Dave Hamilton’s proud path from retired high schooler to Gay Flag Football Hall of Famer

If you call or text Dave Hamilton over the next couple of weeks and he doesn’t get back to you right away, be patient. It’s June. It’s Pride Month. Hamilton’s calendar is overflowing with activities.

He’ll be at Fenway Park Tuesday night, Red Sox vs. Phillies, for Pride Night.

There’s the big FLAG (Friends, Lesbians And Gays) Flag Football League kickoff event Thursday night at Dick’s House of Sport on Boylston Street in Boston’s Back Bay.

On Saturday, Hamilton will join members of the league to march in Boston’s Pride Parade.

Later that day, he’ll be volunteering at the annual Chandler Street Block Party in the South End.

But to speak with Hamilton for just a few minutes is to come away with the impression that the man’s entire adult life has been a celebration of his gayness. And he owes it all to football, even though there was a time, many years ago, when his under-construction coming-out process caused him to walk away from the game he loves so much.

Hamilton, now 58 and partner/co-head of information technology at Boston-based Bain Capital, grew up in Stoughton, about 20 miles south of the city. By the time he was in middle school, he was pretty sure he was gay. But he’s pretty sure he fell in love with football the day he was born, which is why, as a junior at Southeastern Regional Vocational Technical High in nearby Easton, “I mustered up enough self-energy and strength to try out for the football team. I got a spot and I played for the year. And I did, you know, OK.”

That was in the fall of 1982. By the fall of 1983, his senior year, he was a former high school football player, having made a painful decision to quit the team because, he said, “I just didn’t feel comfortable in that environment.”

Hamilton’s back story is sadly familiar. Though he was never singled out for being gay, never gay bashed, never bullied, never outed, he found himself caught up in a swirl of casual homophobia. And as any queer person will tell you, it’s the casual homophobia that can really mess with you.

“There was a lot of toxic masculinity in the locker room and lots of slurs and things like that,” Hamilton said. “I never really felt like one of the guys, even though I was friends with them. I guess I just didn’t feel comfortable revealing my true self to them. So after the season I thought it over and decided I didn’t want to put myself through that experience again. I decided not to re-up for my senior year.”

Looking back on those years, Hamilton said, “I was a pretty masculine kid. I was a beefy kid. And I did have a decent amount of friends. But the words kids would use — faggot, homo, those sort of things — were used all season long. And there was talk about kids who were either effeminate, or smaller in stature, or who couldn’t stand up for themselves.”

So, yeah, he just up and quit. He graduated from high school in 1984. He moved on to Massasoit Community College in Brockton and earned an associate degree. He entered the work world. In 2000, he landed at Bain Capital.

How’s that saying go? It gets better? This is the part of the story when things really got better for Hamilton. In 2003, through a friend of a friend, he was introduced to the FLAG Flag Football League.

“The first day I went, it was an open clinic,” Hamilton said. “And I was, like, wow, look at all these other people who are gay, like me, and who also have a likemindedness with sports.

“It’s amazing to see others who may never have played sports before come into their own,” Hamilton said of his involvement in flag football.

“For the first time, I really felt whole,” he said. “I was gay, I loved sports, especially football, and it was the first time I could completely be myself. Everyone can play. It’s a community through sports. No one gets rejected from the league if we have spots. We do a draft. We make sure everyone is on a team. We spread out the talent. People teach people how to play. And it’s amazing to see others who may never have played sports before come into their own. We have people who may never have caught a ball before.”

Hamilton has been with the league ever since. He was named a team captain in his third year. He later joined the league’s board of directors. He was assistant commissioner for two years. Beginning in 2012, he began a five-year run as commissioner.

On the national level, Hamilton was in his second season when he joined the league’s travel team, the Boston Hancocks, which led to a trip to San Diego to play in the Gay Bowl, the National Gay Flag Football League’s championship tournament.

“I just never thought, as a young gay boy, that I’d ever have an opportunity to play in a national gay sporting event,” Hamilton said. “Now I was finding out there are people all across the country who are gay, who are out, and are playing the sport we all love.”

Over the years, Boston’s FLAG Flag Football League added some community outreach to its agenda. The league awards scholarships to high school students who work to make their school safer and more inclusive for LGBTQ+ individuals.

In 2017, Boston was host city of the Gay Bowl. That’s when Hamilton played a role in the New England Patriots becoming the first NFL team to offer support — including financial assistance — to the Gay Bowl.

Hamilton, shown posing with Josh and Robert Kraft, got support from the Patriots and then the Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins as sponsors of Gay Bowl XVII in 2017. (Courtesy of Dave Hamilton)

It began with a chance meeting with Josh Kraft, president of the New England Patriots Foundation and a son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

“We made an appointment with both of them and talked about our league and about the Gay Bowl, and they became lead sponsor,” Hamilton said.

What began with the Patriots soon extended to the Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins becoming sponsors of Gay Bowl XVII. As a kid, Hamilton was in the closet. Now he was out of the closet and working the room, getting to know the likes of Robert Kraft and Josh Kraft, as well as Steve Pagliuca, managing general partner of Bain Capital who happens also to be co-owner of the Celtics.

It all led to Hamilton being named to the National Gay Flag Football League board of directors. He also serves as director of partnerships.

In 2018, this former high school football player who quit the team because he wasn’t comfortable being gay, who didn’t think he belonged, who never considered there might be an outlet where his sexual orientation and his love of sports could travel a dual path, was inducted into the National Gay Flag Football League Hall of Fame.

And now, more than 40 years after turning in his high school football uniform, Dave Hamilton will be wearing the official teal-colored Pride uniform of the FLAG Flag Football League at Saturday’s parade.

(Photo: Courtesy of Dave Hamilton)