Meet the hunky champions of The Utah Fire, winners of Gay Bowl XXII – Queerty
Super Bowl LVI, aka The Rhianna Bowl, may be several months away, but Gay Bowl XXII wrapped in Honolulu, Hawaii earlier this month. Congratulations are in order for the Utah Gay Football League, who won their first national tournament championship title in 16 years.
The UGFL’s team, The Utah Fire, competed alongside 50 other teams from the U.S. and Canada to win the Division C title. With nearly a thousand flag footballers and 135 games, the National Gay Football League tournament was the largest LGBTQ event ever in Hawaii. It also likely made for a great weekend crowd at Hula’s Bar and Lei Stand.
The tournament was especially revelatory since it was long overdue. Honolulu had been selected to host in 2020, but the event was canceled.
“We were super disappointed about it, but we also took it as an opportunity to kind of reset ourselves and use this as a learning base,” Gay Bowl XXII Tournament Director Ty Law told Hawaii News Now. “Now we can take it to the next level and complete it for this one.”
Also, the views couldn’t be beat. “Playing right next to the beach in front of Diamond Head, like, it’s amazing,” he added to Metro Source.
The Utah Fire entered the tournament with high hopes. In 2019, they made it to the final game against Washington, D.C. and lost narrowly.
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“Honolulu proved to be our year,” said team member John Maznicki. Team center and lineman Ralph Ingersoll added, “This is one of the best tournaments I’ve been a part of since our beginning.”
Mazniki is ready to build on the momentum: “We all are looking forward to taking this win for Utah and bringing it to the Sin City Classic in January, our local league play this spring and summer, and back to Gaybowl 2023 in Seattle.”
The Utah Fire have a surprisingly low social media profile, but are some team members catching a college came a while back:
And here they are practicing for the 2019 Gay Bowl, when they nearly won the championship:
Their recruitment strategy that year surely brought the boys to the yard field:
Check out some local coverage of the 2022 tournament below: