The recent recruitment event by the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance drew a packed crowd, helping to fill up an already busy Blake’s. Aspiring gay athletes were introduced to AGSA’s eight sports organizations. A spread in the March 12 issue of David magazine includes some photos I shot at the event. Learn more about the event and see additional photos here.
The eight teams of the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance set up shop inside the top floor of Blake’s on March 2 for its second recruitment and sign up event of the year. The crowd, which was easy on the eyes, was there to learn more about the teams that swim, run, scrum, spike, swat tennis balls and softballs, and kick and throw a pigskin.
During their event in January, AGSA made some news by announcing its first Sportsperson of the Year, swimmer Michelle Martin.
This time around, the focus was more on the eye candy. And to help, I’ve added Flickr to the blog, which provides an easy way to share photos from events all over town. (You don’t have to register with Flickr to view the photos.) View the pics one by one or as a slide show. There’s also the ability to post a comment.
| www.flickr.com |
Quick hits on what’s happening in Atlanta’s gay sports world this weekend:
RUGBY. The Atlanta Bucks Rugby Football Club (1-3) takes on High County in a rematch from late January. High Country won that contest big – 52-3. But the Bucks notched their first win of the season Feb. 23 against Nashville. Game time is 1 p.m. on Saturday at Creel Park in College Park.
RUNNING. Front Runners Atlanta, which typically hosts an 8 a.m. run at Piedmont Park, is changing course this weekend. The group will test a route through Inman Park and Candler Park. 8 a.m. at the parking lot of StudioPlex in Inman Park with a post-run breakfast at Highland Bakery.
SOCCER. The Hotlanta Soccer Association hosts a beer bash and fund-raisers on Saturday. The event is to raise money for the league’s annual tournament held over Memorial Day Weekend. Tap from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
SOFTBALL. The Decatur Women’s Sports League hosts sign up events for its upcoming softball season, which starts March 21. On Saturday, it’s 6 p.m. at 3 Legged Cowboy. On Sunday, it’s 12:30 p.m. at First MCC.
AGSA. The Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance holds its second recruitment event of the year on Sunday. It’s a chance to learn more about the eight sports organizations that make up the alliance, enjoy some eye candy and knock back a drink or two. Blake’s on the Park from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Michelle Martin, a massage therapist in Decatur, started swimming with the Atlanta Rainbow Trout at the age of 50. Two years later, she entered her first international swimming competition and now holds several records and won five gold medals during the International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics championships last summer in Paris. Last month, the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance named her Sportsperson of the Year.
Martin offers five tips on how older adults can start – and stick with – a fitness routine:
1. Start small. Don’t smart with something big. Don’t go from doing nothing to registering for a triathlon.
2. Start with something you already know. If the only thing you know how to do already is walk, then start walking.
3. Set your priorities. If you are going to do something, put it into your schedule. Say I am going to run every Wednesday at 9 a.m.
4. Set a goal. Work from goal to goal. When you achieve your first goal, as soon as you are done, set up your second goal and never leave yourself goalless. That is the twilight zone and you stop doing everything. For example, say for the month of February, I am going to walk 15 times this month.
5. Have a team – chiropractor, therapist, acupuncturist – to go to when you hit minor setbacks so they can help you heal. Because an older athlete has a whole different set of problems than younger athletes do, they get hurt and it takes them longer to heal. The big thing that discourages older athletes is that they get hurt and their body isn’t responding as it did when they were 30 or 40. You are not too old to do this. Have a team to get you patched up and running again.
Fab Five is a weekly feature that quizzes personalities about sports-related topics. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.
Catch up on past Fab Fives:
Mark Pettit on how the Atlanta Dream should reach gay fans.
Gary Sisney’s tips for watching the Super Bowl.
Philip Rafshoon on page turners for the sporty type.
Mike Horton’s gay sports hopes for 2008.
One of the rewarding aspects of writing and blogging about the gay sports scene in Atlanta is meeting the people behind the incredible number of organizations spread all across the metro area. That was the case recently in talking with Michelle Martin, who seems to spend all of her free time running through the streets of her Decatur neighborhood and swimming with friends at practices of the Atlanta Rainbow Trout.
But Martin is more than just another gay jock looking to stay in shape and meet new people, the most common refrains heard from members of gay sports organizations. It’s turned into a passion for her, undertaking a new sport at age 50 and quickly becoming a dominant force in her age group. She also gives back, serving as swim director for the Trout.
“I just had so much fun,” Martin says of competing in her first International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics championships in 2002. “It was great going to a gay meet and meeting other lesbian swimmers. I just loved it.”
After she was recently named Sportsperson of the Year by the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance, I had the chance to profile Martin in my Southern Voice sports column. Read the full story.
The crowd at the recent Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance recruitment event was filled with easy-on-the-eyes scenery. A few hundred people packed the upper floor of Blake’s on the Park for the Jan. 27 event, which was held to introduce aspiring gay athletes to the eight sports organizations that make up AGSA. A spread in the Feb. 6 issue of David magazine includes some photos I shot at the event. Learn a little more about the event through a previous post here.
