Sports
Area cornhole league offers friendly competition, low-impact sport
Ankle injury led local lesbian to form all-girl team
The Washington Blade All Star series showcases local athletes playing in LGBT sports leagues. This week we meet two players from Rogue Cornhole who are competing in season three of the league, which began Wednesday at The Midlands.
Originally from Washington, Mica Willis lived overseas in Saudi Arabia, Peru and Mexico while her mother worked for the State Department. At age 9, she began playing soccer while living in Saudi Arabia.
She continued playing as a goalie in women’s and co-ed soccer leagues while attending the College of William & Mary. An internship and employment with the LGBTQ Victory Fund brought her back to the D.C. area in 2013.
Her first step into the LGBT sports community was with Stonewall Dodgeball in 2015, which she says was an intense experience. Her fiancé Emily is a Charm City Rollergirl and Willis subsequently suffered a broken ankle during a casual skate.
She had surgery in late 2016 and spent a year re-learning how to walk. It looked like her sports career was over and she joined a flip cup league to stay socially active.
Also playing in the flip cup league was Kevin Comerford who would go on to launch Rogue Cornhole last fall.
“I had been thinking a lot about the LGBT sports community and how there are not very many women playing, especially queer women,” Willis says. “I have a lot of gay male friends but not many lasting friendships with queer women.”
Recruiting co-workers at her current place of employment, NGP Van, Willis formed a lesbian-only team called the Funbags.
“I had all these friends at work, and we needed an excuse to hang out outside of the office,” Willis says. “Rogue Cornhole has a chill vibe and is not clique-y. Playing cornhole in a cool bar is a great ending to a stressful day at work.”
Willis is eventually hoping to try a few more low-impact sports such as golf or billiards. In the meantime, she has a technique that works for her in the sport of cornhole.
“There is a process and I can’t throw without a beer in my hand. In the winter league, it’s a hot toddy and its part of my balance,” Willis says. “I need a two-three beer warmup before I am at my sweet spot. It is my hurdle to compete well.”
Daniel Ferrucci grew up in Grove City, Pa., and played high school basketball, golf and track & field as well as club volleyball.
He started his collegiate career at Adrian College before transferring to University of North Carolina Wilmington where he broke records in track & field. A job in corporate retail moved him to D.C. in 2009.
Fulfilling something he always wanted to do, Ferrucci started playing ice hockey and has been with the same group in Fairfax for eight years. His entry into the LGBT sports community began with Stonewall Kickball, Rogue Darts and Stonewall Dodgeball.
Ferrucci was running Cornhole for a Cause, which benefits SMYAL, when he was approached by Rogue League Sports for advice on starting a cornhole league.
“It has been exciting to watch the growth of it. One thing they have done well is grounding the competition — there is no judgement of anybody,” Ferrucci says. “It is very inclusive, and everyone gets a long really well. In cornhole, you get the opportunity to talk and meet people you wouldn’t normally meet.”
Along with hockey and Rogue Cornhole, Ferrucci is also playing Rogue Darts and Stonewall Kickball. He is joined in cornhole, darts and kickball by his partner John.
“I met John when we were teammates in 2014 in Stonewall Kickball,” Ferrucci says. “There is an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t date within the team, so we had to keep it under wraps.”
With so many sports commitments, Ferrucci still found it important to return to Rogue Cornhole for season three.
“After living in Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina, I can say that cornhole has always been in my life,” Ferrucci says. “My Rogue Cornhole team is part of my core group of friends and the laid back chill mentality of the league opens the door to new friendships. It is so much fun.”
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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