Black Gay Athletes Find Fellowship, Compete Against Stereotypes in Atlanta’s Fitness Boom
One of the goals in softball is to return to the same home plate you started from, but Jeremy Nobles’ journey through the sport led him to a new world.
“Growing up, being around the same people, doing the same thing every day and every weekend,” Nobles says, describing his life as a 20-year-old in Moundville, Ala., population less than 2,500. “And just knowing in the back of my head that I like guys and there’s no way the people I hang around with would acknowledge or understand that. It’s hard living with that kind of secret with nobody to talk to, and trying to find myself—I just didn’t know what to do.”
Epitomizing how bygone that era of his life is, Nobles was rescued from his forlorn circumstances via MySpace. An online friend invited him to join a softball league, which Noble didn’t realize was composed of gay players until he arrived at George Ward Park in Birmingham the following weekend.
“It was kind of shocking and intimidating to me at first,” Nobles says. “But at the same time I felt I could be myself, I don’t have to pretend and I can just enjoy being who I am.”
“Knowing in the back of my head that I like guys and there’s no way the people I hang around with would acknowledge or understand that. It’s hard living with that kind of secret with nobody to talk to, and trying to find myself—I just didn’t know what to do.”
Although Birmingham was about an hour’s drive from Moundville, Nobles initially feared being spotted in a gay environment by someone who knew him and being outed to his folks back home. He began making weekend trips to Atlanta to play softball, hoping for discretion but finding liberation.
“I had never traveled anywhere, so to be in a different state and city was just mind-blowing,” he says. “How people walk around with Pride shirts, and just being themselves and dressing how they want. It just inspired me to venture out and experience all of that.”
Over the past 15 years, Nobles has gone from a closeted young man who was afraid of the oversized softballs and confused by the format of the game to running his own team, The Atlanta Phoenix, and being known as a social butterfly.
“It really changed my life,” Nobles says about gay softball. “I’ve built lots of friendships through this, and it’s made me a better person.”
'It Was Almost Like A Secret Society'
The softball league that served as a lodestar for Nobles is part of Atlanta’s vast queer sports universe. The city’s social fitness scene has helped generations of LGBTQ athletes satisfy their desire for competition and camaraderie, and post-pandemic even more people are looking for fun ways to stay active and re-connect with others.
“We live in Atlanta, and everyone wants to look good,” says Dedrick Tillerson, captain of the Atlanta Fury basketball team and founder of 4Us Sports, which has organized gay basketball and kickball tournaments, and partnered with Atlanta’s gay volleyball and flag football leagues. “People weren’t really able to do anything for a whole year, being locked in the house. Now, people are out riding bikes, they’re lifting weights again, they realize they’ve gained COVID weight and they’re trying to get back to, ‘Let me look good.’”
From kickball to tennis, there are different group activities every day of the week across LGBTQ Atlanta. However, despite the city’s reputation as a Black queer mecca, as well as the preponderance of Black athletes in many sports, Atlanta’s gay athletic leagues have long been perceived by some as part of the white social scene.
With many of the organizations starting prior to social media, recruitment was often limited to word-of-mouth or hosting a fundraiser at a Midtown bar. This insularity kept LGBTQ Atlanta’s expansive recreational offerings unknown even to an elite athlete like Tillerson, who ran track professionally after competing for University of Kentucky.
“When you come to my basketball tournament, you’re going to feel the atmosphere of an HBCU homecoming. There’s going to be vendors there, there’s going to be DJs, an emcee, people dancing and having a good time, food, and all those things you would get when you go to an HBCU event.”
Tillerson had been living between Washington D.C. and Atlanta for almost a decade before he learned about the latter’s LGBTQ sports leagues in 2014. While he initially founded 4Us to organize basketball games, Tillerson realized he could use the non-profit to amplify awareness about various activities to those who didn’t have a friend plugged into the system.
“It’s almost like it was a secret society in a way,” Tillerson says. “[Founding 4Us] was the opportunity to say, ‘Did you know there’s all these leagues that you can play in?’ and people were dumbfounded because they did not know.”
