Sports
Hudson Taylor returns to competitive sports
Champion wrestler starts over in Brazilian jiu jitsu
After a successful college wrestling career, Hudson Taylor, center, started over in Brazilian jiu jitsu. (Photo courtesy Taylor)
When Hudson Taylor appeared as the guest editor of the Washington Blade Sports Issue in 2015, he was already in his fifth year of serving as executive director of Athlete Ally, which he co-founded along with his wife Lia. Their mission is to end homophobia and transphobia in sports by providing public awareness campaigns, educational programming and tools and resources to foster inclusive sports communities.
At the same time, he was volunteering as an assistant wrestling coach at Columbia University. The coaching position allowed him to keep in touch with the sport that he loves, stay in shape and remain involved in the culture of sports.
His duties at Athlete Ally escalated to a point that required his attention on a full-time basis and he left his life as a wrestler behind to focus on the mission of his nonprofit.
“Wrestling had been a daily part of my life since age 6. When it ended, it was a struggle for me,” says Taylor. “The only way I knew how to stay in shape was through wrestling.”
Hudson Taylor was born in Pennington, N.J., and started wrestling at age 6. By age 10, he was committed to the sport and would go on to win nationals the following year along with maintaining top five national rankings in his weight class through eighth grade.
He next left his family home for prep school and boarded at Blair Academy for four years where he lived the life of a student-athlete. Taylor’s tenure at the school was during a wrestling dynasty that won 31 consecutive National Prep Titles from 1981 to 2012.
“One unique thing about Blair is that you are not divided across other sports. The wrestling team is committed to training year around,” Taylor says. “Outside of wrestling season, my fall sport was weightlifting and my spring sport was also weightlifting.”
Taylor was heavily recruited by colleges and could have gone anywhere. Northwestern University was his first choice, but he ultimately chose University of Maryland because its facilities were new and the theater department was the best match for what he wanted to study.
Not only was Taylor obsessed with competing, he had clear goals about other aspects of his life and they included Broadway, acting and performing. He entered the University of Maryland as a theater major with a music minor in vocal performance.
While competing at Maryland, Taylor was named the Atlantic Coastal Conference Wrestler of the Year in both 2007-08 and 2009-10, after winning the 197-pound title at the conference tournament. In his other two seasons, 2007 and 2009, Taylor finished second in his weight at the ACC’s.
On the national level, he finished third in the country in 2008 and 2009, and fourth as a senior in 2010. He is tied for fifth in career pins in the all-time NCAA record books with 87. At Maryland, he holds the school record for career pins (87), career wins (165) and pins in a single-season (24).
The time commitment proved difficult juggling sports and theater and his college major evolved into interactive performance art. It was the intermingling of sports and theater that would define his life path post-college.
To stand in solidarity with the LGBT community as a straight ally, Taylor wore an LGBT equality sticker from the Human Rights Campaign on his wrestling headgear. He received national media attention and the resulting experience would be his inspiration to launch Athlete Ally.
Fast forward to 2016 and Taylor is missing his sport. He begins stopping in at Edge Wrestling in Hoboken which offers adult wrestling, Brazilian jiu jitsu, mixed martial arts, muay thai and boxing. He would begin sparring with five-time World Jiu Jitsu champion Bernardo Faria, who is a black belt.
“Competitive jiu jitsu athletes take wrestling classes to help with their standing skills and we were having an exchange of knowledge,” says Taylor. “Not very many adults can give me a workout and I found myself getting tired; I was not in shape.”
A spark was ignited and Taylor began training in Brazilian jiu jitsu at the Marcelo Garcia Academy in NYC, which is two blocks from his Athlete Ally office. He says that wrestling and jiu jitsu are closely related but there is a huge wall between the two.
“When I first started going to the academy, I walked in as an elite level wrestler with an expectation,” Taylor says. “I ended up getting beat by people with nowhere near the time I have spent on the mat. It was both humbling and exciting to realize that I was a beginner again.”
After several months of going to classes three days a week, Taylor earned his blue belt in jiu jitsu in September, 2016.
“At that point I was like, ‘Heck, let’s compete. Put me in,’” Taylor says.
