The Gridiron Turns Gay

With another football season rolling into Cincinnati this Fall, there is another team worthy of your attention and they have been working at it since the Summer. On a muggy, late August morning earlier this year, the Queen City Pigs flag football team convened for a scrimmage on the Withrow High School Football Field. They are the Cincinnati GLBT Gay Flag Football League’s all-star travel team. The entire Cincinnati league boasts just over 40 members who, together, are made up of 4 teams, each with about 11 members, plus drop-ins from time to time. If that August practice was more frenetic than usual, it was because the Pigs are hell-bent on making a good showing when they travel to compete on the national level. The team, just finishing up its first season of play, is set to begin its 2017 season on a positive note. Unlike most football teams and leagues, the Pigs play during the summer, bringing the sport to a football-craving community a few months early. “It fills the summer,” player Eric Hilson said. “Everybody misses football throughout the summer.” Hilson, who played his high school football career at Schroeder High School in Cincinnati, is one of the league's organizers and is an active player. “I’m excited to bring gay flag football to Cincinnati and show how gays can turn up!” Hilson laughed. Closing out its first year of play in 2016, the league was able to gather gay, straight, lesbian and transgender players from across the region to one of the many football fields in the area, dawn a ring of flags around their waists and attack the gridiron. In its 2017 season, the league is set to play eight regular-season games, plus a few games away on the national scene. The just-over a dozen players who make up the Queen City Pigs have been practicing once a week since August.

“It’s going to be a very community-oriented team, where anyone and everyone is welcomed.” Comments J.P. Carter-Nelson, another one of the league's organizers. The newly formed GLBT Flag Football League here in Cincinnati plans to make its league an annual event, adding to the many gay-centric sports leagues already boasting strong support, like volleyball, bowling and softball. Jahmar Daniels, a Cincinnati realtor and another of the league’s organizers says, “We are striving to compete at the highest level, and to do that, we want to prepare well beforehand. Just working out a few times at the gym is not enough to succeed in an actual game.” During the season, each of the league's 4 teams schedules their own weekly practices and a separate weekly practice for the dozen or so players chosen to play for the traveling team which competes quarterly in different cities in the United States against teams from around the country. Just this past summer, the league's traveling team went to Chicago to play in the National Gay Football League’s Pride Bowl where they debuted the team’s prowess on the national scene.

But it's more than winning that gets these players out there every week. Many players say the experience of playing on a gay team provides a safe place to play a sport that they love; a new place to find acceptance and a way to share community. “I enjoyed the experience," Nick Robertson said of his experience traveling with the team to Washington, DC the first weekend of October, the second time the team competed nationally. “It's a place where I can be myself. And especially being able to travel to new cities with people like me...that's what I love about playing and it's another place where I can feel community.” Many believe in the Cincinnati league so much that that they traveled from as far as Florida and Washington State to help Cincinnati compete at October's Gay Bowl in Washington, DC. Andrew Velasquez, a business owner in Orlando, Florida, Jamere Parson, a registered nurse in Washington, DC, and Brain Hawker from Washington State all added to Cincinnati's entourage during tournament play in D.C. this past October. Just on the heels of playing in D.C,, the Pigs are one of about 40 teams from 19 U.S. cities, plus Toronto, that have competed in national championships of a gay flag football league, with many more cities in the process of following in the Pigs’ footsteps to form their own leagues.