In 2005, Men’s Fitness magazine listed its “Top 25 Fittest Cities in the United States.” It comes as no surprise that San Diego came in the top 10 (No. 9, to be exact). With our year-long activity-friendly climate and diverse terrains, residents of America’s Finest City aren’t limited to gym-based activities to stay fit.

The get-out-and-play spirit has certainly been adopted by San Diego’s GLBT community, home to more than two dozen active sports and recreational organizations maintained by and for GLBT residents.

According to the 2006 American Community Survey conducted by the Williams Institute, there are an estimated 120,000 GLBT San Diegans in the city and county.

Certainly other cities and counties in California have larger GLBT populations (Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example), but, GLBT San Diegans have carved out for themselves perhaps the most active alternative sports and activities community in the nation.

You name it, there’s a club for it. Whether you’re into hiking, running, walking, cycling, darts, bowling, or 4x4 off-roading, rest assured, there’s a GLBT club just waiting to embrace you.

Maybe you like organized team sports. Well there’s softball, soccer, football, rugby, basketball and volleyball, to name a few.

Maybe you like competition, but you’re not really a “team player.” Then you might try tennis, golf, swimming, wrestling, surfing or any number of other individual-based sports.

If you’re looking to pursue a hobby or sport and you’re a member of the GLBT community in San Diego, you’re lucky because you’re in the right place! There is a club for you.

Sports are so popular among the San Diego GLBT community that our city is serving as a test site for a new concept in gay and lesbian athletics.

The San Diego Summer Sports Classic will combine tennis, softball and a golf tournament June 21 and 22. For more information, visit www.summersportsclassic.com.

March is a busy month for San Diego’s GLBT sports fanatics. The GLBT basketball organization (S.D. Hoops) is entering its own March Madness, while the flag football and softball leagues are just getting under way.

With all this on the horizon, we’ve compiled information about some of your favorite sports organizations.

America’s Finest City Softball League (AFCSL) is perhaps the most storied gay and lesbian sports organizations in San Diego. GLBT athletes have laced up their cleats and taken the field in competitive play here since 1981.

While a lot has changed since, on Sunday, March 30, softballers will take the field for the 27th straight season, bringing an unparalleled level of continuity and longevity to GLBT athletics in San Diego.

Newly installed AFCSL co-commissioner for the Open Division, Chris Veldkamp has been active with the organization for more than a decade. Veldkamp brings to the post an appreciation of the league’s longevity, and a desire to update procedures, and help marry them to newer technology.

He also hopes to start another growth spurt for the league.

While the AFCSL is considerably larger than it was 27 years ago, the league now is little more than half of its enrollment at its peak, reached around the time Veldkamp first came into the league.

There are 17 teams in the Open Division of the AFCSL this year, and roughly 12 in the Women’s Division. In year’s past, there were more than 30 teams in the Open Division alone.

Nobody knows for sure why the attrition has taken place, but the most likely culprit is competition from other organizations.

“It used to be that softball was really the only game in town,” Veldkamp said. “But now that’s changed.”

Indeed it has. Much of that interest has been generated in just the last 10 years, as many other organizations have either sprung up, or begun to increase in popularity.

One can draw a parallel between the rise in interest of other sports to the decline in membership of softball.

Far from a withering organization, however, the AFCSL still boasts nearly 500 members, a veritable behemoth in gay sports in San Diego. And while 2008 hasn’t seen an increase in new teams for the Open division, the league was able to hold steady – better than a lot of large leagues across the country, where alternatives like football, rugby and tennis are just now starting to earn a foothold.

In an interview last week, Veldkamp pointed out that some cities in California have a significantly larger number of participants than the Open division in San Diego, but that those cities have less competition for athletes’ attention.

Los Angeles, for example, doesn’t have a flag football league. San Diego not only has one, it boasts one of the largest in the country, with nine teams in 2008.

While certainly an institution for athletes, the AFCSL is hardly a unique organization. In fact it is but one of 56 gay softball leagues in 35 cities across North America, from Vancouver to Ft. Lauderdale.

