating in kickball.
“Even though we lost, oh, we still had fun,” Phillips said of her team. “We would joke on the field and everything.”
Phillips said she struggles to leave the house, especially since she started working from home in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the people she found at Stonewall Sports keep her coming back each week. While she joined to get exercise, she found an organization where she made many friendships, one she considers lifelong, and a space where she feels cared for.
“It’s like a no-judgment zone,” she said.
The allies are a part of creating this safe space, she said. As a Black woman who is male-presenting, it’s nice to know a group of people who come to her aid.
“I have a lot of barriers,” Phillips said. “So, it’s nice to have an ally standing up when you need them.”
‘Feel like a kid again’
Hanohano, 30, said since joining Stonewall Sports in 2020, he has been able to facilitate connections, make friends with whom he can have deep conversations and grow as a leader.
Every season Hanohano played, he started a new team. He is not typically a captain, but he takes a leadership role in the team, usually as a mediator and coach for newbies, teaching them how to hit and kick.
While Hanohano could join a team with his best friends from Stonewall Sports, he said he wants to continue to expand his community by finding players to bring into the league. Plus, he knows he’ll see his closest friends during nights out and their weekend getaways, like birthday trips to Atlanta.
Hanohano said he is thankful for Stonewall Sports because he was able to find friends he might never have met because of their different backgrounds or professions.
“I’m friends with these doctors and lawyers and I’m just a car salesman,” he said. “And yet we can sit at the same dinner table and talk about just random things.”
Playing sports again and making friends took Hanohano back to his childhood, he said.
“The league,” he said, “definitely helped me feel like a kid again.”
For more information on Stonewall Sports and how to join a league, go to https://stonewallindianapolis.leagueapps.com/
Contact IndyStar reporter Madison Smalstig at MSmalstig@gannett.com.
