Gay college athlete traded cheerleading for soccer and found the family he needed
Dillon Bacchetta’s decision to try out for the college soccer team had a huge impact on his life, finding confidence as an out gay man.
Mark
Because my community college didn’t have a cheerleading team, I did something I never expected to do: I became a college soccer player.
I had two problems.
The first was that I had never played soccer before.
The second was much harder to overcome: I was gay, and the idea of joining a team made up mostly of straight men terrified me.
That fear did not come from nowhere.
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Growing up, I was bullied for being small, for the way I talked and eventually for being a cheerleader. People called me gay before I ever really got the chance to come out on my own.
I learned early to watch how I stood, how I spoke and how much of myself I showed around certain groups of guys.
Cheerleading became more than a sport to me. It became a defense system.
I took pain and anger and turned them into discipline. I wanted to be the best. I chased perfection because being exceptional made me feel protected. If I could work harder, perform better and constantly become a stronger version of myself, maybe nobody could make me feel small.
That mentality took me far in cheerleading. But when I arrived at Atlantic Cape Community College in New Jersey, there was no cheer team.
I had always wanted to play soccer, so I decided to try out.
When I told my mom, she looked at me like I had 10 heads.
“No, don’t do that,” she said.
She had watched what I went through growing up and wanted to protect me. I understood her fear because I had the same one.
But there was another part of me that wanted those friendships. I wanted guy friends I could practice with, play video games with, joke around with and eventually think of like brothers.
So I taught myself soccer. I practiced alone before tryouts and never told anyone I had never played before. I basically decided to fake it until I made it.
A soccer scoreline that stung somehow breeds togetherness
At tryouts, the guys came over, introduced themselves and asked how I was doing. Everyone was nice.
Inside my head, though, I was having a completely different conversation. “Don’t be too flamboyant. Watch how you stand. Watch how you talk. And please don’t suck too badly.”
Then I got the text. I made the team.
For once, I could not protect myself with championships, experience or perfection. I was a beginner surrounded by players who knew far more than I did.
So I found another way to contribute. I showed up early. I stayed positive. I encouraged people constantly. If somebody made a mistake, I wanted him thinking about the next play instead of beating himself up over the last one.
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Sometimes people just need one voice saying, “You’ve got this.”
Then came my first real college soccer game. We lost 33-0.
Yes, 33-0.
It was also the first soccer game I had ever played.
That came directly from cheer. I love building people’s confidence. I love seeing somebody who doubts himself suddenly stand a little taller because another person believes in him.
We were undermanned and playing huge minutes. By the final 20 minutes, my leg had completely cramped. My toes were curling inside my cleat, and I was praying I could make it to the final whistle.
But I did. Afterwards, everyone looked defeated. Some guys sounded ready to give up on the season.
I remember telling them that the game was over. Nobody was going to feel sorry for us. If we did not want to experience that again, then we needed to practice harder, condition more, and sacrifice more.
That was something cheer had taught me too. When something goes wrong in a routine, you can’t spend the rest of it thinking about the mistake. You keep moving. You trust the people next to you. You finish together.
Slowly, that became our mentality.
Coming-out conversation with teammate felt so simple
The guys taught me soccer. I tutored my teammate Julio in English. I helped my teammate Zoen with his résumé. At first, I jokingly thought of it as a trade: You guys help me with soccer, and I’ll help you with the things I know.
Eventually, nobody was keeping score. We were just friends helping each other. Then we became family.
One day, Julio said something I’ll probably remember forever.
“You know, Dillon, you’re my first, like, real friend that’s gay.”
I smiled. It was not some dramatic conversation about sexuality. That was exactly why it meant so much.
Julio could talk to me about girls. I could talk to him about boys. We could give each other advice, laugh about relationships, and understand one another without needing to be the same.
Love was love.
Even the locker room became healing. A locker room had once been a place where I was hurt and afraid. Now I was surrounded by male athletes and nothing happened.
We changed. We joked around. We listened to music. Nobody cared that I was gay.
Eventually, neither did I. Somewhere along the way, I stopped monitoring myself. I was just Dillon.
By the end of the season, the kid who had secretly taught himself soccer before tryouts had become a starter and won Most Improved Player.
But the biggest improvement was not my soccer ability. It was my ability to trust.
That culture did not happen by accident. Our athletics coordinator Marcia and our athletic trainer / assistant director Melissa helped create an environment where people could build relationships like these and actually thrive.
I learned later that not every athletic environment feels that way.
Poetry and acting put it all into perspective
After graduating from Atlantic Cape, I transferred to Rider University excited to return to cheerleading, a sport I had dedicated more than a decade of my life to.
I thought I was walking back into familiar territory. Instead, that experience became painful. I found myself leaving practices upset and crying afterwards, struggling to understand how the sport I loved could suddenly make me feel so small.
The irony was impossible to ignore. I had once been terrified that a group of mostly straight men on a soccer team might reject me.
Instead, Julio, Zoen, Tony and others became some of the people I could fall back on when I was struggling somewhere else.
The guys I had once been afraid to meet became part of my support system.
After my soccer season, I tried to make sense of everything through writing. At Atlantic Cape, I was involved with “Rewrites” — the college literary magazine — where my honors professor Rich Russell, a fellow member of the LGBTQ community, was an advisor.
I wrote a poem called “Passing Truth and Scoring Pride.”
In it, I wondered whether the bond I had built with my teammates could fade.
Years later, I know the answer. It did not.
The poem ends with me understanding that I was not simply “the gay kid.” I was a teammate. A friend. A brother.
Soccer has even followed me into unexpected parts of my life. Later, through my work as an SAG-AFTRA actor, I was cast as a soccer player for an upcoming production. This time, I actually knew how to play.
That made me smile. A sport I taught myself because my community college did not have cheerleading had somehow followed me into another chapter of my life.
Cheer taught me to survive through excellence. Soccer taught me that I could belong without being perfect.
So if another gay kid is reading this while changing his voice, watching the way he stands or deciding not to try something because he is already imagining what other people might think, I understand.
I can’t promise every person or every team will treat you the way my teammates treated me.
But I hope you don’t let the people who hurt you in your past decide which doors you are too afraid to walk through in your future.
I went looking for a sport and found a new family.
Dillon Bacchetta was a 2021 USASF world champion in co-ed competitive cheerleading before playing soccer at Atlantic Cape Community College in New Jersey. He is a Rider University honors finance student and also works as an actor. He can be followed on Instagram at @dillbacc.
Story editor: Jon Holmes. Are you an LGBTQ person in sports who is interested in sharing your story to inspire others? Contact us here.
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