“I have a world of support within arm’s reach.”

2019 was a weird year for me. After nearly five years of marriage and nearly twelve years together, my husband asked for a divorce. It was good timing at least, as I’d just started to work again after being off of full-time work for nearly three years due to health issues. I’d been seeing multiple physical therapists for three years in order to be able to walk safely.

Earlier in the year, I had been diagnosed with a hypermobility syndrome. Truth be told, that’s not the first diagnosis I’ve picked up. The growing laundry list of afflictions in my life has made it hard to move, see, breathe, and think at different times. I grew up with Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, something that can be fatal as it attacks organs and joints alike. I got sick when I was five and it’s really the only life I’ve known. I was never an athlete or honestly good at balancing. Honestly, I’d fall standing up many days. 

That brings me back to 2019. In the middle of dealing with all of this upheaval, I leaned hard on the connections I made via social media. One of the people who got me interested in hockey – specifically, the person who spurred me to go to a 2014 Women’s Badgers NCAA tournament game – shared the NHL video made about the MGHA. I ruminated on how cool it would be to learn how to play hockey like Cole, Rigsby, Pankowski, Clark, Nurse, and Roque. I let the idea pass towards the back of my mind, focusing on the important things like finding my own apartment, etc. I thought that idea would let me be.

Boy, was I wrong! The notion of playing hockey kept rattling around my brain. Within a few weeks, I brought up the idea with my physical therapist who overwhelmingly agreed I was ready for that type of physical activity. She gave me a ton of exercises to work on that were tailored to becoming a better skater. Once I signed up, I definitely started to think about all the ridiculousness I had gotten myself into. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not the epitome of grace.

My first day on the ice was… hard. I was able to be upright for maybe a total of five minutes out of an hour. My mentor and the other coaches hung out with and encouraged me to keep going. At the end of the practice, I walked to my car incredibly sore and sweaty. For the first time in my life, though, I did something sporty. I didn’t do it well or for most of the allotted time, but I did it.

I couldn’t wait to get back out on the ice next week!

At my second practice, I definitely got injured. I fell in a back-leaning butterfly and tore part of my meniscus. For the first time in my life, I asked at urgent care if I could play the next week. The answer was a resounding no, but I was able to start strength training again after a few days. 

Despite being off the ice for just a week, I had numerous people reach out and check on me. When I came back, I was greeted warmly by the other newbies and coaches alike. The support propelled me to push myself harder, both on and off the ice. 

I decided to take up the position of goalie, something I’d always admired but was sure I would suck at. Instead, my hypermobility helped me excel. I went from being someone who never did a sport to embracing one of the most difficult positions in one of the most ridiculous sports out there. It took a while to get the hang of getting all those pads on, but I know there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than squatting in goal behind my team. 

To be a part of a team and have people to rely on at all feels weird. When I was growing up, I didn’t really have friends. As a matter of fact, I was heavily isolated in an abusive family. Closeness isn’t something I’ve ever had, at least not in a healthy way. Since joining the league, I began to allow myself to connect with others instead of putting up walls. It became easy to share all the difficulties I was going through with my health, relationships, and life in general.

The amount of growth I’ve been able to go through physically, emotionally, and mentally by joining the league is something I can’t measure. My sister says that I sound happier than I ever have, and she’s not wrong.

When I started using a different name and different set of pronouns, my friends and teammates didn’t even flinch. When I started testosterone, my trans brothers checked in on me to see how I was doing and gave me the 411 on what to expect. When my disabilities affect my ability to play, I get encouraging comments instead of ones filled with ableism or frustration. Hell, a few people have emergency medical information for me in case something goes wrong.

As I write this, I’m preparing to go to divorce court with my ex-husband. I can’t lie and say that I’m not nervous – I absolutely am. I know it’s going to be a rough day and that it’ll open up healed wounds. Thankfully, I have a lot of support within the MGHA. From advice from divorced players to check-ins from teammates, I have a world of support within arm’s reach.

When someone asks me what the MGHA means to me, it’s hard to sum up in a short sentence. It means many things – progress, a workout, flipping off my disabilities… I think the most important pieces for me, though, are support and acceptance.

