Category: Essays

Julie Anderson – 2019-2020 Essay

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Hockey has been my passion for as long as I can remember.  My parents did not let me play growing up but that didn’t stop me from spending as much time at ice rinks as possible.  Watching my younger brother play, going to friends’ games, working at a family friends’ rink, attending college games on my own, and finally having my own kids to experience the hockey life with.  I’ve been a hockey mom now for 11 years. A hockey board member. A Zamboni driver. Concession stand worker. Game scheduler. Tournament director. The hockey life list goes on and on.

A few years ago, after moving to this area, a hockey dad convinced me to play in a “Kids vs. Parents” game.  They didn’t have a goalie, my son is a goalie (not for this particular team), and would I play goal for the parent team?  Sure, why not? As is often said, goalies are crazy! So, at the age of 43, I played goalie and I fell in love! From there, said hockey dad, who has become one of my best friends, convinced me to play in their Friday Night Beginners League, which I love.  Then I was asked to play on a women’s team, which I did not love; too much drama! I play as often as I can. I’ve played on teams of those I have never met. I’ve played where I travel and stay in VRBO’s, like a sailboat. I play with friends that I look forward to seeing on the ice each week. I play with a group of guys that make me laugh while trying to beat me up. And I fulfilled a bucket list item by playing Pond Hockey in Eagle River. While wearing goalie skates!

Forward to the current hockey season.  A friend, Keith, from another group asked me if I would be willing to play goalie on his team for Madison Gay Hockey Association (MGHA). I’ve heard of MGHA and I have heard they are a great organization.  But, should I be on a team for gay hockey? I am not gay. 

The funny thing is, without even knowing what was going on in my life, Keith extended the offer for me to play, we chatted about it, and I finally I said I could do some games but couldn’t commit to all.  I wasn’t sure this was the right group for me, but I was willing to give it a try. What was going on in my life at the time? My oldest child, my first baby, “my Girl” as I’ve always called him had started the process of transitioning to a male.  As a mother this was very difficult to accept. I couldn’t understand why and I had a lot of unanswered questions. I was hurting, but mostly I was scared. My child has a chronic disease and I was scared of what hormones would do. I was also scared the decision my child had made would lead to a very difficult lifestyle for him.  I wasn’t familiar with the LGBTQ community and I didn’t know how I was going to support my baby.

I showed up to my first game with the Avalanche Avengers knowing only 1 person.  I had not spent much time in the gay community but I am very open to everyone being their own person. The first person I met was extremely friendly and offered me a hug (it’s a funny story). Everyone I met after that were just as friendly and welcoming. They were all ready to have fun.  They were all extremely supportive of each other and encouraged each other to play the MGHA way. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I was nervous, this was a new experience for me, and I can say I went out to play my first game with MGHA and I sucked!

Since that first night, I have come to love my Sunday nights with all the people involved with MGHA.  I started to refer to MGHA as “Happy Hockey” to my friends. Everyone was so happy and we have so much fun playing.  Cheering each other on, encouraging new skaters to try something different, helping each other up, and laughing! Oh, the laughing!  But that was only the on-ice fun stuff. Happy Hockey became the place I learned more about my child. The place I have met people from all walks of life. The place I look around and see an amazing community that I know my child will be safe in.  And a place that I so badly wanted to get my child involved in! With a little pushing, a lot of support from my team Captains, and the Board, my son is now an Avalanche Avenger along with me. The joy I get from watching him skate and make friends, and be 100% himself, is priceless.

What is MGHA to me?  Happy Hockey!

Ian Leach – 2019-2020 Essay

It’s 2016 – I’m going into my sophomore year of college living in a brand new city in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Desperately looking for community and not really knowing how to find it in the predominately-high income school I was attending, I decided that one of the best options would be a semi-local gay soccer league near Detroit. I thought that playing in this league might give me the opportunity to find a like-minded community that cared about social justice and inclusivity, especially in a sport I had played for the majority of my life.

The experience ultimately turned out to be one of the most problematic queer spaces I have ever attended. Frequented by nearly all cis- and gay men, I encountered fatphobia and transphobia in many of the people I played with. My body image and self-esteem ultimately tanked and, frankly, I would struggle to count on only two hands the number of problematic statements I found from the people within the league.

