Learn how Lori and Keil from Stonewall Sports' Kansas City chapter built an inclusive, volunteer-run sports league for the LGBTQIA+ community, balancing accessibility, collaboration, and innovative ideas like virtual reality sports to create meaningful connections.
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Welcome to Episode #21 of the Sold Out podcast, where we interview league organizers across the country for tips on how to sell out and grow leagues.
In this episode, we chat with Lori and Keil from Stonewall Sports' Kansas City chapter, a nonprofit organization that provides recreational sports leagues for the LGBTQIA+ community. They discuss the founding story of the organization, its structure, the challenges of managing a volunteer-run league, and the importance of community engagement. The conversation also covers collaboration with other chapters, cost management strategies to keep sports accessible, and the management of referees to ensure a positive sportsmanship environment. In this conversation, the speakers discuss the importance of community building within sports leagues, particularly focusing on inclusivity and creating safe spaces for diverse participants. They highlight the significance of kickball as a staple sport in their league and explore the innovative introduction of virtual reality sports. The conversation emphasizes the need for adaptability and receptiveness to feedback in fostering a thriving community.
Key Takeaways:
Tune in to hear more about Stonewall Sports' unique approach to league management, their national collaborations, and how they’re using sports to create lasting community connections.
Listen to the full episode now!
Below is the full transcript from this episode. The Sold Out Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple, or you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube Channel!
Tune in every other week to hear AREENA interview the country's best league organizers about their success in selling out leagues consistently.
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Lance McDonald (00:00.925)
Alright, today we have Lori and Kyle from Stonewall Sports, Kansas City. Thanks for being here, y'all. So yeah, let's get started with the basics. Obviously located in Kansas City, but what sports and leagues are you running? And yeah, just tell me a little bit about yourselves.
Keil Young (00:17.294)
So I'm Kylie Young. I'm the director of operations. So I oversee eight of our, we have eight in total, all of our sport leagues. So we've got volleyball, billiards, pickleball, virtual reality league, our kickball league, which is our biggest one. We've got, and we've got tennis and trivia. I think that's all of them. I'm trying to think.
I think that's eight, but yeah, we currently probably have maybe around 2000 players currently in our league. So that is a lot to manage. And I'll let Lori kind of explain our story and how we got started and everything like that.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (01:02.785)
Yeah, so my name is Lori Schlatter, pronouns she her. I am the commissioner of Stonewall Casey. so we are, I think first important thing to know about Stonewall is that, so Stonewall Sports Inc is a national nonprofit that then has, I think they're up to 24.
somewhere around that number of chapters around the country. So we were started as a local chapter in 2019, but we still we do get some support from the National Board in terms of, I mean, a range of things, just kind of general support. They handle our like taxes and accounting like we go through an accountant at the national level.
but we manage everything locally in terms of the actual leagues, the day-to-day stuff, kind of determining our own board governance. And yeah, I've been on the board since 2021, so I think we can definitely speak to kind of the general founding story and then from neither of us were along with like the actual founding group, we can kind of speak to that story. But we've both been on, Kyle's been on for about a year now and I'm going on three and a half. and
Lance McDonald (02:11.389)
Cool, OK. Well, yeah, want to.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (02:13.57)
Sorry, the main thing that I didn't say is that we are a rec league for adults only, and we focus on LGBTQIA plus community. Critical thing to leave out in the in the opening sentence. So we're yeah, basically a queer adult rec sports league. We focus, you know, we say we're a lot more about the community than the sports itself. Each of our well, maybe not all most of our sports, especially the bigger ones will have like, competitiveness, like divisions by levels of
Lance McDonald (02:24.637)
you
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (02:42.887)
competitiveness. So we aim to provide a space for anyone coming in who just wants to play versus someone who does want to be more competitive. So our primary goal really is to create a high-fund, low-cost as part of our mission statement for queer and trans folks and then just kind of sports as like the vehicle to do that.
Lance McDonald (02:43.773)
Hmm.
Lance McDonald (03:02.641)
Got it. Okay. That makes sense. okay. Yeah. I already have questions brimming about like virtual reality league. I don't think I've heard of that one before. So like what the heck is that about? But, yeah. Okay. Before, before we get there, yeah, maybe let's let's yeah. So founding story 2019 y'all joined a little bit after that. but this was started by national association, like planted this, organization in Kansas city. Is that how it worked or?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (03:09.711)
You
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (03:30.81)
Yeah, so the way it works. So Stonewall Sports, Inc. They started in 2010 and it started just in Washington, D.C. It started slowly spreading across the East Coast and then slowly started spreading West. So the way that you can start a new chapter of Stonewall Sports is basically there's like our one of our founders, actually two of our founders had previously played in other chapters on the East Coast. So they knew it existed and.
basically just required that they got a group of folks together to be on the founding board and communicated with the national board in order to understand what they needed to have in place to kind of create that local chapter. it's definitely, it has to be led by folks locally. It's not like the national board kind of does plants. It's just different cities will reach out to create a new chapter.