“I don’t rush… in the locker room; I linger, relishing a feeling of comfort I’ve so rarely felt before in locker room settings.”

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I am a transgender hockey player. I am trans and a hockey player. I am a hockey player who happens to be trans?

My gender identity shouldn’t matter when I tell people I’m a hockey player, but so often in sports, it becomes the only thing that matters. People fixate on an athlete’s genitals and fail to see the athlete as a whole person who just wants to play the game they love. USA hockey may have a trans-inclusive policy on the books, but players are still required to select between the two binary genders when registering. How do you pick when both feel like a lie?

As a nonbinary transgender athlete, sports can be a difficult setting. In a sport like hockey, “difficult” can easily morph into a heap of conflicting emotions. The gendered nature of the sport often leads to me feeling like an unwelcome imposter wherever I play.

When I play with men, I pull my gear on rapidly, shoving down fear that one of them may notice there is no bulge in my underwear. The likelihood that I mention my pronouns, much less enforce them, is miniscule at best. I spend those games trying to reassure myself that I belong. Your voice is low enough to blend in. That stubble coating your chin will quell any suspicions. Cis people don’t question other’s assumed cis-ness unless given good reason.

When I play with women, my trans-ness shoves itself to the forefront, demanding it be noticed and addressed. As I grow more comfortable in my body, I grow less comfortable among the teammates I am happiest playing with. Walking into rink after rink, my anxiety treads a well-worn path, summoning my equally well-worn defensive mantra to the surface. You’ve met some of these people before. They want you here. You shaved last night. No one will scrutinize your chest under this baggy hoodie. The other team isn’t going to question your hormone levels on sight. Just play the damn game.

When I came out in college and began contemplating medical transition, I also began wondering how such steps would impact hockey. The spring before I came out, I had stepped into a captain role on my college team. I spent that summer with a D3 girls hockey program, practicing among some of the most stereotypical cisgender girls I’d met to date in Minnesota. It was over this summer that I began to unpack and analyze my unhappiness and discomfort. I bought my first binder. I let my housemate buzz my hair. I googled “top surgery” for the first time.

I didn’t want to jeopardize the joy I found in hockey, nor did I want to let my team down, but fighting tears or rage every time I was reminded of what lay beneath my clothing wasn’t a sustainable way to live. I needed to act.

Fast forward a year and a half, and a very different person arrived in Madison, WI. I was finally seeing a body I thought I could love in the mirror, and my confidence had grown along with muscle and facial hair. But in graduating college, I left behind a team that had accepted me as me without a care for how I looked or sounded, and for the first time in recent memory, I didn’t have a place to play hockey. I spent a lonely summer coaxing myself into the gym and googling ice rinks around Madison, waiting for fall and the chance to join a league a friend from college had told me about.

The MGHA has changed my entire perspective on Madison. Immersing myself into a community of passionate and welcoming people has given me reason to begin thinking of Madison as a home. I’ve found people who, even after only a single season knowing them, I think could be friends for life. Playing hockey here, I don’t feel the old urge to tailor my underwear selections or color of stick tape based on how accepting the league seems to be. Here, there is no question. My teammates would be disappointed if I didn’t bring my whole self to every game.

Hockey has always brought me joy, but with the MGHA, I get that and so much more. I’m vocal on the ice, communicating with my teammates in earshot of the ref. I don’t rush through changing in the locker room; if anything, I linger, relishing a feeling of comfort I’ve so rarely felt before in locker room settings. It isn’t unusual for me to be among the last to leave as the rink staff shut the lights off around us.

MGHA hockey means a place where I can shed the usual cloak of trepidation I feel walking into a hockey rink. I know that there, I’ll see people who know that I am transgender who simply file that fact away in the same file as my wild-patterened shorts – as a fact about me that bears knowing if only so they can support me when the world would beat me down.

