For select scholarships, students submit the best stories that they’ve crafted as part of the application process. From dozens of strong applications for this round of scholarships, three winners emerged – Olivia Capriotti, Lucy Postera and Shannon Moore. This is Postera's winning submission for the Robert Crowley Award for Excellence in Collegian Column Writing, a story highlighting the importance of queer journalists and queer stories in the media.
I am eleven years old, sitting on the floor of my living room in mid-November. The air is crisp, and it’s the time of the year where leaves crackle under your feet while you walk through a chilly fall breeze. For most families, fall is a time of togetherness as the season changes, for my family, fall is about football.
The TV screen shows Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady, both athletes I admire, and between touchdowns I hear the game analyzed by former football players and men who love the sport. As a young girl, there was nobody who I could relate to on a deeper level while watching these games. I knew from a very early age that I loved the connection and togetherness that athletics ignite, but I also recognized the lack of diversity within sports.
As I got older, the gap between me and the reporters that I saw on the screen only widened. I came to realize my identity as a gay female, but this only emphasized that there was nobody I could relate to while watching games and reading about the sports I loved.
On TV and in newspapers there were no female journalists and no one, male or female, who was open about their sexuality. While playing high school sports, I watched on while my teammates’ post-game interviews were done solely by straight, cisgender, white men.
Within the sports world, there are very few sports journalists that have come out and shared their sexuality with the world. As years go by, the world of sports journalism has advanced in the field of diversity and individuality but is still lacking in representation of queer sports writers.
Read the rest of Postera's winning story here