Lance McDonald (04:16.637)
Okay, got it. And it's all set up as a non-profit, is that right? And are y'all both full-time employees? Are they full-time staff, I guess? Or is it part-time?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (04:19.933)
Correct.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (04:26.148)
No, it's actually against our bylaws to pay anyone. So we're all volunteer run. The only people even across the national board, they've only ever paid our accountant and now just now they're hiring one paid person to help with all of the administrative work across all the chapters. So it's very much a volunteer led organization.
Lance McDonald (04:29.99)
all volunteer.
Lance McDonald (04:48.007)
how many volunteers are with your local chapter.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (04:52.469)
So we have about 20, so it depends on the levels. So we have our board and then we have a lot of folks that volunteer on top of that. our board is like 23 to 25 people, depending on how many spots are full. But then we will have people that volunteer to help with other sports. also have, I mean, we obviously rely fully on volunteers. So there's a lot of different times where we'll ask folks that community.
the community to come participate but primarily it's on our our board so around yeah 20 to 25.
Lance McDonald (05:27.133)
Got it. Yeah, I usually don't go too much down the path of staffing and stuff, but I am kind of curious. I talked to many different kinds of leagues that are structured in different ways and for-profit and non-profit and having everybody be volunteer when also a lot of these things are pretty challenging to manage and run. Like how do you pull that off? How do you have a good, is there just a way you guys think about getting volunteers that are really bought in and willing to put in the kind of time and effort?
that it takes for things to run really well. Cause in my mind that seems like a bit of a challenge. Cause yeah, sometimes it's just real work and it's not fun. Paying people is a good way to get them to do stuff that's not fun. So how do you manage that?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (06:04.35)
Yeah.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (06:08.317)
Yeah.
Keil Young (06:10.744)
Yeah, it is really, it's really difficult to find because you don't really have like your carrot that with a paycheck to like motivate people. So you really have to focus on like your relationship building and you have to figure out what drives like the volunteers passion and also like their willingness to like get things done. I think
there's a big part of just getting to know people in that. So that's mainly what I do, but we also have a lot of documents and stuff. We have a lot of people that have been on the board in the past and still kind of participate. They're always willing to want to help out. So that's a big part of it too.
I'm trying to figure out like a concrete answer for you, but there really isn't one. So, but I think just people wanting to like see their friends like be in a space for them that is just a good community like to build. I think that's really what kind of drives a lot of
Lance McDonald (07:12.625)
Right.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (07:13.676)
you
Lance McDonald (07:32.251)
I mean, have like, right, you've got a mission that I resonate with, right? And then you mentioned community is kind of maybe the other carrot. You get to be a part of something and build relationships.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (07:34.816)
Yeah.
Keil Young (07:42.028)
Yeah, and especially like having a space where you can like have queer sports like that is a big driver as well because there's not a lot of spaces. mean, especially in case the city is, you know, pretty liberal, but Missouri and Kansas surrounding areas are not. They're very like red state. So having a space where we can like do that and kind of be free to be, you know, who we are and have events that are.
part of that. think that's a really important thing that we've really cultivated and I'm proud of us.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (08:15.564)
Yeah, I think that's what I was going to speak to as well in part is I think that is a big draw that we really are a mission driven organization and that we, you know, we really do prioritize the community aspect. And I think the other thing that I have really tried to think about in my role is
how do we continue to improve on the board and the volunteer experience and how do we make it easier for people to commit to something that's hard? And that's still very much, very much a work in progress, but everything from like, how are we recognizing people on the board? How are we setting expectations for people on the board so they know what is expected? How are we
Do we have transition documents in place? You know, like that was a big thing that we had to work on when we transitioned from our founding board to our kind of like next gen board is, now we have to make sure that these roles are repeatable. And so it makes it easier for someone to come in and be like, well, here's my checklist of things I have to do instead of coming in like the founding board did and saying, how are we going to build this from the ground up? Like, how do we not keep reinventing the wheel? So I think it's, yeah, I kind of think of it from both ends of.
