The Epic Highs and Lows of Queer Basketball Theory

How do you define community? We can safely say a community is a group of people who you associate with, and even more generally, people with whom you share a commonality. We learn from a young age that we must  pack ourselves into boxes — that we must sort ourselves socially into preconceived notions of what kind of person we should be. We spend a great deal of time later trying to make sense of ourselves all as we expand our horizons, meet new people who are like us, and learn how we differ from others. As time goes on, we constantly work and re-work the schemas that dictate who we are supposed to make community with.

Where do we find community? At Amherst, that question seems obvious. We go to the club fair and get roped into a couple odd clubs by our orientation leaders, classmates, dormmates, or other people we happen to know. Some of us may have been recruited by the college for a specific sports team, and regardless of what you might think about the student-athlete divide, the bond that is created when you join a sports team is almost second to none. You train together, you share equipment, you eat together, and you debrief together. Almost every waking minute you’re not in class, they are with you, and no matter what, they’ve got your back. When you step onto the court or the field, victory is not just in your hands alone. You’re all in this together — they are your community.

We find community in other places too, especially when it comes to identity. There are many affinity groups on campus, many of which are queer. There are many amazing queer pride registered student organizations (RSOs) like Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC), as well as others that combine being queer while being in STEM (Out in STEM), or being a queer athlete of any sport (Queer Athlete Alliance). There are also club sports teams, which are non-varsity teams where you can play regardless of experience. As of this writing, however, there are no RSOs which are dedicated to a mixed-gender sporting experience for typically gender-segregated sports or a markedly all-queer sports team. 

I don’t point this absence out to say that it’s necessarily wrong not to have this kind of community on campus, but why not have this kind of community on campus? In the field of play, the idea of relation, of being able to share yourself with your teammates, and for them in turn to be able to trust and confide in you, is something that is integral to a good performance on the court or the field. Synergy is a major key in the song of life, and execution of a play often depends on the subtleties expressed by your teammates in each turn of the game. Disconnecting from your team snaps you out of the flow, and for those of us who came from conservative, rural areas, the sidelining of self can feel even more costly. 

It is quite easy to slip into the mindset that attitudes are better up here, but as Managing Opinion Editor Caroline Flinn ’28 noted in her piece, Amherst Isn’t As Left as You May Think, the college is not always a haven for left-wing politics, and as I would argue, not always a haven for queerdom. I would also like to go a step further and make note that attending the apathy is a right-lean in places sometimes unexpected. Oppressive views tossed into a classroom discussion with a demure nonchalance, a wall of Fizz defense for a poorly researched and dogwhistle-laden piece, or the occasional comment overheard in Valentine Dining Hall (Val) is enough to knock you back into the reality that elite institutions encourage a liberal veneer rather than promote substantive left-wing politics.

Interest in theme communities like Sylvia Rivera, the queer theme floor situated atop Moore Dormitory, has declined this year based on the number of applications I reviewed compared to last year. Maybe it is because of the housing shift toward the new Student Center or perhaps the woeful lottery system. Staff have been cut in college-sponsored safe spaces like the Queer Resource Center per the official college budget. Allow me to indulge an insular point of view as I ask— what role should queerhood play on campus if it must abide by the rules drawn up by the college? Do answers actually lie outside of Amherst?

In late February, I had the opportunity to watch a basketball game where everyone on the court was queer, including the coaches and cheerleaders. This game was played by a community basketball league centered in Easthampton called Division Q (or “Div Q”) which centers queer players and competes in a short season from the first week of February to the end of March. It is almost unbelievable that something so niche exists outside of the five colleges. It is a testament to queering space and an incredible dedication to such a diverse community.

Exist with me for a little bit. You are situated in an elementary school much nicer than any you had seen before. Girl Scout Cookies are being sold outside the gym. So, you sit down with your pack of Lemon-Ups and watch the game unfold. Before tip-off, the competing teams — Homo Improvement and Friends of Dorothy — are hailed in player-by-player by the absolutely spectacular Valley Queerleaders. As the first period unfolds, it dawns on you that these are the teams of your dreams — players of any and all gender, players of all ages, and players who are unapologetically queer. The first three periods end with the score fairly close, until the fourth, where a 58-46 victory for Homo Improvement finally crystallized. 

