Dillon Bacchetta had two reasons to feel nervous about trying out for his college’s soccer team. He had never played the sport before.
And, after growing up gay and experiencing bullying, joining a group of mostly straight men felt like a risk.
He made the team anyway. His first college match ended in a 33–0 defeat.
That scoreline was painful. The relationships that followed became something he treasured.
In a first-person essay published by Outsports on October 7, Bacchetta looks back on how soccer helped him find confidence and friendship as an openly gay man.
He had spent years competing as a cheerleader. When he arrived at Atlantic Cape Community College in New Jersey and found there was no cheerleading team, he chose a sport he had always wanted to try.
He practiced on his own before tryouts. Being a beginner meant entering the team without the experience he had built in cheerleading, while carrying fears shaped by the way other boys had treated him growing up.
His new teammates gave him a different experience.
They helped him learn soccer. Friendship grew around ordinary conversations, jokes and advice about relationships. They could talk about girls; he could talk about boys. His sexuality did not become an obstacle to getting close.
For someone accustomed to watching how he spoke and behaved around other men, that ease mattered. He could relax into being a teammate and a friend.
By the end of the season, Bacchetta had become a starter and earned recognition for his improvement. Atlantic Cape’s own account of its 2025 athletics awards also lists him as the men’s soccer team’s Most Improved Athlete.
The personal change reached beyond the field. Learning to trust other men gave him something years of bullying had made difficult to imagine.
His story leaves room for a quieter kind of sporting success: people helping each other, sharing everyday parts of their lives and discovering that they belong together.
A crushing defeat was part of Dillon’s introduction to soccer. So was finding friends who wanted him on their team.
📷 Instagram: @dillbacc
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