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Baby makes 3 for
coach and partner
Oregon State's Kirk Walker comes
out to his team after deciding to adopt
By Jim Buzinski
Outsports.com
CORVALLIS,
Ore. -- Kirk Walker stood before his Oregon State softball
team and was finally going to reveal something about his
personal life that his players had not known.
"I told
them my partner and I were adopting and the information was
on a website," Walker recalled about what he said to his players at the September 2005
meeting. Their coach was gay. And he just came out to them.
Walker asked for questions. Their collective response, he
said, was, "Oh, that's great, now tell us about the
baby." They wanted to know everything about the process of
Walker and his partner adopting a baby, and did not ask a
single question about his sexual orientation.
"I wasn't
completely surprised by it, and it was kind of a nice thing
that it really wasn't a big deal, but deep down I felt I may
get ramifications later," Walker said. "Two or three weeks
later, we had an alumni game, and all the parents were
around, and the parents were all excited by the adoption as
well, so it was obvious the kids had talked to them about it
and there were no ramifications. That's when I started to
feel like this wasn't going to be a big deal."
If the news
affected the Lady Beavers, it was only as a positive and they showed it on the
field. Nine months later, the team made its first appearance
in the College Softball World Series, capping the best
season in school history.
Walker's
revelation might not have been a big deal in Corvallis, but
it is historic nonetheless. With his going public, he is the
only known openly gay Division I college coach in the country.
Walker, 42, knows other gay coaches, but none are publicly
out (having spoken to the media or otherwise gone public).
Outsports also does not know of any publicly gay coaches at
that level.
"I am in a
unique situation. I am a Division I coach, I am in the
athletic arena and it is important that people speak and
appear because it is important to the process of breaking
down that barrier," Walker said.
"Virtually
all my peers around the country know and I've seen no
changes in the relationships. If anything, it made some of
my peers who are also gay much more eager to seek me out and
say something."
Walker's
decision was motivated by the desire of he and his partner,
Randy Baltimore, a team leader at an insurance company, to adopt a
child. The men have been partners for 10 years and live in
suburban Portland. In 2005, they were in the process of
adopting with a surrogate mother and their pictures were
posted on an Oregon adoption website. Walker did not want
his players to find out about their coach's personal life by
stumbling onto the website, so he made the decision to tell
them.
“I actually
cried when he said that," Natalie Johnson, a senior center
fielder said, recalling the meeting. "It was really great
and we felt special that he would trust us with that part of
his life and we’re very proud and happy for him." If
anything, the news may have made the team closer. " It gives
everyone more moral support to be who you are and what you
want to be and not hold it back," said sophomore catcher
Stefanie Ewing.
 Walker
(photo right) and Baltimore (left) had their dreams
fulfilled on July 12, 2006, when Ava Amor Walker Baltimore
was born. Amor was the name chosen by the birth mother and
the men agreed to honor her by keeping it as part of the
baby's name.
Ava not
only has two dads, she also gained 18 aunts. When the couple
brought the baby on campus one day last fall, her bassinet
looked right at home sitting outside Walker's office. Baby
bottles and softball bats were a natural fit in this
setting. On the field during a team practice on a glorious
sunny and warm fall day, players would take breaks and go
over to Ava and coo and play with her. A few yards away,
Walker was calmly yet firmly instructing his charges on
proper fielding techniques.
Walker has
been a consistent success on the field, winning 462 games
and two Pacific-10 Conference coach of the year awards in his 13 seasons at Oregon State. The Los
Angeles native came to Corvallis after being as assistant
coach at perennial softball power UCLA. Now regularly
nationally ranked, the Lady Beavers
reached the regionals of this year's college softball tournament.
The coach, though, takes on a different persona when he's
home and becomes dad.
"When he
coaches, he's very much in control and he expects his
athletes to perform at his peak levels," Baltimore said. "At
home, I'm the one who's demanding."
Coming out process
Walker was
not closeted prior to telling his team. His assistant
coaches knew about Baltimore, as did members of the athletic
administration. Walker had told his parents two years after
he met the man who had become the love of his life. "As a coming out process it
really was really relatively kind of slow," Walker said. "In
the last five years, it was something I would never lie about
or hide. It wasn't something I necessarily shared with
everybody, but if anyone asked I would have said something
about my partner." For whatever reason, none of his players
ever asked about his private life.
Walker
acknowledges that a gay man coaching collegiate women will
have an easier time coming out than one coaching men.
"I can't
imagine that it would be as easy coaching men and that's
probably because of being in a potentially compromising
position with an athlete," he said. "What's ironic is that
there are many gay male coaches out there coaching men. I
know several of them. … There's not this whole locker room
staring-down-the-athletes, kind-of-checking-them-out thing
going on. It's really about separating your life. It's your
job coaching these athletes and then you have your private
life."
Walker is a
thoughtful and articulate man and it is obvious he has
thought a lot about being gay in the sports world. He has
read Outsports almost since its inception and only recently
agreed to allow a profile of him written. He disputes any
notion that gay men are not represented in sports.
"There's no
reason why there is a less percentage of the gay population
in sports than in any other part of life. I actually think
that on the male side, there is a higher percentage of gay
athletes" than society as a whole, Walker said.
"I think
because sports is very traditional, macho, very masculine
and if you do it very competitively, even at a young age,
it's an escape, it's something you focus so much of your
time and effort on, and you shut down much of your social
life. This is true for gay or straight athletes. There are
many athletes who don't do all the dating things, even if
they're straight, because they're so committed with their
time to their organized sport. So I think for someone that
may be struggling with their sexuality, and they are good at
athletics, they tend to dive head on commitment-wise to
sports so they can be in a little bit of denial about their
sexuality."
"I don't
have the numbers, but if you use the 10% [of the population
being gay] as a benchmark, I would imagine that in sports on
the male side, the number of gay athletes is higher."
Walker also
thinks that within sports, no discipline has a higher
percentage of gay people (he has known of past Oregon State
football players who are gay and also knows of current and
ex-pro athletes). It's just that in sports like
swimming or gymnastics there might be a "higher comfort
level" with being gay, he said, leading people to believe
more gays are in those sports. Despite progress, Walker still
recognizes the motives for athletes to stay in the closet.
"It's still
going to be a long and difficult road for a current
professional athlete to make that step and it's probably not
going to happen by his choice," he said. "As a professional
athlete or a competitive college athlete, you give up a lot
of your own self to be a part of the team, straight or gay.
You give up a lot of your likes, dislikes and wants … and
for a gay athlete [his sexuality] is the easiest thing to
give up because he kind of wants to hide it anyway.
"It's
easier for a gay male athlete who has questions about their
sexuality to hide it better by being a committed and focused
athlete because that immediately gives them a legitimacy
that no one questions. There really is no other vein in this
country any more that has that same [aura of masculinity] as
sports does."
Since his
announcement to his team, Walker has had no negative
reactions and said he has not "felt anything different from
any of the male athletes" he meets on campus. He's
still Coach Walker to them. He also is
willing to be the public face that says being openly gay and
being a coach can comfortably exist.
"I am very
comfortable being in the public eye," he said. "The fact
that this is a big deal is OK with me and I'm comfortable
being in that role."
Oregon State softball coach Kirk Walker
welcomes
e-mails.
Editor's note: Jim Buzinski traveled to Corvallis along with
a producer for CBS News and freelance correspondent Paul
Lombardi to produce a piece on Walker for CBS News on Logo.
Comments from the players were taken from Lombardi's
interviews with them. The TV report has yet to air. Photo by
Jim Buzinski
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June 4. 2007
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