In his first tournament, the Pan IBJJF Jiu Jitsu No-Gi Championships in New York City, he won the gold medal in the super heavyweight division (215 to 220 pounds.) as a blue belt. He also entered the absolute division, which encompasses all the weight classes and won another gold medal.
“I have always been a student of my sport and obsessed with technique. Now that I am entering a new sport, I get to learn a whole new body of knowledge,” Taylor says. “I am in love with the new knowledge I am learning.”
Taylor next began teaching private lessons to jiu jitsu black belts to increase their wrestling skills. In April, he crossed over to grappling and won his division at the 2017 Grappling World Championship Team Trials in Las Vegas. He is now qualified to compete at the World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan in October.
The journey continued this past June when he won his division at the 2017 World Jiu Jitsu IBJJF Championship in Long Beach at the blue belt level. In November, he is scheduled for the World No-Gi IBJJF Championship in San Francisco.
“I wish I had found all of this sooner because I want to compete against the best,” says Taylor, 30. “I am restricted by the belt system and it could take several years to advance beyond the blue belt.”
Just recently, Taylor began teaching his first classes at the Marcelo Garcia Academy, helping the athletes with their standing game. For now, he is enjoying his return to competitive sports and has no immediate plans to tie it into his work at Athlete Ally.
Coming up for Athlete Ally is a new campaign regarding the bidding process of the NCAA along with an athletic equality index on the policies of the NCAA Power 5 conferences.
When asked if he would ever consider showing support for the LGBT community on the jiu jitsu mat as he once did as a college wrestler, he doesn’t hesitate to reply.
“If I compete in a country that I feel needs athlete activism, you can bet there will be a patch on my uniform that supports equality,” Taylor says.
Sports
Brittney Griner, wife expecting first child
WNBA star released from Russian gulag in December 2022
One year after returning to the WNBA after her release from a Russian gulag and declaring, “I’m never playing overseas again,” Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner and her wife announced they have something even bigger coming up this summer.
Cherelle, 31, and Brittney, 33, are expecting their first child in July. The couple shared the news with their 715,000 followers on Instagram.
“Can’t believe we’re less than three months away from meeting our favorite human being,” the caption read, with the hashtag, #BabyGrinerComingSoon and #July2024.
Griner returned to the U.S. in December 2022 in a prisoner swap, more than nine months after being arrested in Moscow for possession of vape cartridges containing prescription cannabis.
In April 2023, at her first news conference following her release, the two-time Olympic gold medalist made only one exception to her vow to never play overseas again: To return to the Summer Olympic Games, which will be played in Paris starting in July, the same month “Baby Griner” is due. “The only time I would want to would be to represent the USA,” she said last year.
Given that the unrestricted free agent is on the roster of both Team USA and her WNBA team, it’s not immediately clear where Griner will be when their first child arrives.
The Griners purchased their “forever home” in Phoenix just last year.
“Phoenix is home,” Griner said at the Mercury’s end-of-season media day, according to ESPN. “Me and my wife literally just got a place. This is it.”
As the Los Angeles Blade reported last December, Griner is working with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts — like Griner, a married lesbian — on an ESPN television documentary as well as a television series for ABC about her life story. Cherelle is executive producer of these projects.
Next month, Griner’s tell-all memoir of her Russian incarceration will be published by Penguin Random House. It’s titled “Coming Home” and the hardcover hits bookstores on May 7.
Sports
Applause and criticism for Staley’s trans-inclusive stance
South Carolina Gamecocks women’s coach made comments on Sunday
If not for a conservative transphobic blogger, this moment should be a celebration of NCAA women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley and the women of the South Carolina Gamecocks.
On Sunday, they concluded their undefeated season with a decisive win and a championship title. But when Staley faced reporters before that big game, Outkick’s Dan Zakheske asked her an irrelevant, clickbait question about transgender women in sports, referring to them as “biological males.”
Staley could have ignored the question, or stated she had no opinion, but instead the legendary coach offered a crystal clear endorsement of trans women competing in women’s sports, something outlawed in her home state of South Carolina for girls in kindergarten through college.
“I’m of the opinion,” said Staley, “If you’re a woman, you should play. If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion.”
