Struby is a queer athlete who's played soccer for nearly her entire life. She spoke about finding space on the pitch for her queerness, as well as her athleticism.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Struby: So, soccer was kinda like my safety, and I just kind of leaned into athletics.
To get to be strong and to get to be loud and to get to have feelings. To have my body be about productivity and strength and helping my team instead of having my body be about looks, I don't know, I think that a lot of that really, really helped.
My full legal name is Struby Kathleen Struble, which is just a little bit silly, but it's also absolutely 100% my name.
So, I was born with the first name Mary, and I was never, Mary was never used to refer to me by anyone at any point except for legal paperwork.
"Soccer was kind of my main identity point for most of my life and very important in my staying alive."Struby
Then I was on a soccer team, and we had three Katies, a Callie, I was Kathy, and the team mom was Kathy. So, like, that was not going to work. And so, I needed a nickname, and so, they took Struble my last name and just called me Struby.
The place where I felt at home and safe and loved and valuable and worthwhile and wanted was a soccer field – and on the soccer field I was called Struby, and it was this name that felt so good. It was this name that had all these positive associations with it.
So, soccer was kind of my main identity point for most of my life and very important in my staying alive.
I still have to defend that I'm a woman anytime I'm on the field with a co-ed team, which is stupid because like refs, other players, fans stop the game to be like, “There's too many boys on the field.”
“Nope, not a boy. Just really good.”
So, right now I play soccer with the San Francisco Spikes, which is an LGBTQ club that started in 1982. A lot of major metropolitan areas in the United States right now have queer soccer clubs and inclusive soccer clubs, and we take turns kind of hosting tournaments around.
This past November, I traveled to Guadalajara, Mexico, for the Gay Games. I played with the women's nonbinary team, and just the soccer itself is amazing because there's no concern – I don't have to do any of my gender checks to be safe on the field.
It's just to have that feeling of like looking and seeing other people like you or like knowing you're not going to have to count the genders on the field or worry about subbing in some sexist way. Like, it's just, we're all here to play and we're all in it together – is pretty magical.
And to just be around other queers playing together and celebrating one another and rainbow flags everywhere while you're doing the sport you love – that historically is not safe – is amazing.
The team that won first place was a team called Mexico Trans, and we were in Mexico, they were the host country and they won gold.
And when they got onto that podium and had a stadium full of people cheering for them and us next to them and a trans flag held up – you could just see , I mean, tears were like flowing down their faces because it was clear that like:
"I never thought this would come. I never thought I would have soccer back once I transitioned. I never thought I would get to play in competitive spaces again. I never thought I would be celebrated in my queerness and my soccerness together."
I don’t know, it was truly amazing and magical.
