At Thomas Boyland Park in Bushwick, a crowd is gathered to watch a pickup basketball tournament. Despite the rain, the athletes play on, hair sticking to foreheads and shirts sticking to skin. As the time on the clock winds down, AJ, the captain of the team wearing pink T-shirts, launches the ball from half court, sinking the basket and beating the buzzer. Her team’s hands all fly into the air in celebration, while the opposing team’s players’ hands reach up too, theirs in frustration.
This is Basketdolls, an all-trans streetball pickup league in Brooklyn, and Team AJ is facing off against Team Nora in the September 28th Doll-Star Game, which features the best performers from the Doll-For-All summer tournament earlier in the month.
With team names like the Whore Moans, the Metropolitan Trans Authority, and the New York LiberT-Slurs, there’s never any doubt that this is a community for trans folks, by trans folks. The whimsy of the team names is contrasted by the cutthroat atmosphere on the court. “The competition was a perfect balance of people trying hard and taking it seriously, but also being there to have fun,” says Jae Grumulaitis, a 24-year-old member of the Cunning Stunts. “Someone would score on me and I’d be like, ‘That’s a beautiful shot.’”
Though Basketdolls only started meeting on June 1 of this year, its growth has been rapid. The league operates on what its director, Devin Myers, calls “the three c’s: casual, competitive, community.”
Myers is an unlikely candidate to start a pickup basketball league in Brooklyn. For one thing, the 23-year-old had never played organized basketball prior to 2023. For another, she had only moved to Brooklyn from Tallahassee, Florida, less than a year before and was still finding her footing and building community in New York City. After getting a taste of playing streetball last summer with Froot Hoops, a lesbian basketball meetup at Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan, Myers was hooked—but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing from the experience.
“When I played last year, I felt really insecure—not because of anyone else, but because of what I projected on myself,” she tells SELF. “I was the only trans woman in the tournament and the whole time I was wondering, ‘Am I playing too physical? Am I too tall?’ I felt this weird presence on the court, and I knew I couldn’t be the only person feeling this. I really wanted to create a space for trans people who are brand-new to the game to have a space to really develop a relationship with their body.”
And so Basketdolls was born. The players’ experience ranges from people who have never played organized basketball to those who have years of ball under their belts. They are a diverse group, including in age. While most are in their 20s or 30s, the oldest athlete is a woman they affectionately refer to as Mama Lisa—she’s been transitioning for more than 25 years and is still hooping at 51, “shooting jumpers like Larry Bird,” jokes Myers.
“The term ‘dolls’ originates with Black transfemmes and Black trans women,” Myers explains. “It was a very intentional nod to say, ‘To all our Black girls out there, I want you all to feel seen. I want you all to feel welcomed here.’” In addition, Basketdolls, along with TRAND1—its counterpart for transmascs of color—pays homage to the streetball culture that originated and thrived in New York City in the 1990s and is seeing a resurgence.
“We fly under the radar so easily to the point where people don’t even know we exist,” Eshé Hughes, the codirector of TRAND1, says of transmasculine people and the motivation to have a separate meetup for them. “In a way it’s nice, but also when you’re not acknowledged for so long, you kind of feel like a ghost or feel like you lose your value. A lot of us found value through sport, and if we can provide that space, value, and visibility, that’s what we are here for because outside that court, they might be getting overlooked.” Hughes was a “big-time baller” as a kid, playing 12 years of organized AAU basketball. He says it was a bizarre experience to realize that he was allowed to play on boys’ teams when he was one of the best girls playing in his home state of Illinois, but that he wasn’t always welcome on men’s pickup teams following his transition.
In addition to their Doll-For-All tournament, Basketdolls hosts skill clinics, regular pickup games, and recently had a Doll-Star Game, featuring the best performing athletes from the Doll-For-All. Not only does it provide a safe space for trans people to get involved in athletics, it’s a way for people to make friends without logging onto a dating app or going to a bar. The vibe is celebratory, which 24-year-old Natalia Catalan describes as being “at once a game and also a party.” The long-term goal, say Myers and Hughes, is for there to be a stable of trans ballers who can play in semipro or pro leagues—when the world is ready for them, they want to be there.
“I think that sports, especially in queer spaces, can have a negative connotation to it,” says Gwen McCaw, a 26-year-old who played for the Metropolitan Trans Authority in the Doll-For-All. Her team made it to the semifinals, where they lost to what McCaw says was the other “defensively-minded team” in the tournament. “A lot of queer folks think that sports are not for them, and as somebody who’s been a lifelong basketball fan, it’s great to get into.”
All-trans leagues are especially important during a time when sports have become a political battleground for trans rights, and trans women, in particular, are being painted as a threat to women’s sports. Even in recreational leagues, the inclusion of trans athletes can sometimes be a sticking point—a lesbian volleyball tournament on Fire Island had to issue an apology earlier this summer after they refused to let a trans man play.
“When you join a co-ed or women’s league, you have to deal with occasional and inevitable backlash for playing, so everyone who has been in athletics at some point in our lives has developed a weird relationship with it,” says McCaw. “You don’t want controversy. It was really nice to be able to do the sport and not have to worry about it, and you can play hard and have fun without the fear that you’re going to have to deal with pushback from someone.”
Basketdolls “is everything to me,” says Catalan, who played for the Brooklyn Babes and lost every single game during their showing in the Doll-For-All (“We took one for the other teams,” she jokes).
“I played soccer from age four until college and it was always hard even though I loved it because I didn’t get along with any of the boys,” she says. “I didn’t relate, I never felt like I was fully part of the team. But in this league, we love playing sports and we love being trans women and we love each other. You feel so amazing after, and then you look around and it’s all people like you, and that’s the best feeling.”
