On a day designated to celebrate love, the Colorado Rockies hosted a very successful Pride Night as 46,632 fans graced the stadium for a 10-8 victory over the San Francisco Giants. Coors Field was just a couple thousand fans short of its fifth sellout of the year.
“I think it’s amazing,” Voight Demeester, who flew in from out of town for the event, said. “Pride is just something that’s bigger than everyone. It’s just love, and it’s something that everyone not necessarily agrees, but when you think about it, it’s like, ‘Why do I have an issue with this person? I don’t.’ To celebrate something that’s bigger than you, I think, is amazing.”
Demeester and his friends Jeff Snyder, Stephanie Winkler, Jacob Jean and Josh Velasquez were just a handful of the hundreds – if not thousands – of fans who attended the game with Outsports, an organization that is a voice for LGBT athletes like Jean and Snyder, who are both cheerleaders at Michigan State University.
“Every year at Outsports, we do a different location to kind of get a different group of people out. Last year we did it in Chicago, and we had a different group of people,” Demeester said. “I am a Blue Jays fan, but I am always about watching different sports, because I like to be there in the moment and experience the thrill of having a sold out crowd. It’s just a completely different feel from having a club or something like that. It’s 100 percent different, because you have everyone cheering for the home team.”
For the band of friends who traveled to Denver from out of town for Pride Week, an event of this magnitude means the world to them.
“I’m here for, I guess, visibility, showing that there’s a lot of gay people in the world and showing that it’s a large population and we’re here and we won’t back down. It’s really cool to be here at a game that’s [nearly] sold out, seeing all the support, seeing a ton of people that are like you, seeing people you can relate with,” Jean said. “It’s really sweet. I’ve never been to anything like this before. It’s my first really large pride event.”
For Snyder, the night revolved around one major theme.
“I think it’s awesome. I just love seeing people come together and really just supporting love,” Snyder said. “It’s really cool. It’s fun to be around all these other athletes, even though we just met today, like we can relate on such a different level because of our sexuality and share our stories and everything.”
Although they had all just been in Denver for a single day, the acceptance for the LGBT community, they said, was overwhelming.
“It’s cool to see all the support not just with the LGBT community, but with everybody in Denver,” Velasquez said. “Just being here today, it’s crazy to see all the love.”
Winkler echoed that sentiment.
“I’m here supporting all my boys for Pride Week, which is awesome. I think it’s super cool how the whole stadium [almost] got sold out, because that shows how much support there is for Pride Week,” Winkler said. “I think there’s so much bad things going on in the world that when you have something that’s uniting everyone together, that’s when it makes situations like this really special.”