I’ve been with the league for several years, and I’ve had the option to write a “What Gay Hockey Means to Me” essay a few times now.  Each time, I declined – this community means the world to me, but I didn’t have a story that fit into a nicely packaged narrative. I am thoroughly hooked on hockey now and play in two leagues (thanks to the MGHA), and I served on the board for two years as a way to give back to the community that has given so much to me… but it still wasn’t quite enough to coax a story out of me.  I didn’t have any life-altering experiences that were worth writing about – that is, until this last season.

I joined the MGHA several years ago.  It wasn’t very dramatic, but it was actually an act of desperation.  I had no queer community. I had lived in Madison for upwards of 10 years and I knew virtually no one like me.  I looked in all of the circles I walked in – namely school, work, and gaming. I was still in the process of questioning my gender when I tried to find like-minded groups in college, but I didn’t feel “queer enough”, or that I fit in.  I had no luck at work – there was a fledgling queer community, but the power dynamics of the workplace made it uncomfortable enough that I couldn’t rely on it for support. The gaming community was out of the question – I am sure there were queers there, but I didn’t click well enough with the group as a whole to find anybody.

At one of the LGBTQIA+ meetings at work, Andrew Cox mentioned the MGHA.  I was not athletic, and I was not into sports or hockey, but I needed a community.  I was desperate. So I went to the website and filled out an application.

I didn’t get in.

That is to say, my application got lost.  Or something. Nobody reached out to me, and by the time I followed up with Andrew (who pointed me to the right people), it was too late.   The league was full, and they didn’t have space for me. Shit. I mean, I wasn’t heartbroken – “this is not the queer community you’re looking for” had become sort of a recurring theme by this point, so I figured I just needed to look elsewhere.

Fast forward a year, and little had changed.  My quest was still underway, and I’d made no progress.  On a Friday in late June of 2015, I had an email from Patrick Farabaugh.  “Are you still interested?”

Well, I haven’t had any luck elsewhere, so sure, why not, I’m still interested.  Let’s do this. How scary can it be? Turns out, REALLY SCARY. Do you have an anti-competitive streak a mile wide, a deep aversion to being aggressive, a crippling fear of being read as masculine, and haven’t exercised in years?  When you do, team sports are utterly terrifying. A month before the season started, I nearly quit the MGHA. What had I gotten myself into?? I needed a community, but did I really need it this badly? What if I didn’t get along with anybody, or I was awful at it, or if it was like all team sports I had tried in the past and I would end up going home crying each night?

Spoiler alert: I didn’t quit.  But I very nearly did. I convinced myself that I should try it for a little bit, and that I could bail if it turned out to be awful.  And, further spoiler alert: it wasn’t awful. In fact, it was wonderful. The league was a place where community came first and hockey came second.  I met so many wonderful, amazing, loving human beings. I couldn’t fathom how there were so many fantastic humans living in Madison right under my nose.  It was unbelievable.

Over the course of the next few years, I fell in love with the league.  Each year, I was placed on a new team which allowed me to make friends with a whole new group of humans.  My circle of friends grew, and the people who are closest to me in my life right now are people I met through playing hockey.  I joined the board as a way to give back. I have a lot of skills that come in handy when running a hockey league, apparently. I was helping make the MGHA a better place.

As things with hockey continued to get better, things in the rest of my life continued to get worse.  It was a litany of disasters with no end in sight. It culminated with the death of my son in March of 2018.  I was absolutely devastated. There’s no way to sugarcoat it – Einar’s death broke me. My grief led me to some very dark places, and as a result, at the beginning of this last season, I left my wife.  I put some clothes in my backpack, hopped on my motorcycle, and rode off into the wind.

The MGHA was wonderful, but I didn’t have a story that was worth writing an essay about.  Until now.

I couch-surfed for a month-and-a-half.  At times it was 7pm at night and I didn’t know where I was going to be sleeping that night.  I rode my motorcycle through the sun and through the rain. And when I crashed on couches, exhausted, with wet motorcycle gear, it was largely with people from the MGHA.  I had built this community for several years, and when I needed them the most, the people in this league Showed Up for me. They fed me, held me, kept me safe, and listened to me cry.  They took me out dancing for my birthday and defended my honor when it was impugned. They had long conversations with me about what healthy relationships look like and what you need to do to build and maintain them.   They talked with me on the phone as I sat on sidewalks in Madison, sobbing and broken. The people in this league stood by me as everything in my life fell apart.

