Our Group student athlete Kim Fuller tells her story in rugby

From our friends from Our Group student athletes, a self-portrait by a young rugby player:

Sharing my Story: Kim Fuller
Posted on May 23, 2011 by Our Group Athletes

The first moment I experienced blatant homophobia in sports (my game-changing experience) was during my freshman year of college when I began playing college rugby. I played rugby in high school, and when I was there, the team was an open community where everyone loved each other, and people looked beyond differences.

In college, the concept of accepting everyone, regardless of their differences, was not embraced compared to that of my high school team. During my freshman year of college, I was shocked when my teammates, who seemed to love playing rugby, suddenly left the team. It became an alarming amount of people who decided to quit. When I began to question why people were leaving a sport that was so meaningful to me (and to them), the answer broke my heart.

One girl told me, and at the time I was not an out athlete, that there were too many lesbians on the team, and she didn’t want to be a part of it. She thought that rugby was a gay sport, that only gay girls could play it. This girl no longer wanted to be on the team since she wasn’t gay and she didn’t want the gay girls to try to pursue her. Many other straight-identified girls that quit felt this exact same way.

This homophobia even effected how the men’s team interacted with our women’s team. Rugby is a sport that strives on comradery, not only within the team itself, but across other (male and female) teams in the area. Historically, Charleston was known as a team that had a deep tie between the women’s and men’s teams, and we would hold after-game socials together. Unfortunately, most of the time I went there, the guys refused to celebrate with us because they believed that there were now too many gay women on the team.

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