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Gay sports groups were out in full force during the Atlanta Pride Festival last weekend.

Several combined forces under a double-wide tent for the Atlanta Gay Sports Alliance, a collection of nine organizations from swimming to rodeo, to spread the sports gospel at the marketplace at the civic center.

Other groups, including the Atlanta Bucks Rugby Football Club, ventured out on their own, offering a booth made to look like a mini rugby pitch. Outdoor groups – the Wilderness Network of Georgia and the Women’s Outdoor Network – were, ironically, inside the civic center enjoying the air conditioned space for their displays.

When it came to the parade on Sunday, several groups marched with the Bucks. Their float focused on the championship they won at the Bingham Cup last month. The club took the Bowl, the mid-tier division of the international gay rugby tournament. Also on hand were members of the Hotlanta Soccer Association, which staged a successful Memorial Day Weekend tournament, and the Atlanta Rainbow Trout, which won eight individual and four team medals during the International Gay & Lesbian Aquatics Championships earlier this month.

The two gay outdoor groups offered up their own floats with canoes and tents, as did the Decatur Women’s Sports League, which included blow up balls and bats. In fact, the Wilderness Network of Georgia’s float won third place in the non-profit category. And of course, it wouldn’t be Pride if there wasn’t a drag queen or two along for the ride.

Hundreds of gay and lesbian runners took part in the 18th Annual Atlanta Front Runners Pride Run/Walk on Saturday, trekking along a new course that stretched around Midtown.

The event, held at Grant Park for most of its history, this year stepped off from Ansley Mall and featured a 3.1-mile course that moved along Piedmont Road and looped through one of Atlanta’s most historic neighborhoods. Though the run has also served as the unofficial sports event of the Atlanta Pride Festival, that celebration changed dates (and location, too) and opens on July 4.

Despite the changes to the Pride Run, the results were the same as 2007: Ben Clarke (right photo) finished first and was also the overall men’s winner while Kim Feather again took the women’s crown. In fact, when she crossed the finish line on Saturday, Feathers captured the women’s crown for the 12th consecutive year.

Proceeds from the event will be donated to the Jerusalem House, which provides housing for people with HIV/AIDS.

If you’re trying to clear your morning fog with a cup of Starbucks or getting your workout going at LA Fitness at Ansley Mall tomorrow, look out for the runners.

Somewhere near 500 sweaty gay and lesbian runners will be milling around early in the morning for the 18th running of the unofficial sports event of the Atlanta Pride Festival. Trouble is, Pride moved and so did the 18th Annual Atlanta Front Runners Pride Run/Walk.

Hint: If you’re one of those kind-hearted gay race fans who cheers on participants from the porch of their Grant Park home every year, forget it. The race dumped you and moved on to Ansley. Sorry.

Hint, hint: If you’re looking for Pride, well sweetie, that’s next weekend.

If you’re a runner looking for a cause, there’s still time to register. Just show up well in advance of tomorrow’s 8 a.m. start time and they’ll squeeze you in. You’ll still get a t-shirt and grab bag of goodies. Your race fee, like everyone else’s, will go towards a big charitable contribution to Jerusalem House, which provides housing for people with HIV/AIDS.

Check back tomorrow for photos from the event. See, you can enjoy it without getting up early on a Saturday. For a fuller preview, read my recent Southern Voice sports column.

Photo: Sher Pruitt, Southern Voice

Lace up your running shoes and get ready for some change.

The 18th Annual Atlanta Front Runners Pride Run/Walk is set for June 28, but it’s changing locations and is no longer an anchor sporting event of the Atlanta Pride Festival.

The 3.1-mile run, typically held at Grant Park, has moved the starting line to Ansley Mall. And while it’s staying put on the last Saturday in June, Atlanta Pride moved its event back a week, to July 4-6.

Some 500 participants are expected for the run and walk and organizers hope they help raise $10,000 for the Jerusalem House, which provides housing for people with HIV/AIDS. The event has donated more than $150,000 for charity since its inception in 1990.

I talked with race organizers for my Southern Voice sport column this week:

“We think the change to Ansley will be well received,” said Bernie Colligan, president of Front Runners Atlanta. “It’s a beautiful course and it’s just a good spot to start it from.”

Read the full column. Check out the new route after the jump.

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It’s been the unanswered question since the city of Atlanta put in place new restrictions on the use of Piedmont Park: will the sports leagues and festivals that call the park home ever be allowed to return?

It’s a question that Maria Saporta, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, asked again today:

“The state’s Level 4 drought restriction still exists,” [city parks commissioner Dianne Harnell] Cohen says. “We would look very carefully at whether the state had lifted its drought restrictions. But the city can have its own restrictions.”

So can the festivals return to Piedmont Park in the future?

“I won’t say they never could come back to Piedmont Park,” Cohen says. “But I would advise them to have an alternative, a Plan B.”

(more…)

Pity those folks who are organizing gay sports tournaments this summer.

Three big events – the Hotlanta Soccer Classic, 5th Annual Best Ball Scramble Golf Tournament and the 18th Annual Atlanta Frontrunners Pride Run/Walk – are facing big changes this year thanks to the continuing fallout from the state’s long-running drought and the city of Atlanta’s efforts to protect its parks.

The Hotlanta Soccer Classic, a Memorial Day tournament organized by the Hotlanta Soccer Association, draws players from across the county. But restrictions on organized sports at Piedmont Park mean the event must find a new home.

“We are going to have the tournament somewhere,” said Bobby Flournoy, chair of the Hotlanta Soccer Classic. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed we don’t have Piedmont, but we will have the tournament and it will be great.”