Teams in each city start their season with the hope of reaching the Gay Softball World Series, a week-long championship tournament held each year in a different member city. (San Diego hosted the series in 1997 and 2005.) In 2008 the series will be held in Seattle.

But to make it to the series, teams must first win their division, and divisions are determined by skill level. The A division is for the most skilled players, and D is for new players still developing fundamentals. Divisions B and C fall somewhere in between. All skill levels are welcome and encouraged.

While the formula is complicated for determining what division players and teams should compete, the objectives couldn’t be plainer: have fun, and make as many friends as you can.

The AFCSL plays its games on Sundays. With a total of 29 teams, the league monopolizes two softball complexes, the Poway Sportsplex and Mira Mesa’s Hourglass Park. Admission to Hourglass is free, and for a fee of $2.50 at the Sportsplex, you get a free beverage.

For more information on the league, its schedules, or to become a player, visit www.afcsl.org.

On Saturday, March 15 the San Diego American Flag Football League (SDAFFL), began its fifth official season of play. Since founded by friends tossing a ball around in the park six years ago, the league has nearly tripled in size. In terms of organization and structure, it is leaps and bounds ahead of where it started.

Founded in 2002 by Ivan Solis, Jr., the league was borne from the desire of a group of friends to play football. The league grew to about 50 people in 2003 for its inaugural season, and now, in 2008, more than 130 players compete among nine teams.

And while it may be called “flag football,” make no mistake: it’s still a very physical game. That may be why 45 year-old Michael Bobo, the 2007-2008 commissioner, is sitting the games out this year.

“It may be flag football,” Bobo says, “but there’s definitely contact, and you feel it for days!”

Indeed, these are a far cry from those neighborhood street games some of us played as kids, where street-lamps marked the end zones, sidewalks were out of bounds, and the only time-outs you got were for passing cars driving through the field of play.

Bobo explains the SDAFFL is a very organized group. They have to be. The fields don’t chalk themselves, and the equipment doesn’t just magically appear.

It takes organization, structure, and money – a lot of money – he says.

Bobo says the league’s single biggest expenses are the fields. “We have to rent fields by the hour,” Bobo says, “so we pay a fee to the Rec center, and for every dollar we pay to them, we have to pay 50 cents to the City of San Diego.”

If the league pays $300 to the Linda Vista Rec Center for any given week of play, for example, then the league has to pay an additional $150 in fees to the city.

Because setting up and chalking the fields is a major undertaking that requires expertise, the league has to pay an outside service to do it.

“Then when you add referees and insurance,” Bobo says, “it all gets pretty expensive.”

That’s why, Bobo said, the sponsors of the SDAFFL are so important. They pay for their particular team’s uniforms, so the players’ fees of $100 can be allocated toward other league expenses.

Still, Bobo said, additional money is useful, so the league will hold fund-raisers during the course of the year, both to help bolster the league’s finances and give back to some of the sponsors.

One of the strengths of the SDAFFL is the attention it pays its sponsors even after the start of the season.

With annual pub crawls, opening and closing parties, and various fund-raisers throughout the year, the league holds several events and, Bobo said, it makes a conscious effort to make sure it holds the events at its sponsors’ establishments.

For example, when the league kicked off its fifth season last weekend, the opening day party was held at long-time sponsor Bourbon Street. The event doubled as a fund-raiser for another sponsor, the Stonewall Citizens’ Patrol.

“This way everybody benefits,” Bobo said.

But it’s not all organization and bookkeeping. It’s about the game of football, and this year stacks up to be one of the most competitive in years.

“There’s a lot of parity this year,” Bobo said. “There is a lot of talent on a lot of teams.”

When asked which was the team to watch, Bobo answered cautiously, and started at the top.

“Well the [Stonewall Citizens’ Patrol] Riots and the Pecs Wolf Pack are the rowdiest, and probably the most visible,” Bobo said. “And they have a lot of talent [lead by team captains Eric Reissner and Jared Duncan, respectively].

“But,” Bobo added quickly, “Flicks Falcons has a lot of talent, and so do all the rest of the teams. It’s going to be very competitive.”

When pressed, Bobo did provide a little insight.

