Sweat shimmering across her face, Natalie Matlou stood over her teammates Monday and, in a mix of English and her native Sotho, demanded victory in the first round of the Gay Games.
Her team, South Africa’s only black lesbian soccer squad, was tied at the half against a group from Wisconsin.
“Take them on!” barked Matlou, a coach who doubles as center midfielder. “Take them on, especially by the goal!”
Much is made of the fact that at the Gay Games staged this week across Chicago, the object isn’t winning as much as inclusion and personal best. But for the South African soccer squad, like many international competitors, moral victories come second.
At the Gay Games, athletes have come from 22 nations, including Chile, Croatia and Papua New Guinea, to learn how to inspire change back home.
For the South Africans, the goal is to change perceptions in a place where they can usually only play women’s teams if they pretend to be straight or men’s teams if they’re willing to endure taunts about their sexuality. Rights for homosexuals are written into the South African constitution, but they don’t always mean much for the working-class black women who make up the team. Most live in impoverished townships surrounding Johannesburg.
“Winning, for us, would open doors,” said Matlou, 32. “We want to show people what they are missing about us.”
An hour later, the South Africans were celebrating a 2-1 victory in Oak Park, but modestly, because they still had to face a squad from Team Chicago in the afternoon. Even women from Wisconsin had a hard time being upset.
“How can you root against a group of women who traveled across the world to be proud of who they are and compete?” said Connie Bettin, 45, who lives in Madison and plays for another soccer team in the Games. “If Wisconsin can’t win gold, I hope South Africa does.”
Like many of the international competitors, the South African soccer players can thank a Gay Games scholarship program for getting them to Chicago this week. Started for the Games held in New York City in 1994, the scholarship brought 115 athletes from 22 nations to this year’s Games, which run through Saturday.
Of the nearly 12,000 competitors, between 2,000 and 3,000 are international. But the scholarships have been given only to people coming from countries where being gay can be a particular challenge, said Gay Games spokesman Kevin Boyer.
Gathered for an orientation at Roosevelt University during the weekend, about 70 of the scholarship athletes traded stories about their difficulties back home.
A Croatian woman said she longs to stage a lesbian soccer tournament in Eastern Europe, but said she would need to call it a “women’s tournament” because the L-word could bring trouble. A member of the Papua New Guinea men’s volleyball team said he and five teammates had to “go out of the country very quietly, and we will have to go back very quietly.”
“Otherwise we will be killed at the airport,” he said.
During introductions at the orientation, the biggest ovation, which was standing and sustained, was saved for Dick Uyvari and Joe La Pat, 62-year-old men who have been partners for 37 years and financed more than half the scholarship fund.
The Uptown couple said they were inspired by their own difficulties through the years, like when they had to get one of their fathers to co-sign on a loan when they bought their first piece of property together in 1971. Gay men have no such difficulties now, they said.
After single-handedly bankrolling most expenses for the South African women’s soccer team, Uyvari and La Pat learned there wasn’t much money to bring more athletes. Well off from careers in real estate, they soon wrote a check for $75,000.
“Anytime you yourself have experienced something, you feel a lot more affected when other people go through something similar,” Uyvari said. “The idea of enabling people to have this experience they otherwise would not have is wonderful.”
The challenges facing the athletes vary.
Carlos Garcia, a 35-year-old swimmer, said homosexuality is largely tolerated in his home of Santiago, Chile, but generally only on the fringes. Santiago recently held its first pride parade, but “it didn’t have the business executives, just the flamers,” he said.
Because homosexuality and the mainstream have yet to merge, Garcia, a real estate agent, said he isn’t out to his teammates in a competitive swimming league.
“I just want to be proud to show my face and let people know I am a normal person,” he said. “I want to make a difference and be a good example to the next generation of gay people.”
In Papua New Guinea, racism is no problem but homosexuality is taboo, said the volleyball players, who asked not to be identified. There are no permanent gay social spots, but roving gay-themed parties that are advertised with code words.
“It’s very, very hard,” one of the men said. “The life I see here is freedom as a gay man.”
Even the South African soccer team members say that though their primary goal is to change what they can at home, they are reveling in the present and the liberation of being surrounded by openly gay athletes.
“I feel like this is where I belong,” said team captain Albertina Nkgweng, 27. “It’s like we’re all free, and we know who we are and what our rights are. I’ve dreamed of a situation like this.”
But when a single-elimination women’s soccer tournament begins Wednesday afternoon after three rounds of open play that determines seeding, gold is still the goal. The medal rounds begin Friday at University of Illinois at Chicago.
“If we come home with a trophy, we’ll be doing something for our country and for all the gays and lesbians we left behind,” Nkgweng said.
That goal might have become slightly tougher Monday afternoon. In their second game of the day, the South Africans lost to a team from Chicago, 1-0.
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jbnoel@tribune.com
