When sport meets identity

👋 This is Annalise.

signed up Last spring, on a whim, I entered the LGBTQ+ kickball league. I didn’t know any of them, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and I had no idea what “tagging” meant.

• Nevertheless, I showed up at Seven Mile’s Tyndall Recreation Center, picked up a highlighter yellow team T-shirt, adorned with my name and pronouns.

Important reasons: Due to the pandemic and our increasingly online world, our “third space,” the place for communal gatherings outside of work and home, is disappearing.

• For a long time, I’ve been bummed about this LGBTQ+ third space that allows for depth of expression and understanding. Their numbers in Metro Detroit have plummeted over the decades, and finding a space that doesn’t center around alcohol can be particularly difficult.
• But even the bar is decreasing. He has only 24 lesbian bars left in the United States, according to the Lesbian Bar Project. The closest to Detroit is Slammers in Columbus, Ohio.

Line spacing: So thanks to my knowledgeable teammates who yelled ‘RUN’ or ‘STAY PUT’ even though I didn’t understand how the base operated, I was drawn to the Detroit chapter of Stonewall Sports.

• I’ve stuck with the league for almost a year, including transitioning from kickball to indoor volleyball.
• The second season of winter volleyball starts next week. There is also pickleball, billiards and bowling.

Quick take: I never thought team sports would be a factor in my journey of discovery — I wasn’t a sports kid growing up.

• But working with a group of people towards a common goal gives me that sense of belonging.

Big picture: Figuring out who you are, sexual/gender oriented or not, can be a daunting journey. Arrows can take the most unexpected shapes.

• Like the shape of a dusty red kickball, it was handed to me by a teammate, caught in a cupped arm, and lunged toward first base for a successful out.
• Then, shared smiles and high-fives followed by high-fives as we made our way back to the bench.
• We hadn’t won a single one that season, and it hardly mattered.