Queerness in Sports
Benedetto Maniscalco | November 3, 2022
In recent years some students have shown a disdain towards Warren Wilson College (WWC)’s approach to broadening their school sport programs. While there is a noticeable disconnect between student athletes and non student athletes on WWC campus, one cultural force that helps these students relate to each other is queerness.
Rae Milstead, a third year math major on the Echo Crew, is one of these students that intersects the athlete and queer culture on campus. To speak to the latter, they find that WWC’s LGBT students — in addition to the community and culture they cultivate — is a large positive for the campus.
“I think that it's the most positive culture on our campus and it's one of the biggest cultures on our campus,” Milstead said
Given the size of the student population that identifies within the LGBTQ+ community, the amount of queer athletes that are attracted to WWC campus translates consistently.
“On the girls soccer team, we're all gay,” Milstead said. “That’s hyperbolic, but most of most of us are queer.”
Milstead spoke to the difference in their experience at Warren Wilson as opposed to larger colleges.
“I have a positive relationship with all of my teammates, whereas at (Texas) A&M, it was very stressful and no one was queer and there was just not a lot of connection,” Milstead said.
Milstead hadn’t planned on playing with WWC’s soccer team when they first transferred. They were attracted to the school for its outdoor education program, its geographical place in the mountains and its high population of queer students.
“I was not planning on playing soccer just because I used to play for A&M and it was just so taxing on my body,” Milstead said. “But I saw the team, I met a lot of teammates and talked to the coach and when the coach had said, ‘we don't call ourselves the women's team, we call ourselves the W team, because not all of us identify as women,’ I kind of had a moment, I want to be on this team.”
Heather Davis, Head Soccer Coach for the W soccer team at WWC and Senior Woman Administrator, like Milstead, had previous experience within colleges that had less queer student populations.
“UNC Charlotte's kind of a big state school,” Davis said. “A little more cookie cutter and definitely a little more normative. And then St. Mary's College of California was a Christian Brothers institution. So it has this kind of basis of religion and religious identity, but was a small private school.”
While St. Mary's College is also a small private school, its student body culture differs greatly from that of WWC.
“I see queer couples walking around campus and never saw that either school,” Davis said. “I think some of that has to do with the type of student that goes to those colleges, that's attracted to what they're offering and I do think a lot of that — especially at St. Mary's — had to do with the religious underpinnings of it.”
She mentioned her experience playing soccer semi-professionally on a Christian team, only finding out about its religious foundations after she had joined.
“I showed up and they're like, ‘where's your Bible?’” Davis said. “I was like, ‘oh shit, what did I get myself into? I should have done more research; I get to this team and and they basically tell me I'm going to hell because I'm gay.”
Davis held strongly onto her identity and decided to stay through the entire season despite the backlash she was receiving and despite the negativity her team and coaches had toward queer people.
“I go through the whole season, and it's like a witch hunt, trying to rid the team of all the queer people but I just stayed on the team,” Davis said. “I was like, ‘I'm gonna make them look at this gay girl, I'm just gonna stay right here on the bench, I'm gonna sit here and I can deal with it.”
She explained her gratitude to be working within a college that harbors a much different relationship with queerness and a campus with so many queer students.
“Wilson is unlike any place I've ever worked in that, truly, folks can express themselves and identify in all different types of ways that they feel moved to,” Davis said.
Milstead mentioned a similar gratitude toward the queerness in and out of sports on campus.
“There's a lot of coaches and there's a lot of people leading positions that have really implemented this socializing around queer culture,” Milstead said. “I don't even realize that it's queer culture sometimes. I just realize it's our humanity and we're just chillin’ all together and it just so happens that like, one of my trainers is queer, one of my coaches is queer.”
While this culture of positivity has well established roots, there are still differing feelings and differing cultures on campus and within sports.
“There's still kind of a toxic masculinity thing of having to prove yourself in the sport and be as manly as possible,” Milstead said. “There's significantly less of that here than at Texas A&M, but there still is some. I think that (WWC) not having a football team helps.”
Davis expressed appreciation and admiration for what she observes and experiences first hand in the WWC athletic department.
“We're always evolving and I see queerness as a very fluid thing, like sexual orientation and gender are very fluid for me,” Davis said. “I love being on that journey, for myself and with my partner. Like I've been able to watch her journey and coming into a more authentic identity and I love being on that journey with my athletes as they come more into themselves — whatever that is — and that can change it changes year to year and I love being a witness to that and being a friend walking on that journey with them.”