From left are Adam Bocek, Kent Hansen and Carl Svagerko. (Photos by Kevin Majoros)

It’s not uncommon for the players in sports teams to come from different walks of life. Their motivation to play and the path they take to get there are all part of the process of making a team. The different personalities on the team are what make it a community.

This week in the continuing Blade series on the players who make up the LGBT-based sports teams in the area, we take a look at three teammates, two gay and one straight, from Charm City Volleyball.

Charm City Volleyball hosts social play in downtown Baltimore on Wednesday nights and competitive play and scrimmages on Sundays in Elkridge, Md. On April 29-30, they will host the 32nd annual Charm City Invitational which already has 42 teams registered to play.

For 13 years, Adam Bocek drove back and forth, twice a week, from his hometown in Railroad, Pa., to Baltimore just to play with Charm City Volleyball.

“Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, there just wasn’t much to do if you were gay,” Bocek says. “I began meeting a lot of great guys in an atmosphere where I could be myself.”

As a youth, his primary sport was soccer and along the way he picked up baseball and volleyball. The volleyball continued in college and would be the impetus for his treks to Baltimore.

Bocek has traveled the country with his teammates playing in tournaments and picked up a silver medal with them at the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland. Just last month he moved to Baltimore after landing a job as a recruiter for HIV research at Johns Hopkins.

“I look at this move as a rite of passage and my opportunity to be around the people who have supported me all along.” Bocek says. “I just love playing this sport and the community that comes along with it.”

After following some friends to move to Baltimore, Kent Hansen was at the Baltimore Pride parade in 2005 and saw Charm City Volleyball marching and hitting a ball around.

“I actually signed up to play that same day,” Hansen says. “One of the people I met on the team is now my husband.”

Hansen, who works as a recruiting manager for a government contracting firm, grew up in Bradner, Ohio and played multiple sports including cross country, track and field, basketball and wrestling. During college at Bowling Green State University he was a varsity cheerleader and also started playing club volleyball.

For six years, he has served as the tournament director of the Charm City Invitational and he is in his fourth year of serving on the national board of the North American Gay Volleyball Association.

He is also traveling the country with his teammates for volleyball tournaments along with traveling for tournaments with the Charm City Kings and Queens bowling league. Hansen and his husband Mike Snyder were also part of the silver medal-winning team at the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland.

“I have met some amazing people and some of my best friends in the volleyball community,” Hansen says. “Every city we travel to we see so many people that we have known for years. I love the competition and the camaraderie.”

Carl Svagerko was happily playing his sports of football, basketball and baseball along with swimming on a summer team while growing up in Westerville, Ohio. That all changed when he joined his high school swim team because his sister needed a ride to the same practices. He fell in love with swimming and went on to win a state championship in high school and spent four years swimming for the University of Tennessee.

After moving to Baltimore to work as a structural engineer in 2014, Svagerko started playing beach volleyball at Rash Field in Baltimore Inner Harbor. He enjoyed it so much that he moved indoors to the Volleyball House. He eventually ended up on a Charm City Volleyball team as they were playing at the same facility.

“Volleyball was a new sport for me and it was filling the void of not swimming,” says Svagerko, who is straight. “I kind of just started showing up to play with them, then waded in and went full immersion.”

Svagerko has since played in his first association tournament which was hosted by the D.C. Capital Pride Volleyball League. In May, he will travel with his teammates to Columbus for the North American Gay Volleyball Association Championships XXXV.

“I was new to the area and new to the community and everyone with Charm City Volleyball was friendly, inclusive and offered me help with my volleyball form,” Svagerko says. “There is so much respect that I don’t see the sexual orientation. And you know what? They continually ask me to keep playing.”