In March this year, the Queer Sporting Alliance (QSA) took out the Outstanding Contribution to Sport Award at the Victorian Pride Awards.
The QSA is Australia and New Zealand’s largest LGBTIQA+ sporting club, and the award recognises its ongoing efforts to provide queer-friendly sporting environments and events.
They have included Australia’s first and largest queer basketball tournament, which featured more than 180 players from around Australia and took place on Wurundjeri Country in the northern suburbs of Naarm/Melbourne in January 2024.
The QSA’s focus is on participation and creating a space for those who have previously been excluded from sport.
Some participants had not played basketball in many years before the tournament, and for some it was their first time stepping onto a court.
The tournament, and all QSA programs, welcome queer folk as well as straight allies.
“It was like Mardi Gras but for gays who love sport,” participant Jethro Athlas said.
“It was my dream come true.”
QSA president Stella Lesic said the tournament was significant because it ensured players of any gender identity could participate.
“The tournament didn’t require any player to out themselves [unless they wanted to] or have a referee assume their gender for the purpose of applying mixed/gendered basketball rules,” they said.
“Particularly for players taking steps to gender affirmation or who have experienced transphobia in sport, our tournament and the QLeague are game-changing.
“For the first time in basketball’s history, players could just play.”
Associate professor Ada Cheung is a clinician, scientist and endocrinologist specialising in the treatment of transgender individuals and sees the benefits the QSA brings to the community.
“What QSA does is beneficial, not just for queer people, but for everybody,” she says.
“[At] the grassroots level, there needs to be much more of a focus on participation [for gender diverse people].”
Bringing queer people back to basketball
Athlas started basketball at 11 years old and played until they came out as non-binary at 23.
“I felt I couldn’t show up as me with the binary rules of a regular competition and I didn’t have many other queer friends at the time to make a team that felt safe,” they said.
Fellow tournament participant Leigh Seelie had a similar story of dropping out of sport after coming out as trans.
“I played on and off during my adulthood and stopped around four years ago as I started to transition,” she said.
“I did not feel that the captain of my team would accept me as they had made a number of transphobic posts on Facebook.
“I did not find a new team as I was concerned about how people would react to me playing and I did not want to be spotlighted.
“When the [QSA] tournament came up, I was very excited to play … It felt like a great opportunity to play a sport I loved again.”
While at first Seelie felt “overwhelmed” about playing in the tournament after time away from the game, she said her team made her feel very welcome.
“I felt a huge amount of joy just being able to be me and play a game I loved,” she said.
With more than 1,000 members registered around Australia, the QSA has also seen an influx of straight, cisgender men and women joining the club.
“QLeague is a joy,” QSA regular and ally Greg Craske said.
“The diversity is an amazing part of the league and comes along with so much mutual support, even across teams.
“Everyone wants others to do well, especially for those that have no experience.”
As an ally to the queer community, Craske sees key differences in the sporting environment the QSA provides.
Craske transferred to the QSA after playing in exclusively male leagues.
“[At the QSA] I have never seen a tech foul given, never seen the referee openly argued with, and have never seen aggression between players,” Craske said.
“It is refreshing, and at my age I am glad to leave all that behind”.
Trans participation lagging behind
Only a very small percentage of the trans community currently participates in sport.
The QSA is determined to change that, and since launching in 2015 has formed dozens of teams across the country.
This includes the QLeague in Naarm, which is designed to engage more trans and gender diverse people in sport.
Dr Cheung argued that such initiatives were critical in the context of current debates around trans participation in sport.
“I’ve been doing a lot of advocacy in the space because a lot of decisions and policies, even at the elite level, have been made based on fear and a lack of evidence and presuming that trans women are men, which is just not true and not understanding what the current research actually shows,” Dr Cheung said.
While many sports continue to grapple with definitions of inclusion, Lesic dreams of the QSA becoming “the biggest queer sports club on the planet”, by bringing everyone in rather than finding more reasons to keep people out of participating in sport.
Reflecting on creating the QSA and building it to what it is today, Lesic said: “We got there by focusing on ensuring the people sitting on the sidelines were our absolute priority. My future hope is that sport from community to elite finds a way to include everyone.”
ABC Sport is partnering with Siren Sport to elevate the coverage of Australian women in sport.
Courtney Fewquandie (she/her) is a proud Butchulla and Gubbi Gubbi woman and sports advocate specialising in diversity, equity, and social justice.
Kirsty Marshall (she/her) is a video producer and digital content creator with a passion for making community spaces more inclusive, specifically in a sporting context.