Some eight years ago, Michelle Martin could barely swim one length in a pool. But she decided to change that, joining the Atlanta Rainbow Trout to train and eventually swim competitively.
Now, she dominates the pool, holds team records and ranks in the Top 10 of the U.S. Masters’ Swimming Dixie Zone for 19 events. Martin also holds three individual championship records with International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics, the world organizing body for gay swimming.
She started it all at the age of 50.
Martin, known among fellow swimmers as “Madame Butterfly” and now the Trout’s swimming director, was recognized for her accomplishments on Sunday as the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance named her its Sportsperson of the Year. The inaugural award was unveiled during AGSA’s two-hour meet-and-greet at Blake’s on the Park to raise awareness of its eight sports organizations.
Martin was one of three finalists for the new award. Mark Davis, a founder of AGSA and a longtime team captain with the Hotlanta Volleyball Association, and Brian Lazzaro, a team captain with the Atlanta Team Tennis Association, were also up for the award. AGSA organizations nominated an athlete or team for the award with the AGSA board selecting the finalists and winner.
Also at the event, Blake’s General Manager Ray Matheson pledged to donate $300 to each of the eight AGSA groups.
The Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance will unveil its gay or lesbian jock of the year on Sunday, the inaugural event in what organizers hope will become an annual tradition.
The award will be unveiled during the group’s two-hour recruitment and meet-and-greet. Some 150 people attended a similar event last September and AGSA hopes to hold them quarterly to help its eight sports teams recruit new members and promote their upcoming seasons.
“We wanted people who had ordinary stories, who said they wanted to prove something to themselves,” Mike Horton, AGSA’s chair, says of the new award. “We wanted to honor people who had done that. Their exceptional abilities came from them being ordinary people who at one point decided to one day just go out and do it.”
My sports column in Southern Voice this week takes a look at the event and the three finalists for the Sportsperson of the Year award. Read the full story.
The column also takes a brief look at the Wednesday unveiling of the new name and logo of Atlanta’s WNBA franchise. In addition to the coverage on my blog (find it here), I also wrote a longer piece for sovo.com that you can find here.
Mike Horton, chair of the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance (AGSA), gives us his five resolutions for 2008:
1. Everyone who wants to do so finds a sport within the AGSA family through which they grow physically, socially and 
emotionally. As a lifelong athlete, some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned have been on the playing field. Ditto for friendships. Sports keep us physically fit and socially active, and many of the situations we face prepare us for situations we face in life. We love welcoming newcomers into the AGSA family. Come out and play.
2. 2008 will be the Year of the Woman … in Atlanta gay sports, anyway. Hillary might seem to be in trouble, but we’re doing fine in Atlanta gay sports where female leadership is concerned. The Atlanta Team Tennis Association, our tennis league, has a female president, Hope Black, for the first time in 20 years. It’s obvious she will only strengthen our league with her skills. More women in our other leagues need to join her and the female leadership of the Hotlanta Softball League. It’s a great thing for all of us.
3. The Atlanta Bucks Rugby Football Club will be very successful, and have a lot of fun, at Bingham Cup 2008 in Dublin. Talk about some serious off-season conditioning! The Bucks have been training very hard to represent us in June. With five months to go, you can bet they’ll make us all very proud.
4. The Hotlanta Softball League will produce even more champions than last season’s three winners at the NAGAA World Series. Talk about dominance in 2007 and you can start with our gay softball league. The competition is fierce and we proved that Atlanta gay softball is truly elite during the tournament in Phoenix last October, as our league representatives won three of eight divisions. We can do even better in the Emerald City (Seattle) in late autumn.
5. Atlanta’s entry into Gay Bowl VIII in Salt Lake City in October ends New York’s run. We’ve listened to New York talking about their dynasty and about how Atlanta’s always been the team that could possibly beat them. This year should be the year that our team from the National Flag Football League of Atlanta ends your dominance.
Fab Five is a regular feature that quizzes leaders in Atlanta’s gay sports scene. Got someone you’d like to see featured? E-mail me with ideas.
Editor’s note: The end of the year means lists. The best of, the worst of, the most quotable personalities of the year. You know, us media types don’t miss a chance to recap our prose from the prior year. Not wanting to miss out, I’m unveiling my five picks for the best local gay sports stories in 2007. Enjoy.
Getting a professional sports organization to admit it has gay fans is tough. Getting them to embrace those gay fans is nearly impossible.
But a partnership between the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance and Atlanta Pride did just that on April 19, when their combined efforts drew more than 150 gay and lesbian fans to Turner Field for “Pride Night at the Braves.” Organizers, unsure of the response they would get, set aside 150 tickets for the event. They all sold and left last-minute participants scrambling to get an individual ticket and find the mass of gay fans in the upper decks.
The event marked the first “gay night” at the Braves since 2002, when about 500 people took part. In 2001, some 2,000 people participated to support Atlanta Games, a group that led an unsuccessful bid to land the 2004 Gay Games in Atlanta. The 2007 rendition raised about $600 for Pride and AGSA.
The Braves, for their part, didn’t say much about the event. In fact, they never did return my calls seeking comment about “Pride Night.”