Sean Fitzgerald (left), president of the Atlanta Rainbow Trout, hopes the team can match its performance form last year when it travels to the gay swimming championships later this month in Washington, D.C. The Decatur Women’s Sports League, started by Anne Barr last year, launches tennis, its newest sport, on June 13. (Photos by Matt Hennie)
Teams gear up for international competitions While some athletes prepare for medals, Decatur league offers bowling, tennis for lesbians
THE QUEST FOR gold by gay and lesbian athletes from Atlanta begins in earnest this month.
No, not gold from the Beijing Olympics in August, but from a handful of championship events that take place every summer.
Chief among them is the International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics Championships in Washington, D.C., where nearly four-dozen members of the Atlanta Rainbow Trout will compete, a contingent nearly twice as large as the one that competed in the event last year in Paris. But the Trout’s swimmers and two water polo teams face the tough task of bettering their accomplishments from 2007.
Overall, the Trout took gold in the small team division for only the second time in the swimming club’s history, while the polo team took bronze for the first time. Team members also collected 16 individual medals.
Since the championships are being held in the U.S. this year, it will should draw more participants and make the competition tougher, according to Sean Fitzgerald, the Trout’s president. The size of the Trout team for the event this year also means it will move up from the small team category.
“We are hopeful,” Fitzgerald said. “You never know until you get up there who everyone has. The competition is definitely going to be stepped up from the last couple of championships.”
LAST YEAR, THE Trout’s water polo team entered the event seeded fourth, its highest ranking since its inception in 1998. But the team lost in the quarterfinals each year since 2002, before defeating Team New York Aquatics to win third place. Some 22 polo players will travel to the tournament later this month, enough to field two teams.
Fitzgerald, who also plays water polo, said their top team enters as the third seed, which will improve its schedule in the early rounds. r />
“Our goal is to maintain our seed and come back with at least the bronze medal again. The No. One and No. Two seeds are out there, but we seem to get a little closer each year.”
The IGLA championships are the first of several international gay competitions in the coming months. The Atlanta Bucks Rugby Football Club takes part in the Bingham Cup, the championships of the International Gay Rugby Association & Board, beginning June 13; Hotlanta Softball League teams travel to Seattle in August to compete in the Gay Softball World Series; and the National Flag Football League of Atlanta will field a team for the Gay Super Bowl, set for October in Salt Lake City.
WHILE THOSE TEAMS prepare, the Decatur Women’s Sports League is taking a less-competitive approach to offering its newest sport — tennis — and starting a second season of bowling. The league, which started in 2007 with softball, continues to grow and respond to requests from participants for more offerings, according to founder Anne Barr.
“Because it has been so positive, word has spread,” Barr said. “The word of mouth is spreading and every day I get contacted by new people.”
The league’s bowling season opened June 4, while tennis begins June 13. A portion of the registration fees benefit the Atlanta Lesbian Health Initiative, which has received about $12,000 from the league since its start, Barr said.
The
following comments were posted by our readers and were
not edited by SOVO. We ask that you
treat others with respect; any post deemed offensive will
be removed.
