Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown will not testify when the Lincoln City Council holds its hearing on an ordinance to ban anti-LGBT discrimination. For this one moment, Brown has caved to pressure from fair-minded people who believe someone in his position should not be vocally advocating for discrimination. Still, he says he is just [...]
Posts under ‘Coaches’
Friday media watch: Ron Brown gears up for anti-gay preaching in Lincoln on Monday?
On Monday, May 7, the Lincoln City Council will hold a hearing on an ordinance that would make it illegal to fire someone because they are L, G, B or T. At the center of the battle over the law will be Nebraska running backs coach Ron Brown, who in March drove to Omaha to [...]
Former college volleyball coach says fear kept him from coming out as gay
By Derick White I’ll get right to the point. My name is Derick White and I am a former collegiate head coach. I am also gay. I remained in the closet for my entire coaching career because of one simple factor – fear. I will explain this in more detail in a bit, but that [...]
Cesare Prandelli, manager of Italian national soccer team, wants gays to come out
Cesare Claudio Prandelli, manager of Italy’s national soccer team, has written the foreword to a book on homosexuality and sport. Prandelli has been a fixture in the Italian soccer world since the 1970s. In his foreword he talks about the importance of ending homophobia in sports and advocates for athletes to come out: Homophobia is [...]
Nebraska coach Ron Brown would be “honored” if he was fired for his opposition to gays
Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown said he’ll keep speaking out against gays, even if it costs him his job, but his bosses support him. Brown said in an interview with The Associated Press that “to be fired for my faith would be a greater honor than to be fired because we didn’t win enough [...]
Kye Allums’ former coach, Mike Bozeman, fired from George Washington
Mike Bozeman, the man who blamed transgender player Kye Allums for his team’s horrific 2010-11 season, has been fired as the head coach of the George Washington women’s basketball team. Bozeman has been replaced by Notre Dame assistant coach Jonathan Tsipis, whose team lost in the national championship this year. Bozeman was a complete disaster [...]
Ozzie Guillen suspended five games for ‘I love Castro’ comment. More than ‘fag’ punishment.
Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen got a five-game suspension for singing the praises of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Miami has a strong Cuban community and many of them are not big fans of Castro, having fled the country at some point since his family’s rule began. Guillen claims his words were “misinterpreted” and that he [...]
Athletes and coaches from NYU combine to create terrific It Gets Better video
Jay Hayes, captain of the men’s volleyball team at New York University, is openly gay and he wanted to share his story. He thought about doing a personal video for the It Gets Better Project. He then had a better idea — involve all of NYU athletics to make a video, showing support from athletes, [...]
Homophobia among chief reasons for decline in female college coaches
With the NCAA women’s Final Four underway, ESPN has produced an exhaustive story that looks at the dwindling number of women coaching women’s college teams (it’s down from a high of 90% in 1970 to 42.9% now). Sexism plays a huge role in it, with women finding it hard to get second jobs after they’ve [...]
Fired Belmont soccer coach Lisa Howe gets new gig at Chamber of Commerce
Belmont University fired soccer coach Lisa Howe a year ago because she came out to players on her team. She’s been out of work since then, but she’s landed a great new job at the Nashville GLBT Chamber of Commerce: “Lisa Howe knows first-hand how it is to come out in the work place and [...]
Hudson Taylor: More support for LGBT coaches is badly needed
While many people are focused on LGBT athletes and when we’ll have the first out male pro athlete in America in one of the big five leagues, Hudson Taylor wants more attention to be paid to coaches. And he’s 100% right. On the Huffington Post he details the importance of laying out the welcome mat [...]
Update on outed lesbian softball player Skye Wyatt’s lawsuit
Pat Griffin has a full rundown of the latest from the Sky Wyatt lawsuit. Watt alleges that her high school softball coach in Kilgore, Texas, outed her to her mother, violating her right to privacy. From Griffin’s blog: The lawsuit claims that the coaches: 1. Called Skye to a fake team meeting 2. Locked Skye [...]
Soccer America’s Youth Soccer Insider talks to Dan Woog about coaches and gay issues
Part of the problem of homophobia at the high school and youth levels is that coaches don’t have the best tools to deal with homophobia when they see or hear it. So it’s fantastic that Soccer America sat down with one of the foremost experts on the subject: Openly gay author and high school soccer [...]
High school crew coach Kevin Hogan is…gay porn star Hytch Cawke
It seems Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden, Mass., recently hired a new English teacher and crew coach named Kevin Hogan. The local Fox affiliate got a tip that that new teacher also happened to appear in porn. Gay porn. With the terrible porn name of Hytch Cawke. The school has put Hogan on [...]
Wyoming high school football coach resigns after mock survey has question “I am a queer”
A head high school football coach in Wyoming has resigned after he gave his team a mock survey that used homophobic and sexist language. The coach, Pat Lynch, of Buffalo High School handed out the survey called “Hurt Feelings Report” to his players prior to a playoff game. (Update: See survey below). It provided boxes [...]
Associate Michigan rowing coach is gay and makes no apologies for it
You should check out this powerful essay we posted by Charley Sullivan, the associate head coach of the University of Michigan’s rowing team. In it he talks about being unapologetically out his entire career and how it has made him a better coach. While I know it’s fashionable, and even somewhat expected, to say “I’m [...]
Moment #37: Eric Anderson’s runner attacked allegedly for coach being gay
Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history. Cross-country, 1996. We hear about the fear of “guilt by association” driving homophobia in locker rooms, but we don’t have many specific examples of it happening. One of the rare cases involves a distance runner on the Huntington Beach (Calif.) High [...]
Pat Summit, winningest coach in NCAA history, has dementia
She’s one of the lightning rods of women’s sports with a tough coaching style and lots of national championships. But no matter what side of the fence you’re on, your heart has to feel for Pat Summit. The legendary Tennessee Lady Vols coach announced this week that she suffers from the early onset of dementia [...]
New gay coaching alliance forms
We got this in today from Roger Brigham, a high school wrestling coach, Gay Games advocate and longtime sportswriter. We couldn’t think of a more perfect person to launch the project advocating equality for gay coaches, and he’s joined by many of our favorite people: Lou Tharp, Mari Burningham, Helen Carroll, Pat Griffin, Dan Woog and [...]
With a gay brother, Adelphi University soccer coach knows what his player is going through
College soccer player Brandon Stoneham writes a terrific coming out story for Outsports and opens with about how he told his coach at Adelphi University. The coach, Carlo Acquista, knows something about the difficulty of coming out through the experience of his younger brother Paolo. “I totally know where [Stonerham’s] coming from because my brother [...]