After I settled into my own apartment and my mental health started to stabilize, I realized that my choice three years prior to join the MGHA – and my choice not to quit before it started – had been life-altering.  Without the emotional support my friends in the league gave me, I may have never realized I was unhappy in my marriage. The MGHA gave me the structure and support to build up the courage I needed to completely upend my life and leave a relationship that wasn’t working for me.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, and I didn’t have to do it alone. This league is my chosen family, and they were there for me.

In the aftermath of my breakup, as the season began progressing last fall, I already knew – I was going to write an essay this year.  I finally had something worth saying.

I’ve never really been an athlete. Even when I did participate in sports growing up, I never developed the competitive drive, the physical confidence, or the comfort and familiarity of being part of a team that I saw in the people around me. Sports to me felt a lot like church—something important and meaningful for other people that I just never quite figured out. I’ve always liked being active, and even liked being outside in the snow and ice, but it had never occurred to me put those things together into a sport. At least, not until gay hockey.

My first season playing ice hockey has had so many other firsts built into it. The Madison Gay Hockey Association is truly the first group I’ve been a part of that states explicitly: ask, appreciate, and learn from each other. From my first day in a room of excited, nervous new players, I heard, “don’t make assumptions.” Don’t assume what people know, how fast they are, what they like or what they don’t, what they want to be called, or whether or not they’re hurt. The MGHA is the first space I’ve been in where getting to know new people doesn’t require coming out through long-winded definitions or explanations, and where any configuration or structure or type of relationship is just that: a relationship. The MGHA was the first place where I’ve really been out about dating another woman, the first group where I’ve really felt valued as a beginner at a new sport, and the first time I’ve seen such tangible progress from week to week among players with such a wide range of experiences and skills. In every interaction, on the ice and off, on the hard days and the good ones, there is a genuine invitation to come as you are.

One of my favorite things about gay hockey isn’t actually on the ice at all, but in the stands. The amount of love and support from people who notice and appreciate each other’s improvement and wellbeing is unlike anything I have ever experienced. People I had never had a conversation with before would tell me how well my team played or how much my game had improved since the previous week. The stands are full of people who are eager to make each other feel welcome, ready at a moment’s notice to explain the game to hockey-illiterate friends or confused partners, and excited to support both their teammates and their competitors. I love the willingness to share stories, questions, compliments, and beers while watching the games, and love seeing those same familiar faces tucked underneath helmets and mouth guards on the ice.

Gay hockey, for me, means celebrating each other’s success. It means patience and progress, falling down (a lot), and getting stronger. It also means, it turns out, that I finally feel like an athlete.

Why I play with MGHA. Let me start out with this:

The 2018-2019 season was my first season with MGHA (hey Nightfuries!) but I already feel like I’ve been in the league so much longer.

I met Claire Busse through work. We got talking about sports and she told me about playing hockey. She convinced me to sign up. I was waitlisted until the next season. Then, I got the email that I had a spot if I wanted it. Initially I was going in to hockey thinking it was going to be a great way to stay active in the rugby off season.  But before I took the ice for the first time I was sidelined by an injury. I wasn’t even able to even put my skates on. On top of the injury I was dealing with some pretty heavy personal issues. I sincerely considered dropping out of the league. I’m so glad I didn’t. I was immediately welcomed by my teammates on team reveal night. I really thought that writing this essay was going to be easy. It’s hard to put it in to words…MGHA has become the part of my family I didn’t know I was missing, that I didn’t know I needed. My teammates and captains made me feel safe and welcomed when that wasn’t how I was feeling walking in to Hartmeyer. I never questioned if I was being accepted for being exactly who I am by any of them. If you can’t tell I’m not the best at cohesive writing. #scatterbrained Remember that time I forgot my breezers, ran home, then proceeded to scored my first (and only I might add) goal? Patrick keeps saying he’s gonna hide them so I score more. It’s little stories like this that make MGHA home for me.

What does gay hockey mean to me? Family. Safety. Friends.