The other two events, traditionally held during the Atlanta Pride Festival, also face significant changes since the festival has changed dates and location. For more details, check out my Southern Voice sports column. Read the full story.

With the start of the season just weeks away, the Atlanta Dream is in high gear.

This week proved pretty typical: On Tuesday, account executives continued their push for season ticket holders by stopping at an Atlanta Pride event where basketball fans were gathered to watch the NCAA women’s national championship.

On Wednesday, team executives selected Tamera Young in the first round of the WNBA Draft and closed a deal that put Camille Little and Chioma Nnamaka on the roster. On Thursday, the Dream introduced the new players to fans during a press conference.

Next week, on April 15, the team will hold open tryouts just days before opening training camp on April 20. If you think you have game, bring it to the day-long session. It’s open to the public.

Other key dates include April 27 (preseason games begin), May 17 (Dream season opens) and May 23 (first home game at Philips Arena). The team acquired the building blocks for the franchise in February during the expansion draft by adding several players, including  Katie Feenstra (photo), a 6-foot 8-inch center.

At the viewing party, the Dream found a pretty receptive audience, which I chronicle in my Southern Voice sports column. Read the full story.

The Dream also released the franchise’s first radio spots. Listen to the 30-second ad or the 60-second spot.

Organizers of Atlanta Pride took advantage of the NCAA women’s national championship on Tuesday to host a viewing party and fund-raiser for the annual gay gathering, which is set for July 4-6.

More than five-dozen women filled the high-top tables and chairs of Midtown Tavern on Piedmont Avenue to watch Tennessee defeat Stanford for its second consecutive title. The crowd included a healthy dose of Volunteer orange.

“We have a really diverse crowd out here tonight,” Donna Narducci, Pride’s executive director, said Tuesday. “It’s important to have a place to come together.”

Narducci, who admitted to not being much of a basketball fan, did allow that she enjoyed the NCAA championships. She was, though, surrounded by serious basketball fans including Angela Mason, who attended the fund-raiser on the invitation of a friend.

“My family is from Tennessee originally,” Mason said. “It’s pretty amazing that [Tennessee coach] Pat Summit has seven championships.”

Cayenne Barnes arrived with a group of friends to watch the game and support Pride. The festival was booted from Piedmont Park earlier this year when the city of Atlanta put in place new restrictions related to the long-running drought. The event was moved to the Atlanta Civic Center, which also prompted a change from its traditional date in late June.

“We really came out to support the Pride committee,” Barnes said. “Everyone is so down on the civic center and they need to give it a chance. It’s no big secret that you have to take care of the park.”

Narducci said the viewing party raised a few hundred dollars for the festival.

The state’s long-running drought has prompted further restrictions on athletic events inside Piedmont Park and forced at least one gay sports league to find a new home for its upcoming season.

In January, the city of Atlanta banned large-scale festivals from its parks, pushing Atlanta Pride to find another location. In announcing those restrictions, the city’s parks and recreation commissioner said league sports would remain in place at Piedmont and other city-owned parks, though she hinted that further restrictions could come as park caretakers monitored the health of the facilities.

But while announcing the drought restrictions last month, city officials were drafting additional rules and regulations for athletic teams using the parks, according to Sharon Davis, a spokesperson for the city parks and recreation department. The new regulations, published in mid-February, ban league play in any park on Fridays and restrict rugby and soccer to just a handful of parks. The city had already banned cleats from its athletic fields.

The Piedmont Park Conservancy, a non-profit organization that manages the park, went a few steps further, closing the two large athletic fields in the Active Oval to baseball, golf, field hockey, flag football, lacrosse and rugby. The two softball fields and sand volleyball court will remain open.

The additional restrictions at Piedmont mean the National Flag Football League of Atlanta, which played there last year, had to scramble to find a new field for its upcoming season, which opens on March 22. Leaving Piedmont means giving up a high-profile location that helped raise awareness of the gay football league, said Thurman Williams, NFFLA’s president.

“When we were at Piedmont Park, it did a lot for us in terms of visibility,” Williams said. “We are just grateful to have a place, but I’d much rather be in Piedmont Park for sure.”

Read the full story.

Read the city’s new rules concerning athletic fields.

So far, the story goes something like this: A long-running drought raises concern over the city’s Midtown jewel, Piedmont Park. That leads to new restrictions booting large festivals from Piedmont and other parks. Atlanta Pride, forced to find a new location, settles on the civic center. The change in locale prompts a change in date, meaning Pride shifts to Fourth of July weekend. That, in turn, gives pause to organizers of events typically held alongside Pride.

Got it, so far? There’s more.

Now, the organizer of one of those events – the Best Ball golf tournament that benefits the Atlanta Feminist Women’s Chorus – is shifting that affair. In January, Eileen Stone hinted that the tournament might move to earlier in the summer if Pride also changes dates. Though the golf event has typically started early in the morning, Stone has always been concerned about the impact of the withering heat of late June as the event unfolds during the day, as she explained in January for my Southern Voice sports column:

“Golf in the summer time is brutal – it just gets so hot,” Stone said. “If I’m not going to hook it to Pride, it makes sense to move it up earlier.”

So, Stone announced recently that the fifth annual version of the Best Ball tournament will be held June 7, about a month before Pride. Last year, some 68 players took part, the largest field yet for the event, and helped raise $2,000 for the chorus. The chorus, though, is facing difficult financial times, as reported by Southern Voice this week.

Organizers of the other sports event typically held during Pride, the Front Runners Pride Run/Walk, have yet to decide where and when they will schedule that contest, which draws about 500 participants.