This year, student athletes came together to create the Queer Student Athlete Group, Oberlin’s first queer student-athlete focused group. The mission of QSAG is to create a safe space for queer athletes on campus where they will feel heard, represented, and appreciated. QSAG has been in the making for quite some time now. Its importance cannot be overstated, as it supports a group of student athletes who have been historically discriminated against in the sports world.

“[QSAG] means that queer student athletes have a space for their identities, not only within the college but within their sports as well,” fourth-year track and field thrower Abby Cannon wrote in an email to the Review. “Obviously Oberlin is generally considered an accepting place for all identities, but I haven’t always felt like pride was something that could be celebrated in athletic spaces. It means a lot to me to be able to connect with other queer athletes and to make Oberlin athletics a more inclusive environment. I felt that in full effect at Pride Night. That was such a special event. It made my heart very happy to be able to combine my celebration of pride and my love for sports.”

Fourth-year Maggie Balderstone is one of the members of QSAG’s board, along with third-year swimmers John Roberts and Nora Holder and second-year tennis player James Foster. Their initiative, along with the drive of other student athletes, culminated in the creation of QSAG.

“I wanted to create a space and group of folks that felt safe and comfortable,” Balderstone wrote in an email to the Review. “It’s hard to find queer representation in sports, and the goal of creating this group was to allow other queer athletes to know they weren’t alone in their existence. It’s extremely meaningful to me to know that I will leave Oberlin Athletics with a group that emphasizes the importance of queer spaces and identity in a typically cisheteronormative field. We usually see athletics as a binary, hetero space, especially at Oberlin, but this group ensures that queer athletes don’t have to feel alone in their existence here.”

Roberts recalled how Balderstone connected with him to create QSAG. 

“Last semester Maggie, then on the women’s basketball team, reached out and asked if I was interested in creating a space for queer athletes,” Roberts said. “It was a super broad idea, but I told them I was definitely interested. We met as a board towards the end of the semester and started to narrow down what we wanted to do. We decided our goal was to celebrate queer athletes and queer joy. After that, we sent out an interest form and listened to what other queer athletes wanted in an organization.”

Since the group is still very new, they are still brainstorming what the future holds for them, what projects they are going to undertake, the responsibilities members will have, and what events they will have on campus. A lot of these responsibilities will be picked up by the board members of the group.

“Right now, we’re still figuring out projects and events we want to hold, so my responsibility has been to come up with ideas and listening to what other people want to see,” Roberts said. “We just had our first Pride Night on Wednesday. That was really fun and successful, which I helped brainstorm and plan. We’re hoping to hold more of those and host more events as well.”

In the recent women’s soccer game against Heidelberg University, QSAG held its first Pride Night, with people joining them for poster making prior to the game with the possibility of winning prizes. The group will also have regular meetings in which they discuss what they can achieve in the near future.

“The meetings are super laid back and informal. We sit in a circle and introduce ourselves with names, sports, and pronouns,” Roberts said. “After that, the board breaks down what events we have coming up or our ideas for plans, then we open the floor to what ideas other people have. Once we start to host more things, we’ll ask people to volunteer for events, but right now we’re really coming up with ideas and making QSAG what queer athletes want it to be.” 

QSAG is a very important addition to student-led groups, and all student athletes who are part of the LGBTQ+ community are encouraged to join the group. Students can find their Instagram at @oberlin_qsag where they will be able to join the mailing list and keep up to date with the latest news about the group.