Triathlete 2.0
by Jeff Kagan
Groucho Marx once claimed that he could sing, dance, play the piano, and (in an emergency) move it. For an entertainer it is quite common to demonstrate three distinct talents---four if you count moving a piano as yet another, but for an athlete it is not so common. Many athletes have multiple abilities, but most focus on a single activity, the one at which they excel or most enjoy. There is a relatively rare group of athletes who go so far as to compete in two.
Pushing the envelope even further are those athletes whose lives revolve around competing in three different sports. We could call them tri-athletes, although, by its most primitive definition (sans hyphen), a triathlete is “one who competes in a triathlon,” an event which traditionally hosts competitions in swimming, cycling and running in immediate succession. While this may seem like insanity to most of us, it is a challenge to the dedicated athletes who push themselves to see how much sweat they can leave on the ball fields, at the ice rinks and in the swimming pools. Rather than risk upsetting the good people at Webster’s Dictionary, let’s enhance the original word and use the term “triathlete 2.0”.
Triathlete 2.0 (n) [trahy-ath-leet-too-dot-oh]: “one who participates in three sports organizations, not necessarily at the same time or even on the same day, but does so over the course of multiple weeks and months (called ‘seasons’).” Why train for a single day’s event and have it all end in a few hours?
Mikey Rickman is a triathlete 2.0. During the week, he’s a public school teacher and interpreter for the deaf in Boston, but his weekends are another story. On Saturdays and Sundays Rickman plays basketball, softball and volleyball -- with a little time in between for socializing and carbo-loading. He serves as the Commissioner of the Boston Gay Basketball League and plays for the Ashmont Rimshots in the upper division where he ranks 2nd in steals. Rickman owes his years of experience to his parents, as he’s been playing basketball since age 6. “My parents asked me if I wanted to play and gave me the opportunity to say yes or no. If I did not like the sport after I started, the only rule was to finish out the season so I did not let my team down,” he says. Apparently, he likes basketball so much, he hasn’t let a team down in 23 years. And the same goes for softball, which he’s been playing for just as long. He’s currently part of the Beantown Softball League where he plays for the Club Café Crew and also coaches Club Café Good Times. When he’s not playing basketball or softball, Rickman spends his last free remaining hours setting up and spiking the ball in the Cambridge Boston Volleyball League.
Being on a field or on a court every weekend for practices or games, Rickman’s schedule is quite rigorous, but he seems to enjoy the pandemonium. “I love meeting new people. Being involved gives me the opportunity to network and to learn more about the city. I moved here from Knoxville, Tennessee, not knowing many people, and now I have a place to call home. My teammates are not only my friends in Boston, but they are my family. ”
One man’s pandemonium is another man’s peace, according to Daniel Edwards, who plays softball, ice hockey and rugby. His motivation for being a triathlete 2.0 is geared more towards solitude and relaxation from life’s little curve balls. “I enjoy it because it keeps my mind at ease. I could have a stressful day at work and go to a hockey game and forget all about it in that hour or two of skating. It’s one of the only times my mind is free of distractions,” says Edwards, who works in the Computer Crimes Unit for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Atlanta.
Edwards is lucky enough to have his three sports spread over several days and not just a weekend. He plays “fly half” with the Atlanta Bucks Rugby Club, then he’s usually on the ice once during the week, centering with the Atlanta Jacks, then once again on the weekends. He plays in a straight softball league, on the Blackburn Predators on Monday nights and then practices with his gay softball team, the Atlanta Menace on Wednesday nights, preparing for Sunday’s game. He also coaches the Atlanta Rubber Ducks softball team on Saturdays.
As Edwards can testify, participating in sports is the ideal way to distract us from the problems and pressures of everyday life. The physical workout helps release tension from our bodies, while the mental concentration takes our mind off of everything other than beating our opponents (and in the case of rugby and ice hockey: beating up our opponents). Along with the hard work each athlete puts into the game, the most important aspect of team sports is teamwork: working together for a common goal. A byproduct of teamwork is camaraderie: the mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together.
Rory Ray, a web developer in New York City, knows all about spending a lot of time with his teammates. Two of his teams have traveled thousands of miles to compete in national and international tournaments. Ray proudly reflects on the camaraderie he shares with the other players, “It’s the reason I play. Being able to have someone right there with me as I go into battle and knowing they'll have my back, no matter what the outcome, is an amazing feeling. In those wonderful moments when everything comes together, and you win an important game as a team, there's no better feeling than being able to share that with them.”
Ray is a forward for the San Francisco Rock Dogs, an LGBT basketball team, which was featured the 2008 LOGO television series, “Shirts & Skins”. The Rock Dogs have contributed to some notable victories, as they earned gold medals in the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago, and again in the 2010 Gay Games in Cologne, Germany. Ray’s former flag football team, the Los Angeles Motion, also won the gold medal at the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago and then three years later went on to take the championship at Gay Bowl IX, a national LGBT flag football tournament akin to the NFL’s Superbowl. On the football field, he’s a wide receiver and free safety, but on the dodgeball court, Ray spends his time with Team Splash and the Big Apple Dodgeball League picking off his opponents one by one.
Even when facing a tough opponent like Rory Ray, it’s camaraderie that keeps the team together. The players develop strong interpersonal relationships, sometimes as close as members of their own families. Perhaps this could be what attracts many gay amateur athletes to organized sports in their adulthood after having had negative experiences in their youth. In some cases, as teens, when other boys took an interest in the opposite sex, gay athletes noticed certain differences in themselves -- differences they were not able to openly discuss due to the homophobic environment of the locker room, whether at school or at home. This created a feeling of isolation and, eventually, a loss of interest.
As adults, now out of the closet, they no longer need to worry about being rejected because they are different. They come back to the sports they loved in their youth, with self-confidence and a sense of personal security, looking to get a taste of the friendship and camaraderie that they missed in their youth.
This was certainly the case for Jeffrey James, a Product Manager at Sony Music Entertainment who says that he participates to get redemption from negative experiences he had playing sports in high school. “Back then, I was a decent athlete, not the best and not the worst, but I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. It was awkward being in the locker room and taking showers with the other guys. Although I tried my best not to stare at anyone, I felt the other guys knew something about me. It was a terrible feeling. Now, on my gay sport teams, I still try not to stare, but I am surrounded by people who are just like me, and I don’t have the same anxiety I had back then. It’s comforting.”
James has been playing softball for twenty years. He joined the Big Apple Softball League in 2001 and soon met his partner, Ed Sokolowski through the league. The two have been together for the past nine years. Sokolowski had been playing with the Gotham Volleyball League, and James decided to try it. He liked it. Dodgeball came next when the Big Apple Dodgeball League broke onto the New York gay sports scene in the fall of 2007. James jumped on board right away, playing with the Back Breakers, trying to avoid getting hit in the face with any balls. Trying... James doesn’t know Rory Ray personally, but he’s seen him in action. “He has a wicked arm. Good thrower. Low and fast,” he says.