Zakheske clearly wasn’t satisfied with that declaration of allyship and Staley swiftly cut him off.
“You want me to go deeper?” she asked.
“Do you think transgender women should be able to participate,” he started to say, when the coach stole the ball and took it downtown on a fastbreak. “That’s the question you want to ask? I’ll give you that. Yes. Yes. So, now the barnstormer people are going to flood my timeline and be a distraction to me on one of the biggest days of our game, and I’m okay with that. I really am.”
Staley is herself a Hall of Fame player a leading voice for diversity.
Reaction to her comments were swift, from LGBTQ rights organizations, athletes and inclusion opponents.
“Coach Staley simply spoke the truth that trans women are women and should play if they want,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, in a post on Instagram. “All of us can take a page from Coach Staley’s playbook as a sports leader and as a person of high integrity guided by faith, compassion and common sense.”
A White House pool reporter revealed President Joe Biden called Staley Sunday evening to congratulate her and the Gamecocks on their championship win. But it’s not clear if she and the president, an outspoken supporter of trans rights, discussed her remarks on trans athletes.
A number of Black leaders in the LGBTQ movement applauded Staley for taking a stand.
“Coach Staley has always been a trailblazer, but she’s also shown that true leadership is about advancing justice and equality for everyone,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson. “By expressing her full-throated support for transgender athletes’ inclusion in sports, she’s sending an important message — our shared humanity matters.
“Coach Staley showed courage and vulnerability, in choosing to answer the question and make a powerful statement of support for trans people on one of the biggest days and biggest stages in sports history,” said Kierra Johnson, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, in a statement. “Not only does that make her a leader we can all aspire to like, it makes her a class act. She has etched her legacy in the history books with her play, her coaching, her heart and her smarts.”
In congratulating Staley on her championship title victory, Dr. David J. Johns, the CEO and executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, also commended her for “her unwavering advocacy and support for transgender people in sports.”
“In a time when transgender athetes face unjust scrutiny, discrimination and exclusion from the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, her courage to speak truth to power and in support of inclusion and fairness sets a powerful example for us all, and is a testament to her integrity and compassion.”
The NBJC leader was referring to Monday’s announcement by the NAIA, the governing body of athletic programs at small colleges nationwide, voting 20-0 to essentially ban trans women from competing with other women beginning Aug. 1, as ESPN reported.
“It is a shocking and devastating development that the NAIA, an organization that has done so much to open doors, is now slamming those doors shut on transgender athletes,” said Sasha Buchert, Lambda Legal’s senior attorney and director of the organization’s nonbinary and trans rights project.
“Instead of standing up in support of transgender young people, the NAIA has simply turned its back on them — permanently depriving them of the benefits of competition. Would that they had the courage of victorious University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, who didn’t miss a beat in clarifying that transgender women should be able to play.”
However, praise for Staley’s stance was not universal.
Riley Gaines, failed former college swimmer and paid shill for the anti-inclusion organization, Independent Women’s Forum, called Staley “entirely incompetent or a sell-out” on Fox News. “Personally, I don’t think she believes what she said.”
Gaines has turned her fifth-place tie with out trans NCAA champion Lia Thomas into a career as a crusader against inclusion and a former advisor to the presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Val Whiting, a former Stanford University and professional women’s basketball player, tweeted her strong disagreement with Staley. “A lot of my basketball sisters feel differently but trans women do not belong in women’s sports. It’s not fair nor safe for biological women. There has to be another solution for trans women to be able to compete athletically besides having them compete against biological women.”
A lot of my basketball sisters feel differently but trans women do not belong in women’s sports. It’s not fair nor safe for biological women. There has to be another solution for trans women to be able to compete athletically besides having them compete against biological women.
— Val Whiting (@iamcoachval) April 7, 2024
Zaksheske’s Outkick colleague, anti-trans pundit David Hookstead, also went all-in with a transphobic post.
“Dawn Staley says she supports men who identify as women competing against real women in sports. Her view could literally destroy women’s basketball forever. Why won’t more people stand up for women?”
Dawn Staley says she supports men who identify as women competing against real women in sports.
— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) April 6, 2024
Her view could literally destroy women’s basketball forever.