Between periods, the Valley Queerleaders cheered for either team, depending on which side controlled the guest hoop. When players fell, a player from the other team would immediately rush to help them up even in the middle of a play not called for a foul. Referees educated players on easier forgotten rules without judgement. This felt like a more welcoming environment than varsity games I had attended in the past. But the same amount of spirit flowed through the stands as speculation of fouls and travel calls passed back and forth between friends and Pioneer Valley community members. After a thoroughly gripping game, I left what felt like a utopic environment where identity did not matter. Anyone could experience the epic highs and lows of league basketball.

I came back to the Amherst campus feeling rejuvenated, but now saddled with questions of what made this community stand out so much to me. I thought, too, about play and how communities engage in it. Who decides the players, the court, the rules? Who is the primary gatekeeper? What is sportsmanship, and what does it mean to fully understand and to show kindness to your opponent — no,  to your fellow player?

Varsity is an all-or-nothing construct, a ticket to a higher institution, to fame, or the recesses of memory. Not for nothing, because although it can be a formative experience, oftentimes care is not taken by the rulekeepers and coaches to make practices and games a safe environment, both for learning and for bonding with other players. Is it for fear of guardrailing, or for the harsh reality of the hostile world? 

In queering a contact sport like basketball, we should be able to count on the overseers of the game as well as the people we make our play with to ensure a court where we feel welcome, feel safe to fall and be caught, to be totally and utterly ourselves without abandon. After the game, I spoke with one of the players from the Friends of Dorothy team and current Amherst student, Aaron Williams ’26. He agreed that safety is a big factor in playing queer sports, reflecting, “safety is really… I haven't really experienced that kind of thing [in varsity basketball]...” and “to be able to see a community of queer, trans athletes in a space together, it’s like a kind of joy.” 

More than that, the ability to play for the fun of things, to not have to worry about the carrot dangling at the end of the stick relieves a lot of pressure that builds up over years of hard work, over the feeling of having to constantly perform and outperform yourself and others. Concerning the difference between community and varsity play, Williams explained, “Div Q is much more accepting of where you’re at in life … [there are] people on [the] team of all different skill levels from people who have never played before to people who have been playing for 30 years,” while adding that “it’s beneficial to get out and do  a community sport … there’s a lot that the community can teach you.”

As for my own experiences in varsity league, I remember my seventeenth birthday being spent playing the longest tennis game that the regional directors had ever seen up to that point. And through tiebreak after tiebreak after tiebreak and tiebreak, I finally… lost. As a 2020 graduate, it was the last game I got to officially play for varsity. Reflecting on it, I wonder if the original tennis gamemakers could have ever accounted for a reality where opposing players could be so in sync, could give themselves entirely to the game and not worry about the prize at the end, could just exist in this moment with each other, rally with the same pulse, match step after step like an intricately devised dance, track the ball like instant messages exchanged back and forth, each deserving of a quick but meaningful reply, and when the lob comes, hitting the overhead smash to accept the end of the rush. Was that for the point, or were you trying to show off? This is the game of your life, and you are playing to get inside the other player’s mind, to exist with them for a little bit, here on this court, together. Does that make sense? Follow-up question— was that queer?

Sure, it was queer. It was queer in that it was a Camp version of tennis. For those unfamiliar with Camp, it is more something you feel than define, but if we must, we can say it is the aesthetic of exaggeration, emphasis, and artifice. In the melodrama of our moment, we forgot the space we were supposed to inhabit, which is to say, the competition for all the marbles (hence it is artifice). Back there, we were just two teenagers trying to understand each other through motion rather than word, and ultimately, succeeding in this campy game of ours where we played for the sake of… well, play. In applying this same notion to team sports, I truly believe the kindness and care we show both our teammates and opponents, as well as getting to know and understand them, can often bring us into a more interesting and more validating performance than one that is done for the sole sake of winning the game. 

Besides bringing our reflections to the forefront, what could the future of queer sports look like? How do we expand knowledge of community leagues like Div Q? How do we bridge the gap between queer and sporting communities? It seems that one of the most important answers is sticking with the communities through thick and thin, continuing to support them. Williams affirmed he would like to stay with his team for as long as he is in the valley, and that seeing the growth of the league is something incredibly important to him.  

In the end, it is integral to keep supporting on-campus RSOs, facilities, talks, and theme communities which support and promote queerhood and queer spaces. There is a wonderful thing, too, creating what you want to see blossom here in Pioneer Valley. All I posit is that perhaps it is also beneficial to look beyond campus and support the communities that exist out there, that want to welcome people of all backgrounds in, that are not structured in an institution bound by collegiate budget. And, if you have the wherewithal, why not dabble in some of these communities?