Yes, there is this rewarding aspect of being part of community. Also, how can we make it easier? And also, how can we make it more worth their while? you know, something that we are, our board is split up into a couple different tiers. So our full board, like I said, I think right now we're at like 23 people. Then we have our executive team, which Kyle and I are on. There's five roles in that team. And then most folks are at the principal level, which is like our directors. And then we have assistants. And so the exec team, one of the things we're charged with is kind of
creating the rest of the board's experience. So we have two retreats every year. We kind of think about what do the meetings look like. So that's another dimension of what are we providing for folks when they're on the board? How are we thinking about providing professional development even, like diversity training? What are things that not only obviously do we want to provide to the board so that we are creating the best community that we can, but also just so like.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (10:33.126)
people like we're on the board thinking what can I get out of this role as well and what am I looking for like that's something we tried to encourage this year with our goal setting and retreat earlier in the year was think about you know yes there's a lot of give from these roles but also what can you intentionally seek to get for yourself in terms of experience or learning or growth. So I think trying to find that balance is is really important too.
Lance McDonald (10:56.571)
Nice. yeah, all that makes sense. how do you, mean, you guys, you're part of a national thing with a bunch of other chapters. And then you mentioned all the stuff you're sort of creating and trying not to reinvent the wheel. Are y'all collaborating across chapters though, with any of this kind of stuff? Like all these things that you're creating, do you sort of share that in like a central place and say, here's how we defined this role and made it easy. And how does that work?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (11:21.798)
Yeah, it's a good question. I would say yes and no. think that's something. So we have someone on our board who is like every chapter is supposed to have a national board liaison. And we've got a wonderful one. Her name is Ellie and she's really helped us this year especially and like reminding us that we can do that and being that person who can liaise with everyone else. Because in our day to day, like I do think that's an area where we could level up.
in terms of having more collaboration across all of the chapters. And I think that's something that the National Board is kind of thinking through how they can make that easier for us to do. But we have, mean, Elia's really helped us reach out when we have questions of like, I'm trying to think of more recent ones. But if there are specific things that we think other chapters have already done, she'll reach out for us and try to get that. There are still gonna be some things though that are always different, right? So like if we think about
transition documents for kickball director, even if all the rules are the same from our league versus a league in another chapter, the way we get it done is going to be totally different. So we do try to lean on that, but there's always things that are just completely specific to our chapter too.
Lance McDonald (12:33.255)
Got it. Okay. That makes sense.
Keil Young (12:34.53)
Yeah, and specifically one this year was that we had been using a really outdated registration form that had like paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs about COVID and how to avoid COVID and like all of the stuff about COVID. I was like, well, COVID is still here, but people know how to deal with it kind of on their own now. So we've, I reached out to her kind of for a national's like updated, like.
risk liability like waiver of new things that we can add. So that has been one of those. And then we also have a national like tournament every year and we've started doing summits with that. And some of the founding members of the first chapter came and spoke on a panel this year and invited like other chapter leaders to go and stuff like that. So there are like opportunities for cross collaboration, I think.
they want to increase that. There's a retreat coming up in February that Lori and I are going to go to as well. they're trying to increase stuff like that. So
Lance McDonald (13:41.757)
Got it.
Yeah, well, what's the national tournament? Can you tell me more about that? Does that do?
Keil Young (13:48.418)
Yeah, so this, changes cities every year. This year it was in Minneapolis. I think, Lori, there was like three, no. Yeah, close to three, or over 3,000 people that attended. Yeah, but lots of different sports are represented. think they, kickball was the biggest one.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (14:00.487)
I don't know if I ever heard the number, but I think it was the biggest one they've had so far.
Keil Young (14:11.17)
by far, obviously, because it's very popular. But there was bocce, which you played on lorry. Billiards, dodgeball, just, we basically took over like the entire city of Minneapolis, all of their sports fields and everything like that to play. We didn't get to finish our last day of kickball because it rained all day. So that sucked. But it was super fun. Like I got to meet a bunch of like other kickball teams from DC.
and got to see them out. They have different sponsor bars where people go every night, so we'd see them out at the bars and everything, so that was fun. But yeah, I don't know how many years it's been going on for now, but that's a big part of it. We're maybe looking at hosting, I don't know yet, though.
Lance McDonald (15:05.959)
Okay, nice. Yeah, 3,000 people is a lot. I that's pretty good attendance to get to go to a new city. That's pretty expensive for a lot of people to pull that off. Did y'all just email your community and say, wants to go? And we'll just kind of form teams like for this event specifically, or how did you get people to come?
Keil Young (15:09.762)
Yeah.
