Five of Author Cat Disabato’s Queer Sports Romance Recs, Plus an Exclusive Excerpt from Rooting Interest
Heard how much you like gay sports smut!
831’s latest release, Rooting Interest by Cat Disabato, is officially out in the world—available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook wherever you get yours. (If you’re a member of The Ones, you’ve maybe even read it by now and are ready for the epilogue.)
If you’re currently looning out about Heated Rivalry, this story should scratch an itch: It’s a lesbian WNBA romance about a sports reporter, Jennifer Felix, who begrudgingly abandons her NFL beat to cover star basketball player Natalie Czapski’s post-injury return to the court. Below: Five other queer sports romances that its author Cat Disabato loves, plus a Rooting Interest excerpt to whet your appetite if you’re still lingering on the sidelines.
Cat’s Picks
Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner: Two players, same team, same dream—to kiss, of course!!!!
The Prospects by KT Hoffman: An openly trans minor-league baseball player has to figure out how to keep his feelings in check when his rival gets traded to his team.
Hotshot by Clare Lydon: A U.S. soccer star becomes a U.K. celeb footballer…and falls for her pretty new coach in the process.
How You Get the Girl by Anita Kelly: A former WNBA player agrees to help a high school basketball coach lead the girls’ team to victory and ends up coaching her in dating along the way.
You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian: The plot reads like buzzy romance bingo: historical, queer, grumpy/sunshine, baseball!
An Excerpt from Rooting Interest by Cat Disabato
Stepping into the arena, I feel a familiar crackle. The air sizzles like it’s charged with electricity, like in the moments before a thunderstorm breaks.
The final few minutes before a game begins is my favorite thing about sports. It doesn’t matter if the setting is a barely groomed field in a hidden corner of a suburb or a brand-new, state-of-the-art, $200 million facility in a major city. The feeling is always the same: anticipation, suspense, but most of all, possibility. Any team could come out on top. Any player could have the night of their life. The goals are specific and simple: play well; win. Off the field it isn’t so simple, but that hardly matters here. Nothing gets me down in these moments. No matter how far I’ve drifted off course.
I’m supposed to be on the familiar sidelines of an NFL practice field, developing a rapport with Los Angeles Cou-gars rookies and coaxing quotes out of the coaching staff. While the guys ready their bodies and their plays during training camp, I am supposed to be filing stories about the new football season for the LA Chronicle. Instead, that beat—my beat, the one I fought for through innumerable late nights and with ruthless competence—has been plucked out of my grasp, as if it’d never really been mine at all.
For reasons too painful to consider closely—namely, that I am the sports section’s only queer female staff writer—my editor reassigned me to cover WNBA All-Star weekend in Phoenix. I’m here because of my repeated requests to write more features, my editor, David, insisted, but the features I’d been pitching him were about football. Imagine my surprise when the response to my pitch about the Cougars’ offensive weaknesses was an assignment to cover Natalie Czapski, the star player for the Hollywood Lights, and her comeback after an ACL injury.
I’ve never written about basketball. I’ve hardly ever watched it. But now, a scant few hours after booking my travel and scrambling to make my flight, I am going to have to figure it out. Even if the ground beneath my feet feels no more solid than sand.
At least the energy in the PHX Arena is familiar, the excitement sparking the air, boosting my mood and calming my anxiety as I wind my way through the crowd. Fans who look like they’ve been following their team for decades mix with overstimulated kids, couples holding hands, and chat-tering groups of friends. All-Star weekend means people are decked out like the color spectrum: red for the Las Vegas Aces, seafoam for New York Liberty, and burgundy for the Lights. In my usual work outfit of a black button-down and black pants, I fade into the background, just as intended.I try hard not to come off as anyone or anything in particular when I’m on the job. To ticket holders, the press badge around my neck means I’m someone official, and to players, I’m nothing outside of my game knowledge and the questions I ask them—more of a conduit than a person. It’s something I learned from David, who was David Greenebaum, sportswriting legend, before he was my mentor and my first-name-basis boss. Now that I am unexpectedly in a position of having to win back a job that I thought was mine, following David’s lead—playing by his rules—is more crucial than ever.
When I make my way to press row, I’m mildly surprised to discover that it’s right behind the announcers’ table, close enough that I’ll probably hear their commentary. I find my assigned seat between a young Black guy, who gives me a tight smile with “no new friends” energy, and a white person with a dyed-pink mohawk and, helpfully, a “they/them” pronouns pin.