The team with the league’s newest sponsor, Hawthorn’s Restaurant Lounge, the Fusion, is “my sleeper pick to watch,” he said. “They have a lot of talent, and a couple of players who are new to the league, but are really good all-around athletes.”

This year the SDAFFL will have approximately 130 players. As mentioned, that’s an all-time high for the 5-year-old organization, which has seen steady growth each year so far. The league welcomes all skill levels, and games are played on Saturdays.

For field locations, times, and to check out the sponsors, visit one of the most user friendly sports Web sites in the city, www.sdffl.org.

The San Diego Hoops has quietly finished regulation play and, beginning this week, the basketball league by and for GLBT athletes will enter its post season.

Things have tightened up in the standings in the final weeks of regulation play.

Team Pomegranite looked to be the class of the league with a 6-1 record a little more than halfway into the season, but it enters the playoffs matching records with Big Mike’s Sports Rub, a team once near the bottom of the ranking.

Because of its earlier wins over its rival, Pomegranite will get the first-round bye, while Big Mike’s will have to play the No. 7 seed, Colorworks, which enters the tournament at 3-9.

Rounding out week one will be Beach City Market (6-6) vs. Urban Mo’s (5-7), and Morgan Stanley (6-6) vs. Pecs (4-8).

Because of the parity of those match-ups, any team can rise up and be a challenger to the top seeded teams.

For more information, visit www.sdhoops.net.

On September 11, 2001, when passengers aboard United Flight 93 seized control of the aircraft from terrorists, they probably didn’t know a nation would be eternally grateful, and that their sacrifice would be immortalized in countless documentaries, a major motion picture, and in the case of passenger Mark Kendall Bingham, an international gay rugby tournament every two years.

Prior to his death, Bingham, an avid rugger, was a member of the San Francisco Fog, a mostly gay rugby team. The Bingham Cup, which has named in his honor, has become the international gay rugby championships, as well as one of the largest events in all of rugby.

In 2008, that tournament will be held in Dublin, Ireland, June 13-15. If Carlos Legazpi has his way, the San Diego Armada Rugby Football Club will send a team, or at the very least, enough team members to merge with another so that San Diego ruggers are represented.

Legazpi is the president of the Armada, and has been leading an effort for the last year to raise enough money to help team members make the trip.

“I think it would be great if San Diego sent a team,” Legazpi said.

The San Diego Armada, the area’s mostly gay rugby team, is a gay club that participates in both gay and straight rugby events.

For the last several months they’ve held date auctions, raffles and sold Jell-O shots to help team members who can make the trip defray the considerable expenses.

For more information about the Bingham Cup, the San Diego Armada, or to show your support, visit www.sdarmada.org.

The Women’s Division of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA), the governing board of gay softball around the world, has separated itself from the larger organization to become its own entity, the Amateur Sports Alliance North America (ASANA).

“Establishing an identity as an organization is our top priority,” said San Diegan Stacey Hayashi, the first-ever ASANA Commissioner. “We are now a new organization that isn’t part of a large, well-known organization anymore, so we need our own identity.”

In an effort to do just that, Hayashi’s organization has already penned two significant sponsorship agreements. One is with Miken Sports, who Hayashi calls “a great partner,” and one is with the car rental company Enterprise. The organization, too, has already set up its own Web site, www.asanasoftball.com.

The decision to separate was made in 2007, during NAGAAA’s annual meetings, but the implantation may not be felt immediately. For example, the two groups will still be sharing space at the Gay Softball World Series in Seattle later this year.

While a significant change, the separation of the two organizations wasn’t a complete surprise.

Hayashi said, “The two organizations are sort of driven differently, even though we participate in the exact same event and the same format. I think there’s a difference in what the two organizations want to accomplish and want to become.”

In San Diego, America’s Finest City Softball League (AFCSL) still reflects the two-in-one model. The women’s division is still under the same umbrella as the NAGAAA chapter, or what is now just called the open division.

“We don’t see that changing any time soon,” Hayashi said, who is also the co-commissioner of the AFCSL. “We’re not so big that we’re not manageable, and being larger helps us recruit sponsorship dollars, and strengthen our league in San Diego.”