This story originally appeared in our Queer Issue on June 4, 2025.
Photos by West Smith
I wrapped my arms around two giant men—the loosehead and tight head (positions, not names)—and twisted my hands into their jerseys. They gripped the waistband of my shorts, locking us together. Thank god I had worn spandex underneath, I thought, as my shorts hitched into a giant wedgie. Sweat dampened their backs. We leaned down, our weight one, our bodies together.
The egg-shaped ball lay at my feet. In a scramble of limbs, I hooked it—inelegantly—out the back of the scrum. The loosehead, tighthead, and I stood up. I gulped non-sweaty air. I smiled at my teammates. They smiled back. Only then did I remember what my face looked like. I was in drag.
For my latest exploration into Seattle subcultures, I joined Seattle Quake, the LGBTQ men’s rugby team, for practice on the pitch. To play with the men’s team in a hypermasculine sport, I tried to get in touch with my own masculinity. But I soon realized how unnecessary this was with a team that is inclusive to everyone.
While it’s advertised as the men’s team, the Quake welcomes anyone who wants to play; they have members who are gay, non-binary, transmasculine, transfeminine, and also straight guys with wives—all the letters of the LGBTQ acronym. The welcoming spirit of Quake allows people who never felt like they could play team sports or contact sports an opportunity to have an exexperience they missed out on—and excel at it. Through rugby and through Quake, players have found a community worth protecting.
Twenty-four years ago, Quake became the Pacific Northwest’s first inclusive rugby team when a group of gay rugby players didn’t feel like a team existed that would take them in and take them seriously, so they made one of their own.
“We actively try to recruit people that are underrepresented in rugby,” Julius Schorzman, Quake’s current president, says. In fact, many on the team never played rugby before they joined. The team recruited Schorzman when they saw all 6 feet 4 inches of him drinking at a bar. He didn’t know anything about rugby, but the Quake were in need of locks, the position where being tall is an asset. Usually, a lock will jump for the ball in a lineout, where other players hoist them into the air to make a catch. Schorzman went to that recruitment event 10 years ago—and met his husband on the team in the process—then never stopped playing. (Although, right now he is technically not playing since he ruptured his bicep tendon in a rugby game.)
Part of the appeal of Quake stems from the welcoming spirit of rugby. Schorzman attributes that to rugby’s hidden-gem nature in the United States, where the NFL is king. Since football gobbles up most eligible athletes, the players who choose rugby are self-selecting for eclecticism, Schorzman explains. Maybe that’s why gay and inclusive rugby in the US is as popular as it is, with around 40 inclusive men’s and women’s teams nationally. In the Quake’s division, the Portland Lumberjacks are the only fellow LGBTQ team.
“People of all different stripes just come and get together,” Schorzman says. “When you tackle each other and do scrums together, it just builds this team cohesion that I haven’t seen in other places.”
The ruggers really are all up in each other’s business. They’re gripping each other by the thighs and the cheeks during lineouts. Their heads butt up against bums in scrums. You get to know people intimately on the pitch, so why not get to know them for real off the pitch?
“There’s what’s called a ‘third half ’ where you can have a really hard-hitting game, you’re really beaten up, and then you go to a sponsor bar and you get drinks with [both teams], and you select a person of the match and celebrate them,” Schorzman says.
It’s like the ultimate team sport experience—something many Quake players never experienced before joining.
Going Out for the Team
Allen Vu found Quake when he was 28 and a fresh Seattle transplant. While walking past Cal Anderson Park one day, Vu saw one of Quake’s two annual rugby 101 practices.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I just moved here, I kind of want to give it a try,’” Vu says. He was 10 minutes late and had no experience. It wasn’t a problem.
Vu never played rugby or team sports. Growing up Asian and gay in a straight, white town, he instead swam and played ping-pong. He says he missed out on a foundational experience that every other kid got to do because he didn’t belong.
“I didn’t really feel comfortable around my classmates, or around other people enough to want to participate in a contact sport or a big team sport,” Vu says. “It just felt like it wasn’t for me.”
Sports also weren’t for Adam Sackman, a third-year rugger on Quake. As a transgender kid on the swim team, “locker rooms never felt right to me,” Sackman says. “For some reason,” he adds with a smirk. So he didn’t experience the increased self-confidence, the communication skills, or trust-building and bonding that can come with playing sports. Being left out of these adolescent milestones is a big deal, which is part of why the trans sports bans snapping into place around the country are so diabolical.
Now, well into adulthood, Sackman is playing not just any sport, but the most epic one. He’s on the pitch grunting and sweating and tackling alongside other men who are bleeding or covered in mud or both.
“It’s very gender affirming in a corny way, but also in a pretty healing way for me,” Sackler says.
The brutality of the sport makes it even more unusual for an LGBTQ team, given long-held stereotypes.
One of the Boys
Padless grappling, tackling, and rucking is like the definition of rough and tumble. The game even has a phrase for when a player needs to be swapped out because they’re bleeding too much—it’s called a “blood bin.” Which is fucking metal. (“I love getting up from an 80-minute game and I’m covered in mud and blood, some of it’s mine, some of it’s other people’s, and just feeling so powerful,” Sackman says.)
“There’s usually the stereotype of gays being soft or not being incredibly physical,” Lucas Copperman, a forward who’s played with Quake for five years, says. “This challenges that directly.”
That rub-dirt-in-your-open-wound kind of masculinity is why I showed up to practice the way that I did. Thanks to an editorial brainstorm and the LGBTQ women’s rugby team, the Mudhens, not being in season, I decided to She’s the Man my date with the Quake. That meant for almost two hours on a Wednesday afternoon before rugby practice, Seattle drag queen Miss Texas 1988 painted my face.