When I left the league after only one year of playing, I thought that queer sports might not ever fit into my life. I questioned if the activity of sport could ever shed its heteronormative and transphobic nature to create an environment that was supportive of all people and cared about improving all aspects of life for queer and trans folx. That is, until I found the MGHA. 

I honestly don’t recall how I found the MGHA after moving to Madison in 2018. Whether it was a message from one of the recruiters on various queer applications or a Facebook advertisement, I ultimately decided that I was going to get onto the ice despite never having played hockey before. And I am so, so grateful that I did. 

It all started with a 6-week clinic that showed me and my cohort all of the ropes of skating. It started as one of the challenging experiences of my life – as someone who carries a lot of pride and issues with perfectionism, it seemed a daunting task to show that I wasn’t “good enough” at something to anyone. It became much easier when my group of never-skaters were so supportive of one another. Every Sunday, we strapped on our hockey gear, fell a few times while practicing and learning, and finally spent the night messaging one another how grateful we were to be doing this together. It’s challenging showing to a 200-person league that you’re not yet good at an activity, but it’s a lot easier when you reframe this as an opportunity to be vulnerable in front of 200 people who care and support you in all aspects of your identity.

Only two weeks after I started the league, my father passed away from brain cancer. As with many queer people, and to put it lightly, I had a complicated relationship with my family – my father never fully accepted me as an out-and-proud gay man and I hadn’t talked to nearly all of my biological family for most of my years throughout college. My father’s passing was and still is one of the most challenging experiences I’ve ever experienced; finding any constructive escape to the reality of picking up the pieces of my life has been something I was and still am desperately been searching for.

Thankfully, the MGHA has remained a constant in my first year without my father and, perhaps more importantly, in my first year of finding my new normal.  Like nothing else I have been able to find, in sport or otherwise, I feel like a kid again. Every Sunday night, I sign up to sub in literally every game I can – I think I’d play 100 games on a Sunday if I could.  Despite traveling extensively for work, I make sure I get back every Sunday so I can play hockey every week.

The MGHA ultimately represents roots for me here in Madison. It represents a future for sporting activities that I so deeply believe in – that it really is possible to have sport be a supportive space for learning and community. Finding my new normal after tragedy has certainly been hard, but I know hockey and the MGHA will have a big role in helping me get to that place in life. 

Grayson Schultz – 2019-2020 Essay

“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.

Martha Hansen – 2019-2020 Essay

“My feelings of indecision evaporated: I knew that I wanted to be part of this community again and that I could be.”

I first heard about MGHA in 2016 while preparing to move back to Madison, my home town, after almost 40 years away. My old friend Susan told me she had a lesbian co-worker who played in Madison’s gay hockey league and maybe I could join too. We had a good laugh about that, given that I was: a) 56 years old; b) had never participated in any organized sport; and c) had spent the majority of my adult life avoiding any and all physical activity. And HOCKEY of all things — come on! Everyone knows it’s a rough, difficult, and expensive sport, not to mention a total boyzone: I had vivid memories from my youth of being at the neighborhood outdoor ice skating rink wearing the white figure skates that were de rigueur for girls in those days and watching the boys play hockey on the other side of the boards, a place where I knew I would be unwelcome if it had ever even occurred to me to try to join in, which it didn’t.

So yeah, Susan and I chuckled and moved on, but for some reason, as ridiculous as it seemed, the MGHA stuck in my mind. So I decided to check out the web site, and when I did, I was immediately impressed with and moved by the MGHA’s commitment to tolerance and inclusion and the fact that it was truly open to all: LGBTQIA and straight people; folks who identified as male, female, and nonbinary; and skaters and non-skaters alike. The cost, while not insignificant, was manageable, with financial assistance available to those in need of it, and it was a rec league, so there was no concern about body-checking or any kind of violence.