Luckily one of the first people I met when I moved to to Madison from South Carolina was Paul Weisensel.  He began playing hockey with MGHA in 2014 and he couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved it. He told me I should try it….I had never even been ice skating before, but he told me the league was inclusive of everyone no matter their identity, orientation, or ability/lack of ability to play hockey…even if you didn’t know how to ice skate.  I met some of the other MGHA players at FruitFest and they also shared the same enthusiasm about the league. I thought about joining but I wasn’t ready yet…

My identity to the world and who I was didn’t feel congruent because I lived most of my life in an environment where even if people “knew” you still didn’t talk about it.  I felt a lot of shame about who I was; even though I was was accepting of everyone else, I did not accept myself. I felt like I lived in two different worlds, I wasn’t out around most people and then when I was around my friends who knew I could be myself.

I have played with the MGHA league for 3 seasons now and the league has been a huge part of helping me have confidence to be myself. MGHA is a hockey league where your teammates cheer to encourage you when you have the puck, even if everyone knows you hardly know how to skate and you can hardly hear the cheering over your own thoughts trying to remember everything you learned about skating with the puck! That encouragement made me want to keep playing and never give up.

For the first time, I found a safe place I could be myself. Unlike the rest of the world, MGHA is a place where you sincerely don’t have to fit in to any box to fit in.  And other than the form you fill out when you sign up for MGHA (which they use to improve the recruiting process) no one ever asks you what box(es) you fit in to. I’ve done a lot of growing along the way, I no longer feel shame for who I am. As cheesy as it sounds, I found myself and a lot of really awesome friends through the MGHA!

              The thing that stands out most to me about the MGHA is acceptance.  Yes, I’ve found a new sport that I absolutely adore; and, yes, I’ve made new friends; but the thing that feels (sadly) unique to this bundle of 150+ beautiful, amazing, loving people, tucked away in an inconspicuous town in the Midwest, is the acceptance that we all grace upon each other.  For lots of people, that acceptance is a beacon as it relates to their sexuality or gender orientation, but for me that hasn’t been the most significant aspect.

            My parents were the hardest to come out to, and it didn’t go well, but it was almost a non-issue for me that they didn’t really understand what it meant that I was gay (“No, like… I’m sexually attracted to men…..”).  I kind of expected it, given their educated-but-not-empathetic view of many other things. The bigger issues with them and others in my family and life has been the lack of empathy and understanding relating to my other deviations from their expectations: my disinterest in children, a job that pays as much as possible, my own car and home, and my anomalous values that I hold above those.  These issues still plague our relationship and make it an earnest struggle to feel respected and loved. But there are those unrefined or inextricable parts of me that are good, bad, different, odd, refreshing, or unsavory for polite company, and yet my MGHA family loves me as I am, sometimes because of and sometimes despite.

            And it’s not just that we’re a smattering of more progressive, young and young-at-heart individuals.  Plenty of my progressive and young peers have constricted world views and assign value to me based on my choices and lack of choices that they would have made.  The MGHA is more than just open-minded. I think it comes from the layers and layers of acceptance that build on each other. We begin with knowing we fit and fill all the beautiful parts of queer (and allies), and we accept each other.  And then there’s also varying levels of hockey ability, including people like me who came in as a wobbly-ass baby giraffe just hoping to not break bones on falls one through four hundred, and we accept each other. And we come from various backgrounds and currentgrounds and futuregrounds, and we accept each other.  And the more we differ, the more we accept each other, and that acceptance is built on and reinforces such a solid foundation that people are comfortable being earnest, complete, fierce embodiments of themselves. You read about it in tons of these essays – how people only felt comfortable with something about themselves or about sharing it within this league, or maybe starting with this league – and it’s one of the most amazing things that this league can help so many people come to accept themselves, to help them realize they deserve to accept themselves and be accepted by others too.

            I’m a very cynical person, and I struggle with seeing the good and not drowning in the bad, but the MGHA has given me acceptance and love and support and, annoyingly, an example of something I can’t be cynical about.  The MGHA means, to me, acceptance. I guess hockey’s pretty neat, too.

