How a Queer Soccer League Is Reshaping Community in Charlotte

Visit Clanton Park or Alexander Street Park on any given Sunday and you might just stumble into a group of people huddled on a soccer field sharing introductions and their preferred pronouns.

This isn’t your average pickup game of soccer, though. This is practice for Charlotte Pride Football Club, the city’s only adult LGBTQ+ recreational soccer league. It also happens to be the first place I started to feel connected to the Queen City.

When I got league co-founder Nick Stark on the phone for this piece, it was during a string of rainouts that had sidelined several practices and games. Everyone was feeling a bit cooped up.

Stark told me he had never set out to start a nonprofit. Back in 2018, he was just trying to find a pickup soccer group that wasn’t straight and overly aggressive. “I was posting in Facebook groups like, ‘Hello? Does anyone want to play soccer?’” he told me, laughing.

For years, interest trickled in slowly, until 2023, when it exploded. A Facebook Messenger group called Kween City Soccer began holding regular games. Then came an organized league. Then, a board. Then, sponsors. And eventually, a nonprofit and a growing distribution list.

The transition from pickup games to a structured league surprised even Stark.

“I thought we’d just be playing casually,” he said. “But people wanted scores, medals, a season. They wanted something to build together.”

That desire for structure wasn’t about competition as much as it was about belonging.

“This isn’t just a team,” Stark said. “This is a community. These are the people I call when I have a flat tire, or when I need advice, or just when I want to hang out.”

How I found a sense of belonging in Charlotte Pride FC

After a decade in California, I decided to return to my Southern roots and landed in Charlotte in late 2023. I’d just met my partner at Charlotte Pride after visiting on a summer work trip and was cautiously optimistic about the move, but I was unsure how my queerness would fit in a region that had once felt foreign.

In coastal South Carolina and, later, during my teen years in southwest Florida, I kept my queerness tucked away. For a long time, it felt like an unsavory secret best left unspoken. It wasn’t exactly the closet; it was more about not bringing an unnecessary spotlight onto myself over what felt like something that would disrupt the status quo.

Call it a symptom of growing up gay in small-town America; the more attention you draw, the more trouble you may find.

The San Francisco Bay Area, with all its rich queer culture, turned that thinking on its head. But I always knew I needed to make peace with the identity I once tried so hard to leave behind: a Southerner.

I didn’t expect some of that peace to arrive through soccer.

Feeling a bit restless at home one spring weekend, I found Charlotte Pride FC on social media and asked to join a practice. When I finally built up the courage to head to Clanton Park, I found a soccer team, yes, but more importantly, one that builds chosen family.

I had played throughout high school but ended up disenchanted with the sport. Homophobic slurs were commonplace in the locker room and on the field. Like so many others, I had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t and eventually it became untenable.

I quit the varsity team before I ever considered pursuing a college sports scholarship. It had been over 10 years since I had last touched a soccer ball.

Like me, fellow league player and board member Kelsey Williams discovered Charlotte Pride FC rather serendipitously when she arrived at Clanton Park in hopes of using part of the field that the league just happened to have booked. A few players asked her if she wanted to play with them.

“I remember Nick telling me about the league and I just said, ‘Hey! I’m a lesbian!’ and I’ve been a part of it ever since,” Williams said.

‘What we’re really building is community’

What makes Charlotte Pride FC unique isn’t just the inclusive culture or the grassroots growth; it’s the mix of experience levels, identities and personalities that come together every week. Some players are seasoned athletes, others haven’t touched a ball since childhood. But everyone belongs.

“We’re probably one of the most beginner-friendly teams you’ll find,” Stark said. “We’re chill. We play. We ask your name, your pronouns and a fun fact. Then we pass you the ball.”

We’ve had seasons where we created our own internal pods, set our own rules, and self-refereed our way through seven weeks of sweaty chaos. There have also been seasons where we’ve played in leagues outside of ours and were quickly humbled by far more experienced players.

The league even had a team participate in this year’s Sin City Classic, the largest annual LGBTQ+ sporting event in the world, held in Las Vegas. Each season has been shaped by who showed up and what they needed … and people do keep showing up.

“The outpouring of support we’ve had at (Charlotte) Pride, from people who didn’t even know we existed — it’s been amazing,” Stark said. “Soccer’s just the entry point. What we’re really doing is building community.”

The league’s growth hasn’t come without its challenges.

The board has to manage day jobs while keeping up with the growing league demands. But it has also brought unforeseen, hidden dilemmas in the current political climate.

Finding field space has meant navigating city systems and school districts, for example.

“When I apply for field use,” Stark admitted, “I don’t always lead with the LGBTQ+ part. Not because we’re hiding but because we can’t afford to be rejected. We’re not hiding, but we are calculating.”

In North Carolina and the South more generally, where anti-LGBTQ+ laws, stigma and sentiment loom large, playing soccer visibly and joyfully as queer people is an act of resistance.

“We’re never getting rid of pronouns in our intros,” Stark said. “That’s who we are. There’s a place at our table when other tables might turn people away.”

Where does a queer soccer league fit into Charlotte’s soccer renaissance?

When you look at the massive growth of soccer in Charlotte, which now boasts both a men and women’s professional team, it’s hard not to recognize the significant gap for LGBTQ+ participation.

Men’s Major League Soccer currently has zero publicly out athletes. There is only one openly gay professional soccer player in the US, Collin Martin, who plays for North Carolina FC in the United Soccer League Championship.

It’s a far cry from women’s soccer, where most teams in the National Women’s Soccer League have at least one publicly out athlete, according to OutSports.

As Charlotte vies to host the 2031 Women’s World Cup and the budding professional teams fill stadiums here at home, Charlotte Pride FC plays without cameras, headlines or paychecks. And as corporations veer away from financially supporting LGBTQ+ organizations, especially those in sports, community support becomes ever more essential.

A recent grant from Charlotte-based The PLUS Collective, an LGBTQ+ fund managed by the Foundation for the Carolinas, is helping to ease the financial burden.

“We’ll be able to hire referees for our league games so our players won’t have to do it themselves,” said Cord Flora, vice president of Charlotte Pride FC. “We’ll also have better access to equipment and won’t need individuals to front money for operating costs. It’s going to take pressure off people’s shoulders and make the league more accessible.”

He added that the team is considering hosting its own tournament in Charlotte, one that could draw players from across the country or even internationally.

“We’re hoping to become more self-sustaining, both financially and organizationally, while continuing to show up for local Pride and LGBTQ+ events.”

Charlotte Pride FC now has a website, merch, jerseys and ways to donate. Flora’s dog Foxy, the league’s unofficial mascot, makes frequent appearances at practices and games with her custom bandana.

For those wondering if they’d fit in, Flora has a question: “What’s holding you back?”

Read more: SugarTank! Records to Showcase Local LGBTQ+ Talent (2024)

Whether you’re new to soccer or just want to watch, he said, there’s space. The team hosts skill days for players who want to develop, there’s plenty of real talent if you’d like to be challenged, and there are social events if you’re just not much into athletics.

“Just try it and make the choice that’s right for you,” he urged anyone who’s on the fence.

When I asked Stark what he wants people outside our community to know, he stated it simply: “We’re here. We love soccer. And we’re a safe place in a world that seems to be losing them.”

That matters, especially now, more than I ever expected.