Keil Young (15:13.128)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (15:21.748)
Yeah, yeah, so the way we do it, we've had folks go from our chapter for the last, I think, three years. So what we do is we kind of put out a call to say, we do like an interest form and we try to help facilitate forming teams, but we also like let folks like captain their own. Like basically we need people to decide they're building a team, but then we'll try to place any free agents that want to go on teams.
One thing that we've also tried to do to your point of it being, you know, fairly expensive endeavor, depending on where it is, is that we do try to do some fundraising and we as a national board commit some money every year to supporting folks to be able to stay in the hotels. So we get a few of the hotel rooms in like the sponsor hotel every year that people can stay in. And we also provide travel scholarships. So that's something that's always been really important for us.
Also just in terms of our leagues of making sure that cost is not a prohibiting factor for folks. So we do want as many people as possible to be able to go. think this year we had, I'm trying to remember how many, we had more people go this year than past years. I think we had 50, because I think we had several different teams across different sports.
Lance McDonald (16:20.53)
Yep.
Keil Young (16:33.71)
Yeah, we had a lot. had two kickball teams. We had a lot of tennis and a bunch of pick pickleball teams as well. Our, our tennis team won. Overall, I believe, and our talent team also won. There was a talent show and we won that. yes.
Lance McDonald (16:47.249)
Nice.
Lance McDonald (16:51.663)
Okay. Great. So the cost thing, you just talked about lowering costs and then I think you mentioned that as part of your like commission statement from the beginning, was it high fund, low cost or something like that? So I guess I've looked at pricing, you know, just across the country as part of an analysis at one point and it's really, really all over the place. So I don't know how to compare it because every city also has different cost of living and all that, but I'm kind of curious, how low are you all able to get?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (17:04.471)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (17:21.467)
your costs and are there other things you do? Do you pay for referees or do more like volunteer stuff there as well or like how can you talk to a little bit to how how low the cost actually is and how you're able to pull that off?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (17:35.313)
I can start and then I'll kick it over to you Kyle. Yeah, so we do, we try to aim for 35 or 40. So our kickball leagues is like, we always have a regular registration and a late registration. So kickball is 35 and 40. That's kind of like our goal. We do have some sports, of course, we have to bump up like pickleball and tennis have to be higher just because of the cost of the venue. But I think we do like,
Keil Young (17:35.692)
Anyone mean to do it?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (18:01.318)
like we have trivia as well. And that's one where, like, I think we have a much, I think that's like 20. Did we do that for $20? 40. Okay. I think we, I think we've done 20 in past years when we didn't do a t-shirt or anything with it, but this year we did some, some merch. so we, a koozie, yes. so, but the ways that we can supplement costs, is, I mean, we have a, a really
Keil Young (18:08.219)
trivia was 40 this year.
Keil Young (18:17.771)
We did a cruisy. Very popular.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (18:29.638)
and thriving sponsorship program. And one of the main ways that we talk to sponsors about why we need sponsorships is that we can help keep costs low. And so that's why it like, it's okay if we have a season that's in the red because that's not our only source of income. And so it gives us a lot more flexibility and allows us to prioritize.
Lance McDonald (18:32.157)
Mmm.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (18:57.969)
keeping the costs low because we have other sources of donated income. And then, you speak to the referees and kind of like how we approach that.
Keil Young (19:05.966)
Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about costing too.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (19:10.31)
Mm-hmm.
Keil Young (19:11.08)
We kind of share funds across sports. like our trivia league, we made a lot of money. Not, mean, because we don't have to pay for the venue. It's one of our sponsors opened their venue for us and we are trivia like fee for the person coming in doing trivia was pretty low. So we, we made money there. We were really in the green. So we were able to kind of move that stuff over and Laura, you can talk about them.
more since you're interim treasurer. But we're able to kind of balance that. And then also we do a donation to our national. we as a nonprofit, we have to have a 15 % donation, right? To local nonprofit of all of our funds every year, part of our funds every year. So we have to save some money for that. But yeah, I think it's 15%, right, Lori?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (19:59.346)
That's like our, yeah, our national boards guide, like their goal. Yeah.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (20:11.784)
Yeah, that's like the, sorry, I my internet might be uncooperative. But yeah, the, perfect. So yeah, so one of the goals of the whole organization is to also be philanthropic. And so they've set a guide for each of the chapters to donate a minimum of 15 % of our income essentially every year to other organizations. So we have.
Keil Young (20:18.486)
Yeah, you're really blurry.
Lance McDonald (20:30.864)
and
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (20:40.486)
to community partners that we have partnered with since we started. And then the last few years, we've also started rotating and donating to a third as well and kind of splitting that up. And at the end of the year, giving and donating that.
