Alissa Wykes is an American football running back for the Philadelphia Liberty Belles of the Independent Women's Football League. She was the league MVP in 2001, the inaugural season that the Liberty Belles won the NWFA title. She came out as a lesbian in the December/January 2002 edition of Sports Illustrated for Women and was also featured in several other gay/lesbian magazines and newspapers. Openly lesbian,[1] she participated as a panel member at the first National Gay/Lesbian Athletics Conference at MIT in Cambridge, MA in 2003.