Why won’t more people stand up for women? pic.twitter.com/2A59KTqvHb
Hookstead then boasted that Staley blocked his account.
Republican South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace retweeted Zaksheske’s account of his interaction with Staley, calling her support of trans athletes “absolute lunacy.” That in turn won praise from Caitlyn Jenner, who retweeted Whiting and posted her thanks to Mace, along with this comment: “There is nothing complicated about this issue!”
What is complicated is that Jenner has never explained why she has competed with cisgender women in golf ever since her transition almost a decade ago.
You’re a hypocrite. pic.twitter.com/42DKwA9jmF
— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) April 7, 2024
Caitlyn Jenner flew from Malibu to New York this week to join her fellow Republicans in their nationwide quest to keep transgender girls and women from competing in sports with other women.
“Let’s stop it now while we can,” said the Olympic gold medalist, at a news conference carried live by Fox News Channel.
Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman organized the event so that Jenner could speak in support of his February executive order banning trans athletes at more than 100 county-owned facilities.
“Trans women are competing against women, taking valuable opportunities for the long-protected class under Title IX and causing physical harm,” said Jenner without providing supportive evidence of her claim. Jenner said the ban would defeat “the woke agenda.”
Her comments drew praise from former NCAA swimmer and paid shill Riley Gaines, who represents the Independent Women’s Forum and has also worked with the failed presidential campaign of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on his anti-trans athlete platform.
We stand with Executive Blakeman as he faces shameful retaliation from @TishJames for merely protecting sports on the basis of sex
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) March 18, 2024
Thanks to you both, @Caitlyn_Jenner @NassauExec !!👏🏼 https://t.co/vAsWfayI7l
“If the left wants to fight this battle on this hill, it’s a losing battle,” said Jenner. “We will win the battle.” She claimed she spoke on behalf of women and girls, contradicting her past statements in support of trans girls competing according to their gender identity and despite the fact she herself still competes in women’s sports.
Shortly after the ban was announced last month, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, denounced it and accused Blakeman of “bullying trans kids.”
James called the order “transphobic and deeply dangerous,” and argued that it violates the state’s anti-discrimination laws. The state attorney general challenged it in court March 1 with a “cease and desist letter,” demanding that Blakeman rescind the order, saying it subjects women’s and girls’ sports teams to “invasive questioning.”
As the Los Angeles Blade reported, Blakeman’s legal team countered with its own lawsuit on March 5, claiming her cease and desist letter violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“Not only was the executive order legal, but we had an obligation to defend it,” Blakeman said Monday.
The order has also been challenged by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit last week on behalf of a women’s roller derby league based in Nassau County that welcomes trans women and would be barred from using the county’s facilities by Blakeman’s executive order.
Just days before the Long Island news conference, Jenner joined Olympian Sharron Davies, who also campaigns against trans inclusion in sports, for an conversation with a British newspaper, the Telegraph, which has been outspoken against trans inclusion.
They recalled that in their day, tests to determine sex were mandatory in order to compete, and Jenner said she has been “pushing” for sex tests to return to sports, decades after sports organizations around the world abandoned the practice because they were unreliable. “If they continue down this road, it will be pretty much the end of women’s sport as we know it.”
“I can still hit a golf ball 280 yards,” Jenner continued, not mentioning she plays from the ladies’ tee. She did however opine about not being “a real woman,” acknowledging that many trans women disagree with her view.
“They keep saying, ‘Oh, I’m a real woman, I’m a real woman,’ and I’m going, ‘No, you’re not,’” said Jenner. “I will use your preferred pronouns, I will treat you as a female, you can run and dress and do whatever you want, I have nothing against that, it’s fine, but biologically you’re still male.”
She added: “Let me explain — I am biologically male, OK? I’m XY. There’s nothing I can do to change that. If you believe in gender dysphoria, and I think most people do realize it’s not a disease, it’s a mental condition, just like some people are left-handed and some people are right-handed, it’s kind of the way you’re born and I’ve dealt with it my entire life.“
“I consider myself a trans person, I am still genetically male, I changed all of my ID right down to my birth certificate so technically yes, I am female, but on the other hand I know I’m not.”
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