Keil Young (20:53.485)
Yeah.
then to go with, referee. we, most of our sports don't have the, the only two sports we require referees for or need them for is, is for kickball, and for softball. So we have in the past paid our softball umpires, since they have previously come with the field. So we have not needed to hire any outside umpiring for that. but for kickball, we source.
all of our umpires internally and there's about 25 of them this year. Last season we were really struggling we probably only had like 15 and I'm an umpire and I was umpiring like two or three games every Sunday so
that became a problem, especially like I don't want to burn out my umpires, but we had a really big recruitment effort and I think we're going to get a lot of them to stay. We offer free registration for the next season of that sport to those umpires, so that's a good way to retain them. And then we also have done an umpire happy hour.
Lance McDonald (21:56.082)
Mm.
Keil Young (22:04.014)
earlier this season, like before it started. And then I'm planning on having like a thank you barbecue for them. Just kind of out of my own pocket. you know, keeping them is really good. Because we need them. But also part of our code of conduct states that
Lance McDonald (22:21.137)
Yeah, right.
Keil Young (22:27.82)
people, it is very stressful in the moment. Sometimes, especially if you're having a game that you're calling that's really, really chaotic between two teams that are not helping the situation. But I think everybody is there to support each other. Lots of like our head umpire and our field manager, like they kind of float around and help people and they monitor the games and make sure that people are.
feeling good about the calls that they're umping especially for new umpires. So we have a whole process for onboarding new umpires and stuff like that. that's been helpful.
Lance McDonald (23:06.141)
Got it, yeah. That is impressive that you're able to do that, because I mean, even in my experience, when you pay refs and you pay them well, it can be hard. I mean, that job is like, I mean, it's pretty emotionally, I guess it depends on how you guys have built community, which probably is a good segue to that topic, but sportsmanship and those things, it can be emotionally rough to be a referee. And sometimes even when they make like actually pretty good, like hourly rate, it's still just not worth it for some people unless you've really...
got a handle on sportsmanship. guess one, sorry, one quick question. The 35 or $40, that is very low. How many games does that cover?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (23:44.767)
Was that eight plus the tournament?
Keil Young (23:45.762)
My gosh. Eight weeks. Yeah, so... Well, seven weeks of play. We kind of like build in a rain day in case. Yeah. So, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Lance McDonald (23:47.549)
Eight weeks? Okay. Yeah, that is love.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (23:55.377)
right, yeah, so eight including the tournament,
Lance McDonald (23:59.035)
Yeah, okay. That's still super cheap. So the main cost is probably just the facility rental. And then you're able to kind of... And the t-shirts. Yeah, everybody gets t-shirt every time.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (24:06.016)
and the t-shirts. Yeah.
Keil Young (24:07.458)
and the paint.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (24:10.133)
Yes, yeah.
Lance McDonald (24:11.773)
Okay, got it.
Keil Young (24:12.942)
Yeah, the paint is...
Lance McDonald (24:16.807)
paint. Is that what said?
Keil Young (24:17.134)
It's just the paint, like we paint our own fields and everything. so we had to pay for that. Yeah. We play on grass. so yeah, the paint has been staying there. It hasn't been raining, which is not good for the earth, but good for my paint budget.
Lance McDonald (24:19.982)
I don't know. Okay.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (24:21.664)
You can play on grass for kickball.
Lance McDonald (24:23.773)
Got it.
Lance McDonald (24:33.141)
Good for your paint. Yeah. Okay. So then, yeah, let's, let's do the segue to community. I think you guys mentioned wanting to talk about challenges, initiatives around community building. And I think that's kind of core for a lot of people. And even if you're just really into the business side of it you have a for-profit, I mean, if you can build real community, then people will stay and, and it's a better business and also for the social side.
So how do you all think about that? You have something that is naturally binding people together in terms of your mission, so that probably helps a bit. But yeah, I now talk to how you think about community and sportsmanship and building relationships and all that.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (25:10.934)
Yeah.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (25:14.771)
Yeah, I feel like there's so many different ways we could take this. I'll start with sharing what I think has become really core to our chapter's culture. So when the founding board members came together, one thing they really wanted to prioritize was ensuring, like sometimes queer leagues end up becoming like gay male leagues and they
like the founders wanted to make sure that we could have a gender diverse league and, you know, make it be that anyone would feel welcome. And so they were really intentional about trying to have a diverse board to start with this, you know, they knew people who are on the board are going to bring in their friend groups. And so I think that's always been a core of how we've thought about building and sustaining community. So I think there's a piece of it.