Even as minority participation has increased in many LGBTQ leagues, the Game Day experience rarely resembles what Black athletes and fans are used to, which Tillerson believes also hinders their cross-cultural appeal. To bridge this disconnect, Tillerson infuses 4Us events with a more familiar spirit.
“When you come to my basketball tournament, you’re going to feel the atmosphere of an HBCU homecoming,” he says. “There’s going to be vendors there, there’s going to be DJs, an emcee, people dancing and having a good time, food, and all those things you would get when you go to an HBCU event.”
‘You Can Find Community’
Like many transplants to a city as hyped as Atlanta, Jeffrey Thorpe was underwhelmed by his new hometown a year after moving there.
“I wasn’t actually very happy being in Atlanta,” says Thorpe, who grew up in Brunswick, GA. “One of my friends was like, ‘You are doing the same thing every single day, you’re not really going out and meeting people, you need to join a team.’”
Thorpe’s friend thought his size would make him a formidable rugby player and, against his protests, signed Thorpe up to receive information about the Atlanta Bucks Rugby Club. Although he knew nothing about the sport, rugby soon helped Atlanta feel like home.
“I heavily attribute the Bucks as being the reason why I stayed in Atlanta,” Thorpe says. “I just needed something new and something different. I needed a new challenge. I loved my friends then, but I kind of needed to meet more new people. Part of moving to a new city is diversifying, learning new things, and learning new things about yourself.”
“I’ve learned to love all of the little things about myself. I am a big boy, and we all know how image issues are, especially in the gay community; and in rugby, the big boy gets picked first. You can find community.”
Rugby is outside of what most Americans perceive as “Black sports,” but Thorpe, who is the second consecutive Black president of the Atlanta Bucks, has seen domestic tournaments beginning to catch up with the diversity rugby enjoys worldwide.
“I actually remember three years ago, a couple of people looked around, and it was like, ‘Wow, there are a lot of people of color here,’” Thorpe says. “This is a lot different than it was a few years ago, and it was eye-opening that there’s a lot of Black people here, and there’s a lot of Asian-Americans, and there’s a lot of Hispanics playing this sport right now.”
Thorpe shows how folks don’t need to know much about a sport in order for it to teach them a lot about themselves. Four years with the Atlanta Bucks has honed Thorpe’s leadership skills and time management and improved his relationships with others and himself.
“I’ve learned to love all of the little things about myself,” he says. “I am a big boy, and we all know how image issues are, especially in the gay community; and in rugby, the big boy gets picked first. You can find community.”
Defeating Stereotypes
You might also find a boyfriend. Sure, group sports can add a wholesome element to an app- or sex-based social life, but flirtation is natural in any gathering of sweaty, virile people with activated hormones and shared interests. However, a reputation for organized promiscuity has kept some people from joining LGBTQ sports leagues.
“We go to the bar in our team jerseys sometimes, and I’ve had guys say that they heard softball was just a big sex ring,” Nobles says. “They think most guys play softball just to get with other guys and sleep around.”
Stereotypes are probably the toughest opponent queer athletes face. Most Americans cannot imagine a gay man playing a sport without chuckling, while others assume gay athletes are overcompensating jocks.
“It’s not just about somebody being super masculine,” Tillerson says. “The best part about having this outlet is that when people come to see us play basketball their mouths drop wide open. They had no idea ‘the gays’ played basketball and they play it so well. Whereas we’ll be in one mode on the court, we may walk off the court and you might find an androgynous person, you might find a trans woman or man, you might find the most flamboyant to the pseudo masculine—you’re going to find all of those people when you come into this atmosphere.”
It was that breadth of representation that first made Nobles envision a fuller life beyond the constraints he bore in rural Alabama, and it was fitting that some of his softball family was present when he completed a full circle around the bases in July.
“My mom was actually up here last weekend for my birthday,” Thorpe says with satisfied relief. “She met my teammates, and my friends, and my boyfriend, and it was the best feeling in the world.”
Ryan Lee is a freelance writer in Atlanta and a columnist for The Georgia Voice, which focuses on LGBTQ issues in the south.