Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltrán, and Jeff Kent aren’t the only Hall of Famers getting inducted this year.
On the same day that the Baseball Hall of Fame unveiled its 2026 class, the LGBTQ Sports Hall of Fame announced 10 new inductees on Jan. 20 — roughly five months ahead of the June 25 induction ceremony in New York City. The Hall of Fame ceremony, led by the Sports Equality Foundation, will also highlight the recipients of the Glenn Burke Activism and Advocacy Award: Former NBA player Jason Collins, who is battling brain cancer, and tennis legend Billie Jean King. Burke, who died in 1995, was a gay Major League Baseball player who was out to many of his teammates in the 1970s before homophobia derailed his career and his life.
This year’s inductees are former NFL player Ryan O’Callaghan, NBA executive Rick Welts, former WNBA player Sue Wicks, TV journalist Robin Roberts, NBA referee Bill Kennedy, New York-based high school basketball coach Anthony Nicodemo, former professional baseball player Maybelle Blair, Olympian and middle-distance runner Nikki Hiltz, former professional rugby player Phaidra Knight, and former high school soccer coach and author Dan Woog.
This year’s class represents a cross section of LGBTQ sports figures who have made an impact in their own way. Hiltz, who is transgender and non-binary, is a middle-distance runner who has won eight straight US titles. Blair, meanwhile, played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a women’s league that gained prominence through the film “A League of Their Own,” and came out at age 95. O’Callaghan played for the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs before coming out in an interview with Outsports in 2017. Nicodemo, a basketball coach for two decades, was inspired to come out in the aftermath of Jason Collins’ coming out story in 2013 and later went on to join Collins at sports camps serving LGBTQ youth.
“Absolutely humbled to be part of the 2026 LGBTQ Sports Hall of Fame class,” Nicodemo, who received a Gay City News Impact Award in 2017, wrote on X. “To be grouped with this group of pioneers is completely surreal. Looking forward to induction in June!”
Among other inductees, Knight was on the US national rugby team from 1999 to 2017, participating in three Rugby World Cups and winning All-World Team honors. Welts came out in a 2011 interview with the New York Times when he was the president and CEO of the Phoenix Suns. Welts is now the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks. Roberts spent 15 years as a sportscaster for ESPN before becoming co-anchor of Good Morning America in 2005. She publicly came out in 2013.
The story of the LGBTQ Sports Hall of Fame dates back to 2013 when Bill Gubrud created what was then known as the National Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame, which inducted prominent sports figures like Brittney Griner, Jason Collins, Megan Rapinoe, and Billie Jean King until it went largely dormant in 2015. Last year, however, the Sports Equality Foundation announced that it had “breathed new life into what will now be called the LGBTQ Sports Hall of Fame.”
Board Chair Robert Goman said last year that the LGBTQ Sports Hall of Fame “celebrates the groundbreaking achievements of LGBTQ athletes, coaches, and advocates who have paved the way for inclusion in sports.”