for that of like, we want to prioritize making people feel welcome and want to stay. And so part of that was making sure, you know, we tried to get like a representative group of people in. I think we still have a lot of room to grow in terms of diversifying the league in a lot of areas. But we do have a pretty gender diverse league. And we don't do like, we don't do any gendered.
leagues, like everything, there's no requirements for, yeah, completely open. And so I think part of that too, that we, I mean, part of what we get from the national board is like, you know, we had help with them in starting up our code of conduct and our bylaws and things, but we have adapted that over the years. And, you know, like one thing we realized is like, we need to have a really clear procedure for how we respond to code of conduct violations and just general incidents. You know, I on the
when we responded to someone who had reached out to us after something happened and they, like, I was the one responding and I was responding with the best of intent, but it did not land well and they were like not happy with how I'd responded. And it was just kind of this domino effect of realizing like the reason why that happened is because we didn't have a process in place. And I was just kind of ad hoc replying to an email that despite my best intentions was not what that person like needed to hear in that moment. And...
Lance McDonald (27:28.157)
you
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (27:35.012)
So we put a lot of time, we worked with a consultant to kind of figure out what we wanted this process to look like and how it could be something that was really.
really encourage people to come forward if they experienced anything outside of what we want within our community and what that could look like. And I think that's something we've seen more people start to use over the years, which feels like a good sign that people trust to report things, including people having poor sports conduct and making people not feel welcome in that sense, including umpires, including other teams. And so that is something that we...
I think in other leagues, it's kind of a norm potentially of like, people fighting with the UMS or there might be like a higher threshold of what is and isn't acceptable. And that's something we've tried to keep a pretty low threshold on. So I do think that speaks to me. know that's how Kyle brought this up earlier of, we want to create an environment where people, when they're volunteering, like we have it specifically in our code of conduct, which I think this was something that we had gotten from nationals that it specifically calls out.
Lance McDonald (28:28.871)
you
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (28:47.642)
you know, like, I can't remember if that's in sports conduct or the bullying clause, but basically saying anything directed at volunteers is like, like an extra level of like, you know, these people are volunteering their time, like we need to treat them with respect. So I think, I mean, there's so much to it though, right? Like there's, think we're still really trying to learn and figure out what it means to.
Because I think it's also like as being a queer league, I think it's also a big responsibility to create a safe space. Like if we are saying this is, you know, a space for queer folks to come play sports, like we need to create a welcoming, inclusive environment. Like I think that's something I've always felt like is really that I've appreciated that we prioritize. And I also feel like we have a real responsibility to prioritize because people are coming here.
to connect with people and to have community. As Kyle said too, if we think about like, it's just there's a lot of things that are kind of scary right now for folks in our community. And so having a space where people can come and connect is like, it's not just about the sports, right? And so it is something I think we're constantly talking about. have a great, why am I blanking on the community relations director and assistant director? We have a great team that like this year they've expanded to put on a whole different.
Keil Young (30:02.7)
Yes.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (30:07.057)
like a whole bunch of different kinds of events too. Like we have someone who's come in and facilitated various activities around mental health. They've done like a walking club, like just a lot of different things to try to create spaces for people to come who maybe want the community but don't want the sports or want extra community time outside of the sports. And so I think it's.
Lance McDonald (30:09.469)
Mm-hmm.
Lance McDonald (30:24.358)
and
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (30:30.825)
for us is like, yeah, this kind of definitely focus on, okay, the things that the spaces that we're creating, how do we make sure that they stay, that they stay space, stay safe? How do we continue to make sure that we are inviting everyone into our space and creating a safe space for them? And are we creating the right spaces? Are there more that we can be creating? Yeah, Kyle and Kieris here, what other thoughts do you have? I think those are kind of the first things to have in mind for me.
Keil Young (30:59.544)
I think you hit on all of them. think just like general like appreciation and like we give each other like a lot of kudos and we really like hype each other up. I can't say that like, I mean there have been a few like, there's obviously a lot of like situations that you can get into and you can think that it's like bad, but there's usually generally like, I think we support each other really well, especially as a board.
We like have a board appreciation like events and I think that we have a lot of community building events like even through like individual sports. I do wish there would be more like cross collaboration. I wish that like more people would like go and watch pickleball or tennis or whatever but
Lance McDonald (31:45.981)
Mm.
Keil Young (31:48.224)
you know, kickballs are our big one and people come out like people's moms come out and people's kids and like it's like a big deal like the neighborhood that we hosted and like they really like having us there. Same with the park.
Lance McDonald (31:59.773)
do you kickball is such a of all your, sounds like that one just says this huge staple. Why is that?
