The American beach volleyball pro Alex Ukkelberg has publicly come out as gay. “Visibility matters,” the 32-year-old told Outsports, the LGBTQI sports portal, after he posted a video on Instagram this week. He had been out to family and friends for a long time, but as he shared more of his life on social media it felt right to speak about it publicly.
Ukkelberg, who lives in Los Angeles and competes on the AVP, hails from Battle Lake, a small town in Minnesota with fewer than 800 residents. “When you grow up in a town that small, being different is almost always treated as something bad — and definitely something you hide,” he wrote alongside the video. He realized early on that he was different, but he didn’t know what it meant.
Over a decade of publicly coming out
In the clip, Ukkelberg recounts that as a teenager he played track and field, basketball, baseball, and football. Because he wanted to be an athlete, he believed it was impossible to be gay. That message had been reinforced by his surroundings. “Until my second year of college, I truly believed I was straight,” he says in the video. The words “I’m gay” were the hardest to utter aloud.
For a long time, he considered staying in the closet. “After years of very poor mental health, I decided I could not give up either identity,” Ukkelberg says. He had to find a way to be both. “And honestly, I’m grateful to be gay. It has made me a better, more empathetic person.”
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Instagram | Coming-out video on Instagram
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Even though he has lived openly for more than ten years, he had kept this part of his story out of social media so far because he needed to figure out how he wanted to talk about it. “Honestly, part of me wants to delete this video right away,” he admits. He never wanted to speak openly about his sexuality. “But that’s exactly what the younger version of me needed.” He experienced rejection from both sides — as “too gay” and as “not gay enough.” He did not want to be anyone’s mouthpiece, he wrote. Yet he believes it is important to talk about it.
Gay Volleyball Players Chat Group
On the athletic front, Ukkelberg celebrated what he calls his greatest international achievement so far this year: in March he and Charlie Siragusa won the silver medal at a Futures Tour event on the Beach Pro Tour in Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands. In the final, the American duo fell to Hungarian Domonkos Dóczi and Ákos Veress. Earlier, Ukkelberg had worked as a volunteer assistant coach for the women’s volleyball team at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. The team posted its best record in two decades in 2019 and qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2004.
Siragusa, who is openly gay himself, spoke of his partner to Outsports as an exceptional person. Ukkelberg embodies many facets of his identity that might appear contradictory at first glance, yet he lives authentically, the 27-year-old Siragusa said. Many people feel they must give up parts of themselves to belong. “Alex does not subscribe to that way of thinking at all.”
According to Outsports, the two are part of a chat group for gay volleyball players called “GayVP.” Members reportedly include the engaged-to-be-married beach duo Kyle Friend and Tim Brewster, Swiss player Leo Dillier, who came out in August, Japanese pro Rui Takahashi, U.S. national player Merrick McHenry, Olympian Justin Lui, and two-time Olympic bronze medalist Erik Shoji, captain of the U.S. indoor national team, who has come out as queer. Also part of the circle are four players from the Brazilian national team.
