Kicking a new habit: Stonewall Kickball League

When people argue about Carolina versus Duke, my eyes glaze over until glossy and smooth like a custard.

The last time I played an organized sport was six years ago in Freedom Park. It was a flag football game with the Meetup.com group, Charlotte Singles. I wheezed from one side of the field to the next, hoping someone might find my lack of physical ability endearing and buy me a roast beef sandwich for lunch.

By the time I turned 29-years-old, it didn’t feel cute to be so un-sporty. It was hard to make friends, especially with fellow queer women in the local LGBT scene.

I could sip a Cosmopolitan and tell you which drag queen should have gone home on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but I had no idea how to play cornhole. I only knew it had nothing to do with the vegetable. I struggled to chat with grown women who often wore jaunty backwards baseball caps. I resisted the urge to tell them they looked like lovable scamps in a boys’ coming-of-age movie.

I wanted people to think I was at least passable at sports, and no amount of wearing my hat the wrong way would make me part of the Queen City’s sporty queer set. Maybe I wanted it too badly. I just needed a chance.

I needed one of these women to not want to throw a cornhole bean bag at my face.

Fast forward to this past February. A backwards baseball cap-wearing woman named Jet sent me a Facebook message. She was a fellow New Yorker in a Southern City, two things I also had going for me.

She invited me to play on her team with the Stonewall Kickball League, which featured predominantly local LGBT people. Founded in 2014, the organization partners with and does fundraising for Time Out Youth, a Charlotte-based nonprofit agency for young people. I would play during the 2015 season that ran through May with the only all-women team in the league, Chicks are for Kicks.

Jet’s kind gesture gave me instant hope. Not only was someone asking me be a part of something, but that something was a sport. She knew I had no experience. I barely knew that a kickball looked wildly different than a softball. But it was a real, live sport where I had to wear sneakers and a hat, albeit firmly with the brim over my face since I sunburned easily.

Plus, she was how a quintessential cool person should be, like a modern day Fonz. She wore sunglasses in nightclubs – at night. It delighted me that someone was living by the phrase, “The sun never sets on a bad ass.” Even when I almost missed the deadline to apply, she reminded me to sign up and pay for my t-shirt online.

If Jet wasn’t about to let the sun go down on me, then I had to let go of my own fears about playing organized sports. I accepted her invitation. We are playing through May and I want you to follow my foray into the local kickball scene. Watch out, Queen City. Joanne Spataro is playing sports.

Want to support the teams? The Stonewall Kickball League plays every Sunday until May 31 at Veteran’s Park, 2136 Central Avenue, Charlotte, NC 28205.