Keil Young (32:08.574)
Our volleyball league is also quite sizable. think it's just, we have a, I think the location has a lot to do with it. The park that we play at is like kind of in the middle of everything. Like it's on like this main road as part of this great like,
neighborhood called Hyde Park where there's a lot of queer people that live in that I call it the Gabor hood lovingly But like that's a good like community like promotion for that so
You know, don't know. Kickball is also like our longest standing sport, so I think it's just been around for the longest and end across. I'm not sure if there's actually. I think there might be only one other adult kickball league in Kansas City, so I think that there's a few other factors that have to leading to that, but our pickleball is pretty sizable. I think we had 300 players.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (32:43.671)
Yeah.
Keil Young (33:06.755)
in the spring. Summer registration was a bit lower because just because it's hot and then our winter league is inside so we don't have as many courts. But yeah, we have 700.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (33:18.773)
I think kickball is also... Sorry, go ahead.
Keil Young (33:22.78)
We have 700, over 700 people playing kickball this season, yeah, pretty big.
Lance McDonald (33:27.195)
Hmm. Yeah, that's big.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (33:30.585)
Yeah, was going to say, think, yeah, it's the first sport we had, I think also across, I would assume most chapters, I feel like at the national level, kickball is one of the bigger sports for Stonewall too. And then I think it can have bigger teams. So we have, what is it, 24, Kyle, is that our cap? So we've upped it to 24 people in a team. That, as we expanded, that was like one of the things we kept kind of bumping up so more people could join. We bumped up the number of teams. We have four divisions there now. So it's like, know, pickleball, for instance, is one we kind of have to cap.
Keil Young (33:44.622)
24.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (33:58.816)
by the venue. Kickball is one that can be more flexible. I think it's also just a more accessible sport in terms of being able to come in with less experience, especially because we have like our lowest of the four divisions. We just rebranded this year as the Leisure League. Like we're really trying to make it be like, you don't have to be a sporty person. You can just come and kick a ball around. And then I think since we have that many people and we have that momentum, it just kind of feels like a bit of a party every Sunday with people hanging out. So, yeah.
Lance McDonald (34:25.297)
Right.
Keil Young (34:26.414)
Yeah, we used to have a DJ and we do like after parties at like our sponsors. You have a sponsor bar like every week that will run like deals and yeah, people just it's pretty fun. And it's also on Sunday. So it's our one of our only leagues that runs on the weekend. So that one's a probably a big factor in in just size.
Lance McDonald (34:29.23)
Lance McDonald (34:48.017)
Cool. Yeah, If have time for one or two more questions, got circled all the way back to the beginning, virtual reality. Been waiting to have. So kickball's killing it, and then virtual reality. Yeah, I haven't heard of that one. There's an e-sports thing that we're kind of picking up on a little bit, but can you tell me a little bit about that?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (34:58.307)
Thank you.
Keil Young (35:08.332)
Yeah, so, first virtual reality league, one of our partner, like one of our sponsor bars has is a virtual reality bar. Laurie can speak more to playing it because I, I've only played it like in trial. I haven't played it on a team or in the league or anything. but, they have like.
I don't know, for virtual reality, like headsets that like have basically have laser tag, like they call it tower tag. and you can play with like four different people on your team. Like four is the max though. and you kind of just go around and jump from tower to tower and like virtual reality and, play laser tag or there's other, there's other games that we can play. don't think we've like ventured out of doing tower tag cause everybody loves it. but there's.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (35:49.794)
It's so fun.
Keil Young (36:00.28)
There's like, but I think our founder of the league, whose name is Caro, was just there one night probably and walked up to Terry, who's owner, and they probably were spitballing about a league. That's how I can imagine that it started. If there's another story that I don't know of, feel free to jump in long enough, you think.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (36:23.311)
I don't remember the details because Kara used to be on our sponsorship team and I think I'm trying to remember if the bar is called Double Tap if they came on as a sponsor first and then I don't remember how it all came about but it was kind of in the mix of the conversation about them being a sponsor. But yeah, I think it works really well. It's one that we've kind of struggled to get a high level of adoption and get a high number of players because I think it is one that people don't expect. And I'll admit I was skeptical.
Keil Young (36:34.764)
Mm-hmm.
Lance McDonald (36:43.538)
Hmm.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (36:48.666)
before I started of like, okay, I'm gonna, I wanna do this, I wanna try it. And then I just loved it. Cause it's like, I think it's very easy to join in as a new game. It's also kind of, it's an interesting thing that removes, like we were talking about, know, kind of sports conduct and the play environment. It kind of removes that because you don't even know who you're shooting at. Like, you know, they're on the other team, but you can't see like the players names on the other team. So it almost, it like removes a lot of that kind of potential of like frustration.