I was amazed to find out that the MGHA would accept people who didn’t even know how to ice skate, much less play hockey, promising to teach anyone who wanted to learn. Remembering my time spent goofing around on the ice rink as a kid, I assured myself that I most certainly knew how to skate! (LOL, more on that later.) In reading through the web site with its emphasis on inclusion of marginalized folks and people who’d been made to feel unwelcome in more traditional sports settings, I realized that in spite of my general societal privilege, I did in fact fall into a marginalized group in terms of hockey: as a girl growing up in the pre-Title IX days, it had never occurred to me that it was a world I could enter.

As lucky as I am to have friends and family in the Madison area, there’s still that thing about being around your own tribe. I had left behind a wonderful group of gay and lesbian friends in Albuquerque, and I knew I would need that in Madison too, especially being newly single again. Having left Madison so long ago, before I identified as a lesbian, I had no idea where to start. But here — so very unexpectedly — was the MGHA. True, I was not an athlete and had exactly zero interest in becoming one, but I had quit my job and moved cross-country to start a new life in the aftermath of my mother’s death and my own divorce, so hell — why not hockey? I got in touch via email and was assured by Randi that I was not too old to give it a shot, and after signing up I was assigned a mentor who was equally encouraging. Susan and her hockey-playing family helped me buy the gear, and I was set to go. The orientation session was as impressive as the web site had been, with its emphasis on inclusion, inclusion, tolerance, and inclusion, accompanied by safety, safety, fun, and safety.

I went to the beginner clinics and found that ice skating was much harder than I remembered (which shouldn’t have been a surprise, given my 40-year hiatus), but also found that no one batted an eye at my advanced age or low skill level: I was treated just like everyone else. Inspired by others who had begun skating as adults and rapidly achieved impressive proficiency, I started going to open skate sessions at the Shell in an effort to improve. It was there, just days before the first game of the season, that I fell and broke my wrist. Although deeply embarrassed, I forced myself to show my face again to my new teammates and other MGHA folks, all of whom reacted with kindness and commiseration. I was offered an open door to return whenever I chose and was jovially assured by several MGHA-ers that they had played hockey with injuries and even in casts and had been fine. Still, sitting out the remainder of the season seemed the sensible thing to do, and I did.

I thought long and hard over spring/summer 2017 about whether I could or should give hockey another try. With the encouragement of Susan (who had decided to join MGHA with me in 2016 and had played the whole season and had a blast), I signed up again. Now age 57, I was feeling like the world’s oldest rookie, but as I began the preseason beginner clinics for the second time, I found myself welcomed back into the league with open arms. I played for Team Red, aka Redrum, and had a fine time, being treated with great patience and kindness by some seriously good hockey players. As before, I was determined to improve my skating and hockey skills, so I also joined a women’s beginner team, through which I met some more great people and got some excellent coaching and even scored a goal! It was a fun season, but playing for two teams was a little more than I’d bargained for, and I ended up deciding to sit out the 2018-19 season.

In the summer of 2019, I was feeling indecisive about returning to the MGHA, but, having just turned 59 (!), I figured that if I ever planned to attempt hockey again, now was the time, so I contacted the recruiting team about reactivating my membership. I almost immediately heard from two (2!) of my Redrum teammates saying how happy they’d be to see me come back! My feelings of indecision evaporated: I knew that I wanted to be part of this community again and that I could be.

Now, with the 2019-20 season coming to a close, here I am, with another full season under my belt, new friends made, much fun had, and even a goal scored!

I won’t lie — I still struggle with self-consciousness about my age and anxiety about my abilities. But it’s important to note that these difficulties are entirely self-imposed: Every MGHA member I’ve ever interacted with, no matter their age or skill level, has been friendly and kind and welcoming. No one has ever asked me, as I have frequently asked myself, what in the world are you doing trying to learn hockey at your age? So I’m here to tell you that when the MGHA says it, they really mean it: Hockey is for everyone — even a rookie who’s practically retirement age. Thanks, MGHA, for welcoming me into the world of hockey as well as home to my community.

Avery Cordingley – 2019-2020 Essay

“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.”

Avery’s Profile
Avery’s 2019-2020 essay won this year and will be featured in Our Lives Magazine.

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.

Kriona Hagen – 2019 Essay

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.

Greta Landis – 2019 Essay

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.

Alisha McGuire – 2019 Essay

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.

Reily Kirsch-Loredo

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!