Pride Month: Sarah Jones on why hockey needs to be inclusive for everyone

When I was younger, it didn’t occur to me, even having had relationships with women, that I was gay – and I appreciate that is a slightly baffling thought.

It took going to university, and joining the hockey team, to give me that confidence to come out – and even then, it still took some time for me to say the words.

Growing up in the 1990s, I didn’t see many books, TV series or films that gave any information about being gay. When I think of the first gay couple I saw on TV, I think it would be a gay male couple – I actually can’t think of the first lesbian couple I saw.

There was no-one in my private life who was gay or part of the LGBTQ+ culture, so all those feelings that I had, I didn’t understand them.

But hockey was different.

Cardiff Athletic, which became Cardiff Met, was the first hockey club I joined, aged 13. It was my first time seeing out, gay women, in any kind of environment. It created, for me, a very normalised feel in terms of having partners coming to watch games and having dating chats about women as well as men.

When I was 18, I went to Loughborough University, which I didn’t actually know was a sports university. And yes, I know what you’re thinking – what was this girl doing?