Valedictorian reimagines own legacy fighting stereotypes

Jackson Sharpe has a plan. And when the Brookfield High School senior is driven to accomplish a goal, he’s awfully good at making it a reality.

“I guess I’m kind of a go-getter,” Sharpe said.

On June 18, Sharpe will deliver a speech at graduation as the Brookfield Class of 2022 valedictorian.

Last school year, he was the driving force in starting a volleyball program at Brookfield.

Throughout high school, he has been involved as a human rights activist.

And every fall, since he was 3, he lived on the soccer pitch. This past season he was a Brookfield captain.

And next school year? He will attend Dartmouth College with plans to double major in Quantitative Social Science with an International Relations focus and Economics.

Yet it is Sharpe’s latest initiative that is consuming him in recent weeks. It is a plan to form a non-profit organization to fight homophobia in high school athletics and create a platform for awareness of LGBTQ issues and change the stigma that surrounds sports like volleyball.

With the help of some editing and slick photography placement from his teammate Ben Bogues, Sharpe put a presentation post on social media the other day.

Volleyball Redefined. Volleyball Reimagined. Sports Redefined. Sports Reimagined … these are some of the names floating around in his head for the non-profit.

His goal, he said, is to get word of his initiative out to the entire sports and LGBTQ communities. He wants to change the way high school athletes think.

“There is stereotype with volleyball, especially men’s volleyball, that it’s feminine or gay,” Sharpe said. “I wanted to get rid of that stereotype. I also knew

homophobia in volleyball and especially in other sports is something that isn’t talked about at the high school level.

“No sport can be labeled as gay, lesbian, straight etc. Sexual preferences of the players on the team don’t define what a team is. A team is so much more than that and that’s the main thing I wanted to put forward. You should be comfortable to be whoever you are on a team. It shouldn’t contribute to any stereotypes.”

This is probably the right place to point out Sharpe has come out as a bisexual in recent weeks.

“This has been a really big journey of growth for me,” he said.

Maybe it’s best we start with his initiative to start the volleyball program at Brookfield. It is as much about local politics as it is about serves and spikes.

“It was a pretty long track to get it,” Sharpe said. “We had to go to the Board of Education. We were supposed to have a presentation and ended up not being able to show it. I called into the Board of Ed meeting and got ripped apart. Mr. Baldwin (athletic director Steve) went the second time and we did much better.

“Eventually, the Board of Ed put it on the budget and passed it along with a girls gymnastics team. Everyone was supportive. There was a vote at the end of last May and we ended up getting $20,000 funding.”

Baldwin, in turn, said, “Jackson did a great job helping to get the program started. He is a great kid.”

This is Season One for Brookfield. About 20 came out for tryouts, barely enough for varsity and junior varsity. With one game remaining Brookfield is 3-16, but that doesn’t tell much of the story.

“Almost none of the guys had played volleyball before,” Sharpe said. “In middle school I had gone to this camp called Peconic Dunes on Long Island. I went to have fun and play a lot of sports and that’s where I was first introduced to volleyball. There were kids there who had played in middle school and high school. I got it in my head that I wanted to start a team in my school.”

Sharpe has been a soccer player practically his entire life. He played a strong level of club with AC Connecticut since middle school. When he took the jump to play volleyball this spring, he quit AC Connecticut.

“We’ve had a pretty tough season so far,” said Sharpe, a volleyball captain. “But, honestly, the progression I’ve seen this year has been insane. It is a small and tight-knit group. We kind of grew as a family.”

When Sharpe went to visit Dartmouth in late April, he had lunch with a number of its volleyball players. The Ivy League school has a competitive club team and Sharpe is looking at playing. There was an eight-person tour and — by sheer chance — on the tour was a kid from New York who also had created a volleyball team at his school.

“We really connected over the shared experiences,” Sharpe said. “All the things you had to overcome with politics and getting a vote passed. It’s much harder than one would think.

“I ended up staying up until 5 in the morning when I got home from Dartmouth because I knew I wanted to do something bigger with the sport. My legacy wasn’t going to be as a player. I wanted to leave a different legacy.”

He started thinking. He put together some rough drafts. Within a few days, he shared it with the social media savvy Bogues.

“My message for this isn’t only for volleyball, but for all sports,” Sharpe said. “The way I see it in the future is reimagining, redefining sports. We’ve seen it at the higher level of some athletes coming out. But especially in high school sports, you never see it. It’s really frowned upon. Especially in sports that are stereotyped as straight.”

Sharpe’s brother Ryan was named CHSCA Class L All-State last fall in soccer as a sophomore and essentially has been Brookfield’s top player since he was a freshman. Jackson is not without humor. He laughs how his teammates called Ryan “Big Brother.”

“I was captain of our soccer team this year, but I would have never felt comfortable coming out there,” Jackson said. “With the environment volleyball had I felt a little more confident in coming out to them in the middle of the season.”

Sharpe is open with his feelings. Among high school boys, this is a refreshing change.

“My freshman year I thought I was gay, but I realized I like girls, a preference for girls, maybe 70-30,” he said. “I kind of knew I was bi by my junior year.”

He said his first attempt to talk about the subject with a girl didn’t go particularly well. He waited a long time. This winter, he came out to his two closest friends. A month ago, it was a girl friend. Two weeks ago, his family. A week ago, his male athlete friends.

“When it happened, it was fast,” Sharpe said. “I felt each time I was stressing less and less. My friends were really accepting, which is nice. And I’m cool with jokes. If someone was going to be friends with me, they weren’t really my friend if they treated me differently.

“I wasn’t really going to come out in the post. I kind of assumed if I posted something like this, everybody would assume one way or another. So I just decided to put it in the comments. By the way I’m bi.”

One area where Sharpe feels helped get him accepted into Dartmouth and other top schools is his activism. He started the Human Rights Club and was co-founder of CT Human Rights Youth Group at Brookfield. Through that experience, he wrote a proposal to present at the National Conference for the Social Studies. He was part of a few friends to become the first students to ever make a presentation to the conference.

Sharpe also hosted the school’s first diversity day with speakers from various nations.

Last September when Hearst Connecticut featured him as part of a group of five seniors who came together to revive the Brookfield Sustainability Youth Council, Sharpe talked about returning to town after completing his education.

“I do want to raise my kids here,” he said. “I want to have a bright future for my kids here in Brookfield.”

Brookfield would be wise to keep Jackson Sharpe in its future. He’s really good at getting things done.