Sports
Rookies & vets: Renegades
Mostly straight team celebrates gay players
Lucian Dieterman, left, and Von Allena of the Washington Renegades. (Photo by Kevin Majoros)
In a nod to what can happen when communities band together, the Blade shines a light on the LGBT-inclusive Washington Renegades RFC in the ongoing series on the rookies and veterans who make up local LGBT sports teams.
Though they are composed of roughly 70 percent straight players, the Renegades are known to be one of the first men’s rugby clubs in the United States to actively recruit gay players.
Its members compete within the Capital Rugby Union and USA Rugby and field two teams in the Mid-Atlantic Conference league. They also travel to tournaments including gay run tournaments such as the Dallas Diablos Hellfest and the Bingham Cup.
At the Bingham Cup in Nashville last month, the Renegades fielded three teams in three separate divisions. The Renegades A team made it to the final four and the Renegades C team played its way to the final of its division. The Renegades B team won its division to take the Mark Bingham Shield.
With diversity playing a big part of their make-up, we take a look at a straight rookie and a gay veteran who both competed at the recent Bingham Cup.
Lucian Dieterman grew up in Lake City, Minn., and played all kinds of sports including soccer, baseball, track & field, pick-up ice hockey and snowboarding. While he was earning his degree in international relations at the University of Minnesota, he played club soccer.
His rugby career started last year when he was abroad in Amman, Jordan and a friend invited him to play in a sevens tournament. He joined the Renegades in February and moved up from its B team to A team before separating his shoulder in late April.
“At 23 years old, I am one of the youngest players on the team and the veterans have been very helpful with working on my basics and fundamentals,” Dieterman says. “They take their rugby seriously and are the first ones to tell me to pick my head up.”
As for playing with gay teammates, Dieterman says he enjoys being a part of a diverse community.
“One of our gay veterans is really high energy,” Dieterman says, “and the first time he screamed ‘Yes, girl,’ on the field to me during practice, I immediately fell in love with the team.”
Competing at his first Bingham Cup last month, Dieterman enjoyed meeting players from all over the world. It reminded him a lot of the soccer tournaments he used to play in except for one big difference.
“There is a kind of spirit behind playing in a diverse community. Most of my past team experiences were filled with misogyny,” Dieterman says. “In this situation, no one really cares where you come from because they are there to play rugby. It’s refreshing.”
Born in the Philippines and raised in Northvale, N.J., Von Allena didn’t play any sports except for being an unwilling participant in his brother’s martial arts training. While he was attending American University, his extracurricular focus was on the arts and his a cappella group.
After graduating college, Allena found he was missing something in terms of his circle of friends.
“I wanted to do something on my own and find a new community,” Allena says. “I looked up sports and picked the most uncomfortable sport I saw, which was rugby.”
Allena joined the Renegades in 2012 and plays in both its spring and fall leagues. At first he wasn’t sure if rugby was for him, but he wasn’t going to quit.
“It wasn’t an instant connection for me,” Allena says. “Four years later I have definitely fallen in love with the sport.”
Allena is the starting hook position on the Renegades B team and has competed in tournaments in Seattle and Dallas along with Bingham Cups in Nashville and Manchester, England.
“The best way to get experience with the team is to travel to the tournaments with them,” Allena says. “It’s also the best way to bond with your teammates.”
Rookie players on the Renegades teams are paired off with a veteran player, but it’s never clear if the newbie will stay or go.
“If we know they are going to drink the Kool-Aid, then we spend extra time with them,” Allena says. “I usually target the shy guys. The extroverts are pretty good at taking care of themselves.”
Fitness is also an important part of being a Renegade with players scrimmaging against each other at practice. The players are taught how to hit and be hit without being injured. It is rugby though, and injuries do happen.
“I was carried off the field with a knee injury at a tournament and was told I had bruised my fat pad,” Allena says laughing. “When my teammates asked what happened, I tried to gloss it over by saying it wasn’t a fat pad; I am just big-boned and husky.”
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
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