On Press Passes and Seeing Your Name Where It Belongs

(Credit: Andy Nietupski/Texas Stars)

If you want to find out if someone has been working in sports for a while you can usually tell if they have an unusual amount of lanyards. It’s funny to remember that a person usually has to pay to commemorate their visit to a ballpark or an event with a little trinket for their keys or various ID badges. 

But if you know someone who has worked in sports, more often than not, we’re drowning in them. Drawers literally overflowing with lanyards, passes, IDs from places that a lot of fans only get to visit maybe once or twice a year. 

If you look at my backpack you will still see a checked bag tag from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta that has somehow managed to not break since 2018. 

That was from my year in Major League Soccer when I got to stand on the field at the Yankee Stadium, enjoy the press box fare in Montreal, and spend a night in the fabulous city of Columbus, Ohio. 

Hanging off my backpack on every stop of my tour was my MLS lanyard and my official all-access pass printed with my photo and a name. I have so many similar passes in drawers all over my house, from Fenway Park, various rodeos and race tracks, all printed or written with that same name. 

The novelty of getting a press badge with your name on it wears off pretty quick once you get your second one. This past April, though,  when I arrived at the H-E-B Center for the Stars game against the Rockford Icehogs, Stephen handed me a pass that actually made me pause for a second just to admire.

Printed on that little piece of paper was one name, “Autumn Limas,” and I have kept that pass in a special place both in my home and in my heart. Because for the first time I got to finally go to a game as myself.

The thing they don’t tell you about transitioning, especially over the first year or two, is that you are constantly hit with these big realizations about your previous life that can bring you to your knees sometimes. Things that, at the time, just do not register in your brain because you do not have the tools or the terms to even begin to understand why they nagged at you. 

My name had always been a puzzle for me to solve for as long as I could remember. Right off the bat my family raised me using my middle name since my legal first one belonged to someone I never met. As I got older I always found myself tinkering with it. Adjusting it, tweaking it, pulling at it like a sweater that just didn’t fit quite right. 

I would shorten it, answer to nicknames, at one point even choosing to go by the first letter of it because I liked that it was “non-gendered.” Dysphoria can manifest in a lot of different ways for people, and in retrospect my constant fear of people making assumptions about me and who I was based on my name or appearance really should have clicked a lot sooner than it ultimately did. 

When you start transitioning it feels like a weight is suddenly dropped from your shoulders and you can breathe for what feels like the first time in your life. It turns out that when you finally feel like you’re inhabiting your own body and your own life it sheds so much light on parts of yourself that you just thought were broken and would never change. 

When you suddenly reclaim that agency you learn, and in some cases simply rediscover, parts of yourself and gain a new appreciation for the things in your life that kept you going. 

I love the fall, so much. Fall means the Texas heat can finally start fading and the evenings can be rainy and moody. It also means that hockey is back in my life,and I can live and die with the boys on the ice. Fall means the world looks back into itself for a moment and prepares to emerge as something new and beautiful in the spring. 

Are you sensing a pattern here? 

Naming myself Autumn was the first step in what has been one of the most fulfilling journeys in my life. Seeing it on a press pass was a milestone that reaffirmed that my decision was the right one. 

That night I saw the Stars win 6-3 and didn’t worry once about how I looked or felt. I met my wonderful colleagues at 100 Degree Hockey and felt like I had been working with them for years. In the post game scrum with Neil Graham, I got a “great question,” on my first night which I’m told was a record. 

It was another game like the countless others I’ve gotten to see over the course of my career, that came with a press pass just like so many others. 

But it had my real name, and I still get a little emotional thinking about it. 

Being trans in Texas at the moment is not exactly easy. It is not fun feeling like you have to keep your guard up at all times, especially in places that had previously felt safe. 

But I have never stopped being proud of who I am. Most of my past life was spent feeling like a ghost, disconnected from the world and my own sense of self. Sometimes the simple act of going to cover a hockey game and getting to see your own name means so much more. 

The Stars won that night, but I’m gonna treasure that night for my own reasons. 

The novelty of the press pass will wear off again sooner rather than later. I’ll get to cover a lot more games and those passes will continue to stack up somewhere like they always have.

But your name is important. They etch it on the Stanley Cup for a reason, and while a press pass from the H-E-B Center may not feel like The Cup, for just one night, I smiled like I put my name on Lord Stanley.