Openly Gay Hockey Player Davis Atkin Set To Join The Kookaburras

Australia’s first openly gay male hockey player, Davis Atkin is set to join the Australian Men’s Senior National Hockey Team the Kookaburras.

Hailing from the Canberra Chill team, Atkin will be debuting at the Men’s Pro League mini-tournament in India next month. He is believed to be the first openly gay hockey player at the national level after being outed in 2021.

The hockey player was added to the National Development Squad for consideration for international competition recently. The speed of his selection is something Atkin was not anticipating.

“You know, six months ago I was talking about making it in a year or two, maybe a bit further on,” Atkin said, as reported by the ABC.

“So getting this opportunity pretty much within six months of being selected in the development squad has been a great opportunity, but one that I’m having to sort of ground my thoughts on and soak it all in.”

From Being Outed To Self Confidence

After being outed in 2021, Atkin felt he had lost the opportunity to come out on his own terms and struggled to see the next step forward.

“High-performance sport is a pretty difficult area to really talk about anything LGBTQIA+ in general, just because it’s not something that has been seen a lot, even globally,” he said, as reported by the ABC.

Atkin took a break from his team and began using make-up as a form of self-expression and posting them on social media. He eventually did return to hockey.

While initially stressed about being forcibly outed, Atkin now considers being openly gay as an opportunity to show others in the LGBTQI+ community – particularly other athletes –  that the possibility for them is here.

“I think it’s a very important role to have someone like me being in the gay community that’s now at an international level, it’s not very common,” Atkin said.

“It’s just a great opportunity for my community to see people like me and have others feel more comfortable coming out in their hockey community, and hopefully more international players or national players will start doing the same.”