Layers of makeup etched harsh cuts into my cheeks, a cleft into my chin, and a furrow into my now-very bold brow. A hand-drawn handlebar mustache enveloped my mouth. The hairspray Miss Texas spritzed over my face ensured everything would stay in place, smudgless. My manhood was not only overt, it was over the top. Miss Texas had done too good a job.
I looked more like a brunette Joe Exotic (the Tiger King) than the Twelfth Night twink I envisioned. This was my fault. Miss Texas asked what I wanted, and I said, “Full king.” I did not know what full king meant. She showed me.
So, I showed up to Pat Ryan Memorial Field, the scrubby ground shaking every five minutes as airplanes roared overhead, in Danny Trejo cosplay. My self-consciousness reached an all-time high. I was hyperaware of myself and afraid of how I looked. This was a first for me. As a lifelong team sports athlete, I never once considered whether I fit in, how I was acting, if I belonged.
On the pitch that day, even though I was invited to join, I worried. I’d forget temporarily while warming up with the team, or catching a pass, or getting pulled up into the sky in a line-out, but then I’d catch a glimpse of the face plastered over my actual face. Who was that? I couldn’t shake the feeling of wearing a mask. This felt especially jarring in a space where people who often had to wear different faces in their regular lives could actually lower their masks.
Take Saint Akudihor, for instance. Akudihor is non-binary and played high school football in New Orleans before they came out of the closet. They were mocked for being different, for being “weird.”
“It was a toxic experience,” Akudihor says. “I was low-key depressed in high school because the coaches were verbally abusive. I used to get made fun of.”
Akudihor moved out to Seattle in 2017. Around the same time, they came out and found Quake. Akudihor doesn’t dread coming to practices or playing games like they did in high school.
“This team is different because I can be myself,” they say.
They now live in Port Orchard and make the hour-long commute to practice twice a week because they want to play with Quake.
“I still make the drive here, because I don’t want to play on a non-queer team,” Akudihor says. “I want to be able to feel comfortable in my body and who I am while also playing rugby.”
For the most part, that’s possible.
“I’m glad that I get to be on a men’s sports team now,” Sackman says. “Minus all the homophobia and the bullshit, it’s pretty rare and special.”
The Homophobia and Bullshit
The Quake play in the Pacific Northwest Rugby league, competing against other teams in the region as a division three team. They regularly square up against typical men’s rugby teams—or, in other words, straight teams. This is when, despite the inclusive and welcoming environment from their own team, players may need to don their proverbial masks yet again.
According to Schorzman, the president, the homophobia has lessened over the last 20 years. However, according to some players, it’s still prevalent. PNW Rugby did not respond to a request for comment.
Ramsey Braden, who identifies as queer, came out last year around when he first joined Quake. The accepting community made it easier for Braden to be himself. Unfortunately, inclusive rugby is not all rugby.
“When we play other straight teams, they’ll say slurs and stuff,” Braden says. “Sometimes they’ll be extra aggressive and do dangerous plays to people just because they’re gay, to try to hurt them.”
When this happens mid-game, the Quake try not to let it rattle them. Braden says they have to make sure to protect their own, but also keep cool heads so they don’t get “carted off ” with red cards that could keep players out for multiple games.
The political dynamics take an existing aspect of rugby and deepen it. Copperman, at his position at forward, takes a lot of the heavy contact. Phase after phase, he throws his shoulder against the other team. He’s looking to get the ball, but he’s also looking to defend his teammates.
“It sounds cliché to say, but it’s like you’re going into battle. You’re literally fighting for that ball every time, and we have to protect it, and you’re protecting your team at the same time,” Copperman says. “There is a primitive kind of war-like vibe sometimes, when you’re on the pitch.”
Protecting your teammates from tackles becomes a bit more serious when the other team hates your entire existence.
“We are ‘other’ in a lot of people’s minds,” Vu says, “but on our team, we stand up for each other. If one of us gets hurt, or somebody’s trying to pick a fight, we’re all ready to run up. Their next tournament, however, will be the International Gay Rugby tournament held in Boston. There, Quake will play against fellow gay teams. That experience is a lot more comfortable, Braden says.
“There’s a kindness, especially when you’re in the scrum,” Braden says.
Last year at the IGR tournament in Rome, Sackman says he played in a game where all players were trans. He says it was like nothing he’s ever experienced before.
“It’s almost like a breath of fresh air,” Vu says. They don’t have to pretend or be afraid, because they’re playing similar people who know what a challenge it is to be an LGBTQ rugby team in this country. “It’s just a time to celebrate, but also a time to kick ass.”
The Third Half
After the smelliest team huddle I’ve ever been in, Schorzman tossed me a Redhook beer. I cracked it and took a sip alongside the rest of the team. Finally, a cold one with the hes and theys.
Sweaty and covered in grass, the Quake relaxed underneath a cloud of bubbles— someone, of course, had brought a bubble machine—and I chatted with more players. One had joined the team after being invited to practice on Grindr. He showed up, and his date’s ex-boyfriend was also playing. Rugby stuck, so did the Grindr relationship. They’re married now.
People palled around, satisfied with practice, excited for the Boston tournament on the horizon.
I again caught a glimpse of my painted face and shuddered. Next time I play rugby, I’ll be sure to show up as myself. Though I must admit, on my drive home, I couldn’t stop admiring the way the makeup sharpened my cheekbones, or how the accentuated hollows of my face glowed in the red of brake lights.
