What started as a simple graphic has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the LGBTQ+ community in sports.

This year marks a decade since Jeff McLean and Dean Petruk co-founded Pride Tape. According to its website:

Pride Tape is a badge of support from teammates, coaches, parents and pros to young LGBTQ+ players. It shows every player that they belong playing the sports they love. Proceeds from the sale of Pride Tape also helps to support LGBTQ+ youth outreach and educational initiatives. That means every roll of tape will make an impact in sports and beyond. Our collective goal is to make sport, at all levels, a more welcoming and inclusive environment for players, their families and fans of every race, colour, age, ability, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.

HockeyCanada.ca caught up with McLean and Petruk to talk about their journey over the last 10 years.

Where did the idea for Pride Tape originate from?

JM: Ten years ago I was working for an ad agency in Edmonton, and we were working with Dr. Kris Wells at the University of Alberta on a project called nohomophobes.com, which scraped homophobic tweets in real-time off Twitter. What we found when we were testing the site was that homophobic tweets were more prevalent during major sporting events. We felt we needed to do something to address homophobia in sports, and we didn't know what that was.

I was charged to come up with an idea, and we chose hockey, because I had some friends in the NHL, as did Kris with Andrew Ference, who was captain of the Edmonton Oilers at the time. Originally this was just a one-off piece of creative with hockey tape—a picture of a player taping up their stick and then using Photoshop to put the six colours on the tape. Driving to work one day, I thought if they can make repeat-pattern hockey tape—like with the Hockey Canada logo on it, the Batman logo, things like that—I wonder if they could repeat colours and we could actually make this tape.

That's when I got a hold of Dean. We had been friends for a long time, working on some charity hockey events with our friends at the NHL Alumni Association, and together we went down the path of figuring out how this stuff could get made, and the rest is history. The Oilers put six different coloured rolls of tape on their sticks during their skills competition to emulate the idea of Pride Tape, and that got the attention of global media everywhere.

What was it like from your perspective, watching the growth in real time as more players and teams started to use the tape?

DP: We had a lofty ambition that all we wanted is one player to use the tape in some form, whether it was on the shaft or on the butt-end of the stick or actually on the blade; it really didn't matter to us, we just said wouldn't it be great if one player did that, and then all of a sudden this whole thing evolved. Every day that goes by, we think we've seen it all, and then something else happens in the community, or to a certain person that reaches out to us, and the stories we have, the heartfelt stories of people in a difficult situation, and the tape has helped them bridge that and find purpose.

We've heard it all, we've seen it all, and we have proof that it's changed lives and saved lives out there. It really grew beyond what the actual purpose of the tape was, the message, and we've really become the bridge to this conversation, to this support unilaterally, and it's been amazing. People use it for different reasons, and some are on the ally side of things, some are in the community. It’s just been way beyond what our expectations were. We've seen it all, but we haven't. It just keeps growing into something bigger and better.

Do you still get that rush of excitement, 10 years on, seeing people use Pride Tape?

JM: It is something as simple as driving home and seeing somebody walking down the sidewalk with their hockey bag slung over their shoulder and a stick taped up with Pride Tape, and they're on their way to the outdoor rink.

When you see Pride Tape out in the wild, it hasn't really, after 10 years, sunk in, you know? It still moves you because those individuals, these strangers that you see with it, that was their choice to buy it and to put it on their sticks or their baseball bats, because they believe in the message. We always say, we just make tape, you make it powerful, that's really what it's about. Nobody owns Pride Tape, except the people that buy it and believe in its messages.

Thanks to the success of Heated Rivalry, there was a massive influx of people wanting to support the mission of Pride Tape and have it on their sticks after seeing the show. Can you speak to that experience?

JM: There is a natural synergy, and I think the big thing for me to doing the Instagram feed is all the fan art, all the creativity and wonderful artwork done by fans of the show and of the tape, and they just naturally meshed it together. People were doing Heated Rivalry posts with artwork and they were naturally just putting in sticks with Pride Tape on it, which was really, really cool. So, I think that's another strength of what's been created here is the creativity of people, and they're doing things that we're not smart enough to have imagined. They just take it to another level.

DP: It was instantly relevant and everybody related to it. I think the biggest difference is that Heated Rivalry has hit mainstream. We've always had the supporters: girls’ hockey, women's hockey, the minority groups that were using it as their support tool and then the community, of course, but Heated Rivalry became this phenomenon that is mainstream.

This might be tough to narrow down, but do you have a favourite Pride Tape story?

JM: We were doing a Pride Night in Edmonton with the Oilers, and they put us on the screen and interviewed us to tell our story. Walking back to the concourse where we were handing out tape, one of the ushers stopped and said, ‘I just wanted to let you know how much this tape means to me and my family. I'm out, and it severed, unfortunately, the relationship with my father and bringing the tape home and talking about the tape has now brought us back together and we have a wonderful relationship,’ and they attributed the tape to that story. That’s pretty incredible and pretty moving when you see it happening at the grassroots level.

It has been 10 years of what we call proof of concept; some of the things that we can do now, we might not have been able to do five years ago or seven years ago, but now that we have the connections that we have globally, within the leagues, the NHL, the PWHL, and those friendships that have been forged make it possible to make a difference in people's lives.

Do you have anything planned for the 10-year anniversary?

JM: More visibility. Dean is on his way to Seattle for their Pride event. I am in Edmonton. I've got the Riverhawks baseball team's Pride Night, which I design the jerseys for. And then we've got we got Luke Prokop’s documentary coming up at the end of June, so we’ve got premieres in San Francisco, Edmonton and Toronto, and we have tape there to give away for everybody coming to the theaters.

It's very ad hoc. Dean and I do this on a voluntary basis, I always say off the corner of our desks. We do have real jobs, but we try and do as much as we can and get out to more events and more tournaments in the future. We would love to do more speaking engagements to tell our story, in the hopes that it can help people. We have the idea of a book in the works as well, about our 10-year history with Pride Tape. Just getting out there to just meet as many people as possible and get the tape in the hands of as many people as possible, because they become those influencers that can make a difference in somebody's life.

Is there anything you would like to finish on?

JM: The one thing that has come up probably more now than it has throughout the 10 years is that I don't think that people realize how much this simple act can make a difference in somebody's life. We need to keep working at it and keep trying harder to let people know that this is making a difference.

I think oftentimes it's like, well, it's a roll of tape, it goes on the stick. It's a very simple act, but it's bold and we can reassure people that it does make a difference in people's lives; when they see it, even if they don't hear it directly, they will be creating a conversation somewhere about the importance of inclusivity in hockey and in sports, and we just encourage people to use it, because it does make a difference. Give it a try and it will surprise them.