Sports
All-stars spotlight: Adventuring
Outdoor enthusiasts find camaraderie, decompression in hiking trails
Jireh Aki, left, and Jeff Hughes are avid members of Adventuring, a local outdoors LGBT group. (Photos courtesy Adventuring)
This week in the ongoing Washington Blade series spotlighting the members of the LGBT sports community, we meet two members of the outdoors club, Adventuring.
Adventuring leads hikes year-round along with biking, tubing and rafting in the summer months. Many of their hikes are along the historic trails and vistas that are in abundance in the Washington area including hikes through Rock Creek Park, Civil War battlefields and the C&O Canal.
This weekend the group will host the Whiteoak Canyon-Robertson Hike on Saturday and the Blackberry Ice Cream Hike on Sunday. On the weekend of Aug. 12-13, members will join the Capital Climbers (rock climbing) in Shenandoah Park for the Big Meadows/Meteor Shower Weekend.
After six years of active duty in the Air Force, Jireh Aki was looking for an outlet into the LGBT community that involved the outdoors. He found the Adventuring group on a Meetup post.
“I attended my first hike in Shenandoah National Park and fell in love with the group. One of the first members I met became my best friend,” Aki says. “The members are welcoming and inviting and encompass a diverse age group.”
Aki grew up in Long Beach, Calif., and played no sports while attending a performing arts high school. After a year at University of California, Santa Cruz, he joined the Air Force and arrived in D.C. in 2012 after being stationed in Okinawa. He was deployed in 2013 and returned to the area to serve at Andrews Air Force Base.
He is currently working as a government contractor for the Department of Defense and attending University of Maryland with an emphasis on global politics with a background in security.
Now serving as the Adventuring membership chair, Aki says the group has opened him up to other clubs under the Team D.C. umbrella such as Capital Climbers and the D.C. Front Runners.
“The Adventuring hikes are a wonderful way to escape the hustle of the city. The tour guides are a wealth of knowledge about local history and it’s nice to put it to sight and see where things took place,” Aki says. “I am hoping to bring in more younger adults so this continues to be an active and successful club.”
The life path of Jeff Hughes is just about as winding as the trails he likes to hike. Band, choir and theater filled his life in Pittsburgh in high school because the sports he tried didn’t interest him.
After graduating from University of Pittsburgh, he attended Georgetown Law and subsequently began practicing law. From there he segued into legal and government consulting and is now working as an independent health & lifestyle coach.
“My encore career is doing something I really care about,” Hughes says.
Hughes came out later in life and he wasn’t sure about where he belonged in the community. It was a combination of things that made him stick with Adventuring after discovering the group in 2005.
“It was a very easy way to become more comfortable with being gay. I began meeting good people and it was a relaxed atmosphere,” Hughes says. “Over time I also started to fall in love with being in the woods. It has become a fix; I need that time out in nature away from the city, the cars and the stress.”
Hughes, Adventuring’s president, also enjoys that the history of the club is being preserved by reinventing hikes that began in 1979. One is the Skyline Drive to Hoover Camp hike which is recreated each year using a different route.
“Some of our original members still join us and one of my favorite hikes is through Shenandoah followed by a day spent in Harpers Ferry,” Hughes says. “The areas we hike are filled with natural beauty and steeped in history. It’s exhilarating.”
Iran and Egypt on Friday faced off during the World Cup’s “Pride Match” in Seattle.
Iran is among the handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death. Discrimination and persecution based on sexual orientation and gender identity is commonplace in Egypt.
Friday’s match coincided with Pride weekend in Seattle. The Egyptian Football Association and the Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran both objected to playing in the “Pride Match.”
Egypt and Iran tied 1-1.
FIFA, for its part, allowed Pride flags inside the stadium during the match.
“The FIFA World Cup 2026 is an inclusive event that welcomes people from all backgrounds,” a FIFA spokesperson told the Washington Blade in a statement. “Fans of all sexual orientations and gender identities are welcome at matches and events. General statements of human rights, including rainbow flags and other flags representing sexual orientation and gender identity, are permitted under the FIFA World Cup 2026™ Stadium Code of Conduct and may be displayed inside stadiums provided they are used in a manner consistent with the code.”
Human Rights Watch welcomed FIFA’s decision to allow Pride flags inside the stadium. Outright International, a global LGBTQ and intersex rights group, distributed Pride flags in Seattle on Friday, which was Pride Match Day.
“Visibility matters,” said Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin. “Pride is now being celebrated in more than 100 countries, including this weekend in Seattle. For many LGBTIQ people, seeing a Pride flag in public is a reminder that they are not alone, and that their rights and dignity are recognized.”
FIFA President Gianni Infantino earlier this year told Die Weltwoche, a Swiss magazine, that “there will be no ‘Pride Match’ at the (FIFA) World Cup.”
“There will be a FIFA World Cup match in Seattle, and on the same day, events organized by external organizations will be taking place in the city,” said Infantino. “But that has nothing to do with the match itself.”
Peter Tatchell, a long-time LGBTQ activist from the U.K. who is director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation, was among those who traveled to Seattle for Friday’s match. Tatchell accused FIFA of not vetting World Cup teams — specifically Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Senegal, Qatar, Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Uzbekistan, and Algeria — over whether they would allow gay players.
“FIFA is protecting LGBT+ visibility in the stands while failing to protect LGBT+ players on the pitch,” said Tatchell.
The Baltimore Orioles will take on the Washington Nationals on Friday, June 26 at 7 p.m. for Pride Night at Oriole Park.
The first 15,000 fans will receive an exclusive Pride Night Orioles jersey. The Washington Blade is a media sponsor of this event.
To purchase tickets, visit Orioles.com/Tickets.
Sports
Minor league team in York, Pa., forfeits Pride Night game after some players refuse to wear special jersey
City is roughly 20 miles north of Md. border
An independent minor league baseball team says it is forfeiting a game because some of its players refused to wear a special Pride Night jersey.
The Atlantic League Pro Baseball’s York Revolution were planning to hold their 11th annual Pride Night event Thursday for a game against the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.
But the Revolution announced the day of the game that it wouldn’t be played. York is about 20 miles north of the Maryland line. The Blue Crabs play in Waldorf.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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