Tillerson had been living between Washington D.C. This insularity kept LGBTQ Atlanta’s expansive recreational offerings unknown even to an elite athlete like Tillerson, who ran track professionally after competing for University of Kentucky. With many of the organizations starting prior to social media, recruitment was often limited to word-of-mouth or hosting a fundraiser at a Midtown bar. However, despite the city’s reputation as a Black queer mecca, as well as the preponderance of Black athletes in many sports, Atlanta’s gay athletic leagues have long been perceived by some as part of the white social scene. Now, people are out riding bikes, they’re lifting weights again, they realize they’ve gained COVID weight and they’re trying to get back to, ‘Let me look good.’”įrom kickball to tennis, there are different group activities every day of the week across LGBTQ Atlanta. “People weren’t really able to do anything for a whole year, being locked in the house. “We live in Atlanta, and everyone wants to look good,” says Dedrick Tillerson, captain of the Atlanta Fury basketball team and founder of 4Us Sports, which has organized gay basketball and kickball tournaments, and partnered with Atlanta’s gay volleyball and flag football leagues. The city’s social fitness scene has helped generations of LGBTQ athletes satisfy their desire for competition and camaraderie, and post-pandemic even more people are looking for fun ways to stay active and re-connect with others. The softball league that served as a lodestar for Nobles is part of Atlanta’s vast queer sports universe.
“But at the same time I felt I could be myself, I don’t have to pretend and I can just enjoy being who I am.” “It was kind of shocking and intimidating to me at first,” Nobles says. An online friend invited him to join a softball league, which Noble didn’t realize was composed of gay players until he arrived at George Ward Park in Birmingham the following weekend. It’s hard living with that kind of secret with nobody to talk to, and trying to find myself-I just didn’t know what to do.”Įpitomizing how bygone that era of his life is, Nobles was rescued from his forlorn circumstances via MySpace. “And just knowing in the back of my head that I like guys and there’s no way the people I hang around with would acknowledge or understand that. “Growing up, being around the same people, doing the same thing every day and every weekend,” Nobles says, describing his life as a 20-year-old in Moundville, Ala., population less than 2,500. One of the goals in softball is to return to the same home plate you started from, but Jeremy Nobles’ journey through the sport led him to a new world.