Sam Harris

b. March 2001

I didn’t really have words for my identity in high school, but I was out and queer, and that was rough on a very toxic boys’ team. I felt supported by my coaches, but I didn’t feel like they were doing anything to correct things that came up in practices. Like, two straight friends bump into each other and go, “Oh, no homo, My bad.”

I had one really good year on that team, where I felt like I was seen by the other players and coaches. The year after that, I unintentionally came out to one of the captains. I have never been able to disconnect the fact that that was the year my playing time started getting cut. The year before, I was starting in the state finals; that year I got maybe five points a game if I was lucky.

When I got to college, I was practicing with both the mixed team and the open division team. I started experimenting with mixed pronoun usage, and then it kinda clicked when someone actually used they/them for me once, and I was like, “Woah! That’s nice.” When I was with the mixed team, I was using one set of pronouns; when I was with the men’s team I was often using a different one, and then eventually aligned them. I was a little more nervous in the men's team scenario, mostly because of experiences in high school.

I went to Gridlock tryouts for fun my senior year of college and then ended up making the team as a practice player. That was the first women’s division thing I had ever done. I now play with Gridlock and with Xist.

I typically play as a DoW, defender of women, which is language that DiscNY worked with a large group of trans folks to create. It’s a very fluid system. The thing about the language is that it’s a position. It's not an identity, necessarily: Defender of choice, defender of men, defender of women. In mixed, for example, you need to have a certain number of people playing as defenders of women and defenders of men on the field. A defender of choice can fill either of those roles. 

There are days at a casual league or pickup where there aren’t enough folks to match up correctly, and I am just like, “Screw it, I’m fine with this.” There is absolutely fluidity in that… but generally, I consider myself a DoW.

People perceive unfair advantages when it’s a disadvantage to them. If I can be frank, I am good at ultimate. There are sometimes when I have a ridiculous mismatch, and that’s not because I am trans, but because I have been playing ultimate for ten years and I’m in the gym and athletic. The only time I have seen somebody get frustrated with that or have perceived people to possibly be frustrated, even though they don’t say anything, is at a casual level of ultimate. 

At a high level of ultimate, the matchups are what they are. People learn to expect this. I think they realize it doesn’t really make much of a difference. We’re just kind of there to play frisbee. 

Numbers-wise, there are so few of us relative to the rest of people playing, and I think that’s something that a lot of people forget about. Between the high-level ultimate teams that I have seen, I can count on one or two hands the number of trans players, especially trans femme players at that level that affect the game.

We have ways of staying connected, especially those of us on teams who match up on each other multiple times a year. It is nice to be able to have that community, even if it’s just hi across the sideline.

With Disc NY, I help run youth programs, which includes the high school league, any of our learning programs, clinics, and any recreational league. The language we use at the adult level and the language we use at the youth level is the same. We use Bx and Gx for our teams. It’s not the best possible language we could use… it harkens back to the womxn term that is not really used anymore. I think that it’s a useful intermediary right now, of getting them exposed to gender inclusive language, because they are going to see coaches and players who fall into that kind of description.

Some of it is just, and this goes for any kind of identifier, making sure that we have people in leadership positions that look like the kids that they’re coaching, or that they could be coaching. So working to diversify our pool of coaches and people that we hire to run our leagues and making sure that we are actively seeking out coaches and program organizers who look like the kids that we want to be signing up for it. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that at the adult level and still working on it at the youth program.