The Earthquakes, SF's LGBTQ+ Hockey Team, Get Ready for Their Comeback

In 1998, the Earthquakes, San Francisco’s only co-ed LGBTQ+ ice hockey team, were lined up outside an Amsterdam arena for their entrance into the first-ever European Gay Games. The team had been established only a year earlier, pulling together both veterans of the sport and first-time hockey players. On that day, they joined 13,000 fellow athletes from 68 nations for the games’ opening ceremonies.

The Gay Games brought in more than 200,000 people to Europe’s self-proclaimed gay capital to celebrate sexual diversity at a time when sports and society at large were heavily steeped in homophobia, and the AIDS epidemic continued to devastate the LGBTQ+ community.

Yet the Gay Games made space for joy amid this turbulence. “You finally get to walk through the gates and see all these people, the stands are filled, and it definitely was super special,” says Quakes co-founder John Heine from his Concord home. He was 37 years old during Gay Games V — and not entirely out of the closet.

“I was hooked, and that was kind of my coming out story,” recalls Heine, now 62 and recovering from a recent hockey-related shoulder injury. “That was a lot of the importance in the vision about gay hockey, the San Francisco Quakes and also the Gay Games. For us, it was a way of learning how to fit into society and the coming out process.”

Now, almost three decades since the team’s inception, the Quakes are returning to the ice following a pandemic hiatus. In a week, they’ll head south to compete alongside 11 other LGBTQ+ teams from across North America at the second-ever Palm Springs International Pride Hockey Tournament, which kicks off March 20.

The Quakes play at Yerba Buena Ice Skating Center as part of the San Francisco Adult Hockey League. With the revival, the team debuted a fresh look last month at the San José Sharks’ Pride game. The new logo offers nods to their home city and the Sharks, who have been longtime allies: a pink triangle and a progress arrow, symbols of Pride.

The Quakes’ comeback arrives at a time when the NHL is grappling with how to be more inclusive: The league banned themed jerseys in June 2023, during Pride month. A ban on Pride tape on hockey sticks followed in October of that year. After players and fans criticized the move, the NHL reversed the rules.

Despite these controversies in the league, the Sharks have been vocal supporters of the LGBTQ+ community and the Quakes in particular. They regularly welcome the queer hockey team to the SAP Center with friendly scrimmages and pro-bono coaching from Sharks’ head coach David Quinn.

“They’ve done Pride nights very, very well,” says 58-year-old Kieran Flaherty, who has been a member of the Quakes for two decades. “The way the Sharks did it, it seemed less pinkwashing and jumping on the bandwagon and more substantive in the approach. They came to us and said, ‘How would you guys like to do Pride this year in a way that might help you?’”

Flaherty got his start on the ice at four years old. Hockey was part of his family history: he hails from Minnesota, known as the “State of Hockey.” Though he wasn’t out at the time, he left the sport in eighth grade after feeling unwelcome for being more effeminate than the other boys on the team.

He came out at 22 and moved to San Francisco shortly after, where he first discovered the Quakes and the Gay Games. For Flaherty and many other team members, the Quakes and the Games provided a safe space for LGBTQ+ people and allies alike to play in an industry that can be, at times, hostile.

“That is part of our genesis,” Flaherty says. “Many of us felt we didn’t have a good place, a safe place, a healthy place for us to participate when we were younger. We were hoping that our presence would help to turn that around.”

The team consists of cisgender, trans and gender-diverse members, primarily of middle age with a few athletes in their early 60s. The Quakes welcomes varying experience levels, which has been part of their philosophy since the team was founded. But the team was nearly defunct from the pandemic about a year ago. With help recruiting from the Sharks, the next generation of LGBTQ+ hockey players is finding their way onto the Quakes.

“I couldn’t imagine a team like this not existing anymore, or teams like this across the United States not existing,” says 23-year-old Joey Marcacci, a gay athlete who’s played ice hockey since he was young. “It’s so important.”