ORLANDO | Cory Fisher started playing rugby about three years ago.
“I ran into a friend of mine and he looked the best he had ever looked in his life,” Fisher recalls. “I asked him what he was doing and he said he started playing rugby. I was starting to get back into the gym, started focusing on wellness and myself, so I joined our local rugby team.”
That team was the Orlando Griffins, and while Fisher was open and accepted by the team as a gay man, he wanted to look for more members of the LGBTQ community who would be interested in playing.
“The first year I went to the captain and said I think it would be great if we advertised our team as an inclusive team,” Fisher says. “Their response was we already are an inclusive team so we shouldn’t have to advertise that. And to be fair, we were an inclusive team so I didn’t feel like it came from a place that was homophobic.”
As Fisher played, he started to see other teams had multiple LGBTQ players and continued to try and get the team to specifically market to the LGBTQ community.
“By year three I was over it,” Fisher says, “and I thought I know there is a demand for this in the community. Orlando is one of the top LGBTQ cities in the country. So I stepped away from the team and said when I come back to rugby I want to make it my own.”
During the pandemic, as members of the LGBTQ rugby community were disconnected from each other, an online group formed called the Rainbow Ruggers.
“It was gay rugby players — across the nation and international — that came together in a group to discuss gay culture, the sport, we started hosting Zoom calls so we could have that social interaction we weren’t getting because of the pandemic,” Fisher says.
It was in this group that Fisher expressed his feelings of disconnect from the community and was advised by a friend to start up his own LGBTQ rugby team with the International Gay Rugby league. And so the Orlando Otters RFC were born.
IGR, which got started in 2000 with a single team in London, is now a league of 119 teams worldwide that holds rugby games year round.
Fisher reached out to Jeff Enochs, the southeast representative for the IGR, on social media to find out what he needed to do to get the Otters set up.
“[Cory] is not the first person to reach out to me to inquire about how to start a rugby team but he’s the first one to take it this far,” Enochs says. “So we started a conversation about what the basics are to get this team off the ground: Getting the word out, connecting with local LGBTQ organizations, getting a practice schedule, getting a coach; once you get those basics together everything else will fall into place.”
Enochs says that the process is in what he calls the “discovery phase” right now and the timeline of when the Otters could become a member of the IGR can vary.
“We are putting the word out there and letting Cory build up a core group of guys,” Enochs says. “First we have to see what kind of interest Orlando has for putting this team together. I’ve seen some teams get started in six month, I’ve seen some take two years, it really just depends on the community in Orlando.”
When, where and who the Otters will play will depend Florida Rugby Union, Fisher says.
“Florida Rugby Union was what I played under when I played for the Griffins and we played against teams from Tampa, Cocoa Beach, Miami, Boca, Gainesville, places like that,” he says. “I’ve actually reached out to the president of the Florida Rugby Union [Kerri O’Malley] and she has guaranteed us games at a D4 level, so that would allow us to play games locally as well as games in the IGR as we get set up.”
Fisher’s main focus now is getting the team off the ground, holding the Otter’s first official get together at Rose Place Park on Dec. 19 at noon.
“As we begin there are some things we have to get in line before we can run full contact — insurance, coaches, things like that,” Fisher says. “So what I’m trying to do, since a lot of members are going to be new to rugby, is they come and we will start with the fundamentals. We start with fitness levels, then run touch rugby.”
For those interested in participating in the Orlando Otter’s first event, go to Linktr.ee/OrlandoOttersRFC and fill out the Expression of Interest – New Player Form.
