Gay water polo trailblazer played at Harvard, testified in a Speedo and is still coaching

Water polo player Mike Crosby has long been making waves when it comes to LGBTQ advocacy for athletes and was one of the first out athletes profiled by Outsports.

The former star player at Harvard-Westlake prep school in Los Angeles and then Harvard University helped pave the way for the gay athletes who came after him. Crosby has been competing openly as a gay man in aquatic sports going back to the late 1990s and still swims and coaches water polo with West Hollywood Aquatics.

He is memorably known for his push in favor of new swimming pools in West Hollywood in 2013, testifying before the City Council in a Speedo, and for his cover photo in 2002 in Genre magazine. We thought it would be a great time to check in with Crosby, a professional recruiter who lives with his husband, Luis Clavijo, their daughter, Sky, and dog, Leonidas, in Los Angeles.

Outsports: When did you come out to people competing with and against you in the water polo sphere and how did it affect your performance at the time? 

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Crosby: I came out sophomore year of college [at Harvard] to my teammates in 1999 — I was already out to close friends and family a year or so prior.  Not many of my teammates were comfortable talking about it right away, but it was only positive encouragement I got from them and my coach.  I don’t remember opponents saying anything mean, and I’m not sure if my performance was affected much at all.  Probably stayed the same or slight improvement.

Related

Gay water polo player Mike Crosby testifies before city council in his Speedo
The West Hollywood City Council members weren't complaining, even if they did pass an ordinance banning his attire shortly after the testimony

You coach water polo now as well as competing. How does your passion for the sport translate into coaching it and does it give you the same satisfaction as participating in competitions yourself? 

I still compete in swimming, but I need hip replacements eventually and can no longer compete in water polo, so coaching is the next best thing.  I didn’t enjoy water polo in high school, liked it a lot in college, and loved it playing as an adult after college, a lot of which is thanks to joining West Hollywood Aquatics and playing with and against other LGBTQ+ water polo players.  Maybe one day, with hip replacements, I can come out of retirement, since I’ve talked to a few ex-Division 1 players who’ve competed successfully at Masters Nationals with replaced hips.

Water polo is a niche sport compared to something like basketball, football or baseball. Do you think this has allowed you to live openly while participating in ways that athletes in those other sports still feel they can’t?

It’s tough for me to say for sure since I haven’t played those more popular-in-USA sports at high levels, but water polo is not only niche but it’s also associated with privilege. Only neighborhoods and schools with money and desire can maintain a large enough pool and water polo program. It depends on the country’s interest — or region of the country, in our case in the USA — whether or not the sport is supported.

I also had less to lose coming out — if water polo were to become toxic when I came out, which it didn’t, it’s not like I was depending on the sport for scholarship money or a lucrative professional career.  So perhaps it was a little easier for me, and is a little easier for the average water polo player.  But it is a full-contact team sport where you’re wearing almost nothing, so in some ways that might make dynamics a little trickier than some sports. 

It’d be an interesting question to ask folks in the countries where water polo is among the most popular sports — Hungary, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Australia come to mind. Some of those countries are not as accepting in general of LGBTQ+ people as ours.

What moment or accomplishment is the defining one in your career? Do you still think about it to this day?

Teamwise, we never in my eight years achieved the ‘Big Goal’ in high school (winning our region’s Division I) or college (winning Eastern Championships and qualifying for the NCAA).  We didn’t really get close either, losing in the semis at best. 

So the first Gay Games gold medal for me in Sydney 2002 was very memorable, and there were far more folks cheering and flashing cameras there in Australia than when you go to the NCAA D1 water polo championships.  It was cool to also have the best scoreboard I’ve ever seen as well, with each player and their goal tally (and major foul tally) for all to see.  They had built that new facility for the Olympics two years prior.

Individually, I was never quite good enough to get All-American in high school or college.  So when I achieved water polo All-American in 2005 at the Masters Water Polo Nationals, holding my own against the best players in the country, I was so happy.  I also earned swimming All-American honors in 2006, 2008 and most recently in 2018 at the Gay Games in Paris.

You mentioned winning four medals at the International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics (IGLA+) Championships recently. Do you think you’ll be able to compete at a high level for a lot longer, whereas other athletes often retire when they get into their 40s and beyond?

It was actually five medals — three golds and a bronze in swimming and our team, West Hollywood, won silver in the competitive division in water polo.  I am always inspired by water polo players who compete well into their 60s and swimmers who compete into their 80s!  I really hope to continue to race, coach and play water polo again on replaced hips as long as I can.

You are living a life that many LGBTQ+ people still feel they will never have the chance to have by being a husband and a father. Do you feel like an inspiration to other queer people in your life and does it feel more like a blessing or a burden for others to look to you as an example?

Blessing.  I feel lucky that I grew up with loving parents who continued to love and support me after I came out, and I feel lucky to have grown up comfortably in Los Angeles, a diverse and accepting city in general.  It was Outsports and the people of Genre magazine that helped get my story out to many and for that I’m eternally grateful.

Are you disappointed in the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in the sports world today relative to what most of us expected by this time in history? Did you expect more queer athletes to be living openly by 2025?

Yes, probably.  Perhaps more queer CEOs, politicians and actors, too, although a big shout out to the ones there are!  [Former NBA player] Jason Collins, and his twin Jarron, was a year ahead of me in high school, and we weren’t friends then, but I got to meet him later after his NBA success — I was pretty star struck and he was a fun person to talk to.  A dream would be to meet Víctor Gutiérrez, not just any openly gay water polo player, but the openly gay male Olympic water polo player.  I love how Glenn Burke, a former L.A. Dodger, is widely credited with inventing the high five (don’t blame him for not being out, it was 1977 after all).

I saw the Outsports article about how openly LGBTQ+ women outnumbered the men at the Paris Olympics last year 9 to 1.  There’s clearly still a lot of work to be done on acceptance.

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