The dismal 1-5 collective record put together by the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers may have Bay Area fans of adult pigskin play down in the dumps this season, but there is still cause for celebration for the locals: LGBT flag football is alive and well and moving on up in the national scene.
Two years ago, the Silicon Valley Crash was winless in its debut in the Gay Bowl, the national championship for LGBT flag football organized by the National Gay Flag Football Association. Last year it avenged two losses in Utah to South Florida in the previous championship to win the B Division national title game in Washington, D.C. This year, the team, now named the San Francisco Bay Crash, hopes to emerge from pool play at Gay Bowl X to join the challengers seeking to dethrone champion Los Angeles in the top division of play.
This is not pads-and-flak jacket, three yards and a cloud of dust football. This is a game of finesse, fun, and ferocity for guys who hold down day jobs.
"Flag football is all about team skills," John Chen, founder and team captain of the Crash, told the Bay Area Reporter . "Tackle football requires a lot more strength. Flag football is more about agility and things like that. In both, if somebody doesn't block correctly or doesn't run the route right then you really run into some serious problems."
Jared Garduno, co-director of Gay Bowl X, said 26 teams are registered to compete in the event October 8-10 in Phoenix, making it the biggest Gay Bowl weekend ever. Sides of seven players will battle through pool play with the top 16 teams advancing to the A Division tournament bracket and the remainder placed in the B Division.
"We won the nationals in our division last year," said Chen. "This year it is our goal to get into the upper division."
The usual social barbecues and parties will surround the event, with the added highlight this year of the inaugural NGFL Hall of Merit inductees.
The Hall of Merit was initiated by the Gay Bowl hosts, the Phoenix Hellraiser Football League.
"We wanted to talk about the history of our league," Garduno said. "We wanted to talk about where we came from."
Entering the Hall of Merit this year will be the founders of the Gay Bowl, Jim Buzinski and Cyd Zeigler Jr., who also co-founded http://www.Outsports.com.
"Without them, gay flag football doesn't exist," Garduno said. "Choosing them was about them putting this together 10 years ago.
"And on the field they have played at an extremely high level. Jim has quarterbacked and coached three Gay Super Bowl teams. Cyd has coached six of the nine championship teams."
People like Garduno and Chen are born to play and compete – as hard and as often and as well as they can. Flag football provides outlet and expression for the competitive fire.
"It is an ultimate high," Garduno said of flag football. "I am competitive by nature, so I always need something to keep me sharp, to keep me going and outdoors instead of sitting around inside.
"I really love the camaraderie. I moved to Arizona from Denver and I didn't know anybody. I'm self-employed and I work out of my home, so it's tough to meet people. You go to a bar and say 'Hi' to a person and they think you want to sleep with them."
Chen, 42, has always been involved in sports.
"I've played sports all of my life, ever since I was a kid," Chen said. "I didn't play high school football because my parents thought I would get killed. I've played softball, volleyball and run track. Now I coach softball and I coach a bear volleyball team."
Chen, 5 feet 8 and 210 pounds, plays a variety of positions in flag football, including center, tackle, linebacker and tight end.
"It's very much a team sport because you have to focus on your responsibility," he said. "More so than a lot of sports, you have to be athletic to play well. And if you mess up, it messes up the entire play. It's hard to cover weaknesses."
Therein lies a fascinating difference between flag football and pile-on tackle football. With 22 players on the field in tackle football, one player may have the opportunity to point fingers at others when a play breaks down. In flag football, with just 14 players in action, that player will find it harder to hide. It requires the courage to have shortcomings exposed and the determination to overcome them. And in some cases, it may cause even deeper reflection.
As Chen's personal experience illustrates.
"I dated women throughout high school and college," he said. "It wasn't until my mid-20s that I began to realize that I have a strong attraction to men. But for several years, I never acted on my desire because I didn't know where to go to meet other guys who are like me. Gay bars were out of the question because I was deep in the closet.
"Fortunately, through sports I was able to meet openly gay men who were both athletes and comfortable with their sexuality. This helped me to understand that the gay community is diverse and not what I had imagined as seen on TV or through various media. LGBT sports became the medium for my coming out and became my LGBT family. Since then I've seen many of my sports buddies come out and come to terms with who they are. Sports was where we felt safe and can be who we are. Ultimately, it was the game we loved that helped us to feel a sense of belonging and accepted as member of the greater LGBT community."
As the barriers of homophobia come falling down at different rates across the country, San Francisco, as always, finds itself at times out of step with its neighbors. This is apparent on the playing fields and arenas as LGBT sports groups in the Bay Area become ever more inclusive of straights with less trepidation than their counterparts.
"More in San Francisco than elsewhere you tend to have straight people who are cool with gay people," Chen said, "and you tend to have more straight players in the core contact sports like football, wrestling, and rugby."
Thus the seriousness of the ongoing lawsuit filed by the National Center for Lesbian Rights on behalf of softball players from San Francisco whose team was disqualified from the Gay Softball World Series after an interrogating panel decided they were not gay. Beyond the fact that a rule restricting the number of players of a given sexual orientation is in violation of non-discrimination laws in California and Washington where the event was held, there was the disturbing fact that the players who were ruled heterosexual despite giving the same answers as players who were deemed gay were people of color.
"That's an issue not just for softball but for all gay sports," Chen said. "One thing we're very proud of in our organization is that we have a lot of guys come out to play and they have never been comfortable with their sexuality before, or they have been on the down low," Chen said. "They have seen on TV, people dressing in drag, and they think, 'That's outrageous' and that's just not them.
"But they view football as a very 'masculine' sport and they feel comfortable playing with it. When they get to know gay players they go, 'Wow, the community isn't what I thought it was.' They come out through football. I think it's very important. We find that very rewarding."
San Francisco Bay Flag Football is open to men and women and offers various levels of play for novices and veterans. For information, visit their Facebook page or e-mail [email protected].
Cheerful donations
While their fellow athletes were digging deep to compete at their best in the Gay Games this year in Cologne, Germany, members of Cheer SF were getting folks to dig deep into their pocketbooks to help others. With some 40 members in Cologne for Gay Games VIII, Cheer SF was by far and away the most active and most visible cheerleading squad at the opening and closing ceremonies and numerous events in between.
Collectively, the Pride Cheerleading Association, which also included squads from Los Angeles and New York, raised more than $16,000 at the Gay Games. Half of the funds have been donated to the German AIDS services organization AIDS-Hilfe Koln. The remaining funds were presented this week to the Federation of Gay Games for its scholarship fund.
The total amount raised this year by the Pride Cheerleading Association was more than twice the combined total raised at the previous two Gay Games.
For more information about Cheer SF, visit www.cheersf.org.