The year has been surreal for gay volleyball player Jordan Lucas
Gay Long Island University volleyball player Jordan Lucas reflects on his impact, loss, changing schools and realizing the power of his story.
Mark
The last six months have been a whirlwind for Jordan Lucas — one the gay, former Cal State Northridge volleyball player, much less anyone, expected as he wrapped up his fourth season of collegiate play.
Lucas was thrust into the spotlight after a matchup against UC Irvine in April where broadcaster Charlie Brande commented that Lucas deserved to be physically assaulted for his trademark and vividly gay celebrations.
While Brande lost his broadcasting job, Lucas became a national name after the incident, sitting down for interviews with national television outlets, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, People Magazine and more.
While the controversy itself sparked that attention, Lucas used that new, larger platform to delve into those viral celebrations and how they represent his wider message of queer acceptance and empowerment in sports.
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Despite the media blitz in the immediate aftermath, Lucas told Outsports that he didn’t fully recognize the reach he and his message had until he played in a tournament in Florida nearly two months later.
First, it was a valet at a restaurant where his team was dining. Then it was the waiter taking their order. Then it was nearly the entire staff at the nightclub they went to afterward. All of them recognized Lucas not as a volleyball player but the volleyball player.
“It really was kind of crazy because I’m in a random part of Florida. It doesn’t really have anything to do with volleyball because we’re just out getting dinner and drinks,” Lucas said. “It was starting to really engulf people, I guess, and that was, to me, where this felt a little bigger than volleyball.”
Speaking out for equality
The opportunities grew from there: NIL deals, a management and volleyball team to help Lucas navigate his newfound fame and an opportunity to speak at a Human Rights Campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, that he still cites as the “coolest thing” he’s ever done.
“I remember I was looking at dates for the Human Rights Campaign event and when I could fit into my schedule, and I told my management team I have to do this. Not just for myself, but for the LGBTQ+ community and for queer athletes in all sports,” Lucas said.
“I brought a friend of mine and I didn’t really know what the event was going to be like, but my friend said, ‘ Jordan, I think this is pretty high level.’ I don’t think that I fully grasped all of it until I was there. I realized I do have this impact in a way.”
That impact was also felt within the volleyball world. Lucas said he heard from several NCAA coaches about how his story has influenced athletes to feel more free being themselves while playing.
“We’re starting to really push out that we’re not this small, niche group of athletes,” Lucas said. “ We have phenomenal athletes and we’re entertaining as well. We can show who we are in the same way as straight athletes.”
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A move east
It also led to him joining the Long Island University squad over the summer when he thought he’d played his last NCAA set. Lucas was ready to call it a career, get his teaching credential and continue coaching club volleyball in Anaheim, Calif., before the response to his story hit national news.
With Cal State Northridge being noncommittal about bringing him back, new LIU head coach and fellow former Grand Canyon University player Ryan Mather reached out to Lucas in June.
“[Ryan] understood my talent as a volleyball player, but also what I can bring to the program from the exposure side of things,” Lucas said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to move to New York, but my team spoke with Northridge and told me they didn’t want me back. I had only one conversation with the Northridge coaching staff in early May to close out the season and didn’t hear anything afterward. I left the door open for them, but nothing came out of it.
“The Northridge deputy athletic director, who I was close with throughout the season, contacted me saying how excited she was to have me back. I was confused, but when I told her I wasn’t coming back, she thought it was weird that I had heard nothing from the coaching staff. We discussed an NIL deal that would cover my school and housing if I came back, but I had to make a tough call. LIU was offering me everything I wanted. We wished each other the best of luck and I made my decision.”
Lucas made the difficult choice to leave his native Southern California and join LIU in early July, capping off a 12-month period of change that started with the death of his mother, Christina.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” Lucas said, reflecting on navigating the family tragedy while preparing to go back to school. “I purposefully didn’t want to tell our coaching staff because I didn’t want sympathy. I didn’t want to feel like a victim or be treated differently.”
It was a similar mindset that Lucas carried following the controversy at UC Irvine, using the moment to show resolve and strength in his convictions. Lucas called it “surreal” to have national media outlets and advocacy organizations view him as an influential figure.
“I still don’t have words for it,” Lucas said. “When we were in the real thick of everything, getting emails from all of these places, I remember being like, ‘What the f*ck is going on?’”
Power of his message
But his own experience of understanding how the facets of himself, his queerness and his identity as an athlete, could manifest on the court spoke to the power of his message, and Lucas knew telling others about his experiences could help other out athletes.
“I think it’s needed,” he said. “In athletics, so many people on the court or field are very timid to share about themselves and don’t want their personal life and career or athletic ability to coexist. I will never do that.
“I remember in my freshman year of high school thinking, ‘How am I going to mix my personal life and my volleyball life,’ but I would always tell my friends that I live two separate lives. Yet I was always thinking about how they could coexist,” Lucas added. “I came out a year later and a switch flipped when I was 18. Poof, the celebrations got more theatrical. The volleyball got even better. I realized that once I was just having fun with it and getting to really give it to people, more people began falling in love with it.”
With one final year on a new squad and aspirations of making the NCAA tournament one last time, Lucas, his public profile, his on-court confidence and those trademark celebrations are ready to write the last lines of his NCAA journey.
The future could hold professional volleyball, teaching, working in the psychology field, sports broadcasting or putting the sports management masters degree he is pursuing to good use, but one thing that Lucas will continue to carry regardless of where his path travels is his story and the full circle moments of the past year.
“My mom died on July 9, so I looked at our schedule when it came out in October for any games happening on the ninth because I knew it would be more difficult for me. The only match we had on the ninth was UC Irvine on April 9,” Lucas recalled. “I remember thinking that match is going to be kind of difficult to be at with it getting closer to the one-year anniversary, plus my parents’ birthdays being close to that date. Then that was when everything happened. Little things like that, I think my mom had a hand in it. She’s the one who sparked all of this for me.”
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