They look at my badge, then my face, then my badge again. “Wow, is the LA Chronicle finally covering the WNBA? Or is this just for Nat’s comeback?”
The small placard in front of them identifies them as a freelancer, someone used to being batted around by what-ever publication decides to say yes to a pitch. And they clearly know that covering women’s sports is still seen as optional at most big outlets.
I know how to play this. I shrug and say, “I go wherever they tell me to go.”
They stick out their hand. “Danny.”
“Jennifer Felix,” I say, shaking it. “But everybody calls me Felix.”
As I busy myself plugging my computer into the power strip taped to the table, Danny makes conversation. “It’ll be good to have CZ back in the four spot.”
It’s like they’re speaking in a foreign language that I studied in high school, some vocabulary familiar but the full extent of the meaning lost on me.
“Totally,” I say.
“Or do you think she’d do better in the five?” Danny asks mildly.
“She’s, um, I think she’s got something to prove so she’ll step up in any role.” It’s not like I’ve said anything wrong. The problem is, I haven’t said anything at all. When sportswriters talk, we argue about minutiae and one-up each other with niche facts and hot takes. I can tell from Danny’s raised eyebrow that they can see right through me, see how little I know.
“Oh, honey,” Danny says, almost sympathetically, but with a vicious little edge. I wonder suddenly if they’d pitched a WNBA story to the Chronicle, gotten the feedback that there wasn’t an audience, only now to see someone totally ignorant of the game plopped down next to them to cover it. “You’re really fucked, aren’t you.” Not a question.
“I’m a fast learner,” I say.
“You better be,” they say, and pointedly turn back to their computer. Conversation over.
I’m rattled, and I know it shows. Determined to shake it off, I return to my setup, straighten my laptop, and shut down any application I don’t need. Sports is a world full of rituals (or superstitions, to the nonbelievers); players have their lucky socks or listen to the same song before every tip-off. And I have mine. I close my eyes. I take deep breaths through my nose. I listen to the sounds of the crowd, note the scents in the arena. The voices aren’t just energized; they’re giddy, and much more high-pitched and femme than what I’m used to from NFL fans. I hear the squeak of rubber soles on the arena floor and heels on the stairs. I smell popcorn, ketchup, and Dove deodorant.
This cataloging is a practice I copied from David. He wrote a book called, simply, Writing the Game, which my father gave me for my sixteenth birthday. My copy is so dog-eared, underlined, and just generally run-through that it’s falling apart at the binding. One of the lines I’ve commit-ted to memory: “Attending a sports game as a fan is a five-pronged sensory experience, so writing about sports should be the same.” One twisted bra strap digging into the skin of my shoulder is the last sensation I identify before opening my eyes. I slip my hand under my shirt and untwist it, making sure everything is in its right place. I’m as ready as I can be.
The announcer’s voice booms, “Welcome to All-Star weekend!”
The screams of the crowd swell to a new crescendo as the announcer starts calling out the first few players, none of whose names I recognize. Cameras flash as the announcer rumbles, “Back from a season-ending injury to show us what a Big can do in this competition, and representing the Hollywood Lights, it’s CZ, Natalie Czapski!”
In my rush to research three decades of WNBA history, I’d reduced Natalie to her component parts: her wingspan, her layup, the design of her Nike sneakers, the muscle she’d put on after her rookie year and the speed it gives her. In doing so, I somehow failed to understand what Natalie looked like as a whole. She glides onto the court, all long-limbed grace. Her blond hair is pulled into tight French braids. On the Jumbotron, I can see how the tur-quoise blue accents on the Lights’ uniform bring out the richness in her pale eyes. And how her big, crooked smile, which stretches across her whole face, makes her seem a little cocky—but also kinetic enough to power the sun. The way the tip of her tongue pokes out slyly between her teeth makes something hum in my rib cage.
She flexes her right bicep and laughs when the crowd goes even wilder. There’s no way for me to hear her, but I can read her lips as she screams at them—at us: “LET’S FUCKING GO.” My stomach and chest pulse with little bursts of want. Fuck. In my rush to get ready for this new assignment, I’d somehow forgotten that the WNBA is filled with my exact type: pretty tomboys with bravado. I’m pummeled by the unprofessional thought Natalie Czapski is hot!! I never had this problem in the NFL.