Four out gay teammates have formed Pomona-Pitzer Colleges’ top men’s 4×400 team and will be competing for a conference championship this weekend.
Sophomore Cal Neikirk , senior Paul Messana , junior Nick Vucovich and freshman Lucas White Moon. Yes, that means three of the four should be back next season. Earlier this season they posted the 24th fastest time in all of Division III. The school is part of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
"We're firstly athletes for ourselves, but we're allowed to be out here running as a testament to all the LGBTQ athletes who came before us and opened the door for us to be here today,” Neikirk said in a statement. “And we, too, are still competing for those whose schools still discourage or openly ban gay student athletes from competing, either through campus culture or through explicit rules.”
It’s the first time we’ve heard of four out LGBT people forming the entirety of a college relay team. It’s entirely possible it’s happened elsewhere, but we simply haven’t heard of it before.
Being an all-gay relay team isn’t an accident.
“We believe that there is great value in seeing four openly gay men competing together on one of Pomona-Pitzer's fastest 4×400 relay teams,” Messana told Sagehens.com. “So, quite simply, we are running to be seen."
It’s a pretty fantastic development, and one that’s come out of the blue for us at Outsports. These guys have been running together right down the road from our headquarters and we didn’t even know it. It just goes to show how many out athletes there are – We can’t keep track.