Every year, the MGHA does these essays and I’ve had the opportunity to read quite a few of them over my three years with the organization. This year, after being tagged by someone in the league, I’ve chosen to write one myself. Now, this probably isn’t the typical ‘What Gay Hockey Means to Me’ essay that you’re used to seeing. This is more of a look back at my experience in this league both in how it has shaped me and how (I hope) I’ve been a positive influence on those around me.

Let’s start a bit with my background. I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania in a rural town where people love their guns and everything that isn’t good is, well, ‘gay’. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great people, but there are also some very closed-minded folks who have never ventured outside of their little bubble. I moved to Madison in 2011 and when I moved here, I had my own little bubble around me, too. I didn’t know much about gay culture and I surely didn’t know any trans folks or even know gender-queer was a thing. Like the commenters on a bad Facebook post, I thought the genitalia you had defined you. I was naive and uneducated about gender identity and sexual orientation.

As for me, I didn’t really know I was gay until a few years ago. It took a good friend to get me to really think about things and connect the dots. When I did, it was quite a relief. I honestly can say that it felt like a weight had lifted. I know it sounds cliché, but I remember feeling it. I had known about the MGHA and decided to sign up.

Unlike so many who write these essays, hockey wasn’t new to me. I started playing as a senior in high school. I worked at an ice arena for six years, too, during high school and college. I had played adult league and was playing with a local group here in Madison. I had experience. I wasn’t the best player, but I could certainly hold my own. I came into the league not knowing what to expect from a gay hockey league.

My first team was incredibly welcoming. I was still trying to get my bearings in this unique inclusive league. It was a different experience for sure, but I quickly realized that success in this league wasn’t measured in goals or wins, but instead it was measured in how well you play with others, your encouragement of the team, and even interactions with the other team. I learned that the MGHA aligns well with my demeanor and style of play. I decided to stick around and even signed up to be on the board for my second and third years in the league.

One of my favorite aspects of this league is the inclusive play. I love the encouragement and the idea that everybody deserves to play. If a lesser-skilled player gets the puck, we let them hold onto it for a little while to get more comfortable. If somebody accidentally knocks somebody down, we ask them if they’re alright and sometimes even help them up. For me, this is huge. Some advanced players may come into the league and struggle with the concept of not taking the puck end-to-end and I admit that I certainly have moments where I want to do just that. For me, though, part of the challenge and fun of this league is improving my other skills while helping hone the skills of the other players. The MGHA lets me work on my leadership abilities while letting me help and encourage those who have less experience. It lets me offer pointers. It gives me the opportunity to instill confidence in people who, due to a plethora of reasons, don’t have that confidence. A little bit of confidence goes a long way, sometimes.

If you remember, I brought a bubble with me from southwestern PA. That bubble shielded me from people who were different. For me, gay hockey taught me that there’s a whole lot more to this world than what’s inside that little bubble. Before I joined the league, I hadn’t really known anyone who was trans or gender-queer. I think I was honestly a little uncomfortable. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know anything about it. It was just foreign to me and foreign things can be scary. I write this showing vulnerability and hoping that this doesn’t make me a bad person. This league, though, has introduced me to a whole new world (go ahead, sing the song from Aladdin… I’ll wait). I know that I’m a much more accepting and open person because of this league. I also know that I’m always learning. I know that if I don’t understand something, I can ask. This league has given me a space to grow and has helped me expand my worldview.

Most of the time, these essays tell the tales of people who haven’t felt welcome in organized sports or haven’t been comfortable in team settings because of who they are and the love and acceptance they find in the MGHA. I love that this league fosters those moments. It fills my heart to have so many people share success stories of feeling welcomed and loved when they play with our group. My story is a bit different, but the outcome is similar. Gay hockey has given me a place to help the people I just mentioned. It’s given me a way to give back and foster confidence and inclusion. At the same time, it’s given me a place to learn how to be more inclusive. I’m sure I still have a bubble. I think we all do. What I do know, however, is that my little bubble that I brought with me from southwestern PA is now a much bigger bubble thanks to the MGHA and the people in the league.