Lance McDonald (36:53.617)
Sure.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (37:17.922)
in play. So it also I feel like lends itself to being a really like positive environment of a game and then also they like project it so folks who aren't playing can like watch the games that's going on. So it's yeah I think it really works well as a league format.
Lance McDonald (37:18.034)
Hmm.
Lance McDonald (37:26.851)
Okay.
Keil Young (37:28.278)
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a commentator and everything. it is, we do try to keep, yeah, we do try to keep at least like one sport per season or like have two sports that are like, able to just like kind of disability friendly because like,
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (37:33.732)
Yeah, they get really into it.
Keil Young (37:50.54)
You have a lot of people running around playing kickball and playing tennis and chasing a ball, but sports is not just that. Sports is wanting to play games with other people. So just having an avenue for that, think, is really important to me personally. I think you kind of have to have the heart of it and want to continue to do that.
That's why I like to keep it around and it's fun. And you do get really sweaty, even though like you're just like shooting at people. it's like,
Lance McDonald (38:19.034)
Cool.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (38:24.72)
Yes. Because it's like you're doing squats for the whole time because you got to hide, you got to crouch, you got to...
Lance McDonald (38:28.574)
Yeah, yeah.
Keil Young (38:29.868)
Yeah, you gotta crouch. gotta go. Like some people play like fully on the ground. Like it's intense. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (38:35.786)
No, that makes sense. did Virtual Audi once and it was one where you were ducking and dodging and I just felt fun, no big deal. And then the next day I couldn't walk because I had just squatted so much. was like, what happened? Yeah, yeah. So it's 4v4 and there's a commentator and it, that, that, and so you just have a few teams, I guess, by nature, probably going to be a little bit of a small kind of league.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (38:43.901)
Yeah.
Keil Young (38:44.526)
It's intense.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (38:46.504)
will catch you off guard for sure.
Keil Young (38:58.882)
Yeah, I think the most we had was last season. I there was like 35 players. This season we have 25. We tried to do a summer season. Registration was super, super low just because of the time of year. But that was something that we wanted to try and we failed.
Lance McDonald (39:06.897)
Mm. Cool.
Lance McDonald (39:17.725)
Wait.
Right?
Keil Young (39:24.984)
Which is okay, because we learned. So yeah, our Winter League, yeah, it will be starting here in a couple weeks. I think next week. Or not next week, week after next, sorry. So I'm a week ahead of myself.
Lance McDonald (39:25.095)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Lance McDonald (39:37.373)
Yeah.
Yeah. Awesome. I think that's all my questions. you have anything else you wanted to bring up or talk about?
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (39:46.591)
I thought of one last thing in terms of the community piece and being stewards of this community. think the last thing that has been a really important theme for me is humility and adaptability and receiving feedback from folks. I think it's inevitable that trying to start any league, especially a league that is trying to be
trying to have this level of priority and commitment to community. Like we're gonna make mistakes as a board and we certainly have done that. And I think the reason why, I mean, think one of the reasons why I feel most proud to be on the board is that I feel like each time we've been faced with critical feedback or feeling like we've made a mistake, we have tried to learn from that and really tried to lean into what our values are and use that to guide us to figure out how to move forward. And that has always ended in us.
usually always ended us in us making changes in, you know, just trying to make sure that we are still going in the direction that we want to go in. And so I think that's also a really critical component that I think there's a lot of steps along the way that if we as a board had decided to take other, you know, make other choices, ignore the feedback we were hearing, like I would not be surprised if we would not have the numbers that we did today if people didn't feel like we were creating the environment that we're aiming to. So I think that's been a really
really critical piece of the leadership for that too.
Lance McDonald (41:17.169)
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. mean, the space is hard not to have some failures. I've had a lot as well, but clearly you guys have done well. I 2,000 people is a large community. So yeah, kudos to y'all for that is a lot.
Keil Young (41:29.166)
lot of people and everyone has something to say and yeah, think always being like, yeah, receptive and open to hearing like any type of feedback is always important for not only league growth, you know, personal growth and just kind of thinking about what kind of legacy you want to leave when you leave your board position or you know, stop playing sports, you know.
stuff like that.
Lance McDonald (42:01.629)
Got it. All right. Well, awesome. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.
Keil Young (42:09.997)
Cool.
Lori Schlatter (she/her) (42:10.944)
Thank you.
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