Matt Murtaugh, left, and Jay Maroney of the D.C. Gay Flag Football League. (Photos courtesy D.C. Gay Flag Football League)

In the continuing Blade series on the veterans and rookies of the LGBT sports teams in the metro Washington area, we shine the spotlight this week on the D.C. Gay Flag Football League.

The League is set to launch its 10th season with 270 players on 20 teams. Members also run a recreation league with four teams which is primarily for players who want to develop their skills, play new positions or try out for the competitive league for the first time.

Matt Murtaugh just came out of the closet last May and moved to D.C. two months later in July. He was looking to make new friends and heard about the D.C. Gay Flag Football League.

“I went through the draft last fall for season nine, the new player skill assessments and the scrimmages,” Murtaugh says. “It was a little intimidating at the beginning.”

Murtaugh, who is 23 and works in government contracting, had never played flag football before entering the League.  He grew up in North Potomac, Md., playing basketball and also played intramural basketball while earning his degree at the University of South Carolina.

“I was the only rookie on my team and the veterans were very welcoming and walked me through all the rules,” Murtaugh says. “They are the ones who make the team run.”

Murtaugh found the League to be very competitive and is looking forward to season 10.

“I am so happy I joined,” he says. “I met a lot of great people that I would not have met otherwise.”

Jay Maroney is a veteran who has been involved in gay flag football since 1999 when it was just a bunch of friends playing pick-up games on the Mall. He has played in all nine seasons of the D.C. Gay Flag Football League and is also looking forward to season 10.

He comes back every season because it’s organized, competitive and the teams are different every year (the League redrafts the players every season to prevent team dynasties).

“The social structure of the League is very different than what you often find in D.C.,” Maroney says. “There are no cliques and social barriers seem to disappear. We have a nice mix of rookies, veterans, women and straight players.”

Maroney, 44, attended a small college in western Massachusetts and received his master’s from Georgetown and a doctoral law degree from George Washington University Law School. He played club level sports during those years and fell in love with kayaking after taking it as a class in his early college years in Massachusetts.

He moved out west and became a professional kayaker and eventually moved to the hotbed of kayaking in the southeast where he specialized in freestyle kayaking and down river sprints.

Maroney’s flag football experiences continue to play out in a positive way because of the friendly, outgoing players who join the League.

He says the quality of play gets better every season because of the rookies.

“The veteran players didn’t always bring a lot of prior athletic experience to the League because of the homophobia in sports when they were growing up,” Maroney says. “The rookies seem to be coming to us with more of a sports background which serves to raise the quality of play in all of us.”