I continue to be impressed with Craig Cassey, the Pennsylvania high school track athlete whose blog, Craig's Gay Word, is a must-read for anyone interested in what it's like be a gay teen athlete. His latest post lists three reasons to come out to your coach. It may seem unimaginable, why would you want to [...]
Posts under ‘High school’
GLSEN and Pat Griffin unveil their new Sports Project, ‘Changing The Game’
We’ve written about it here over the last few months, and now GLSEN is officially launching its Sports Project, ‘Changing The Game.’ The initiative is designed to combat homophobia in K-12 sports by opening conversations in schools and on teams about the issue. The project’s Web site provides resources for athletes, coaches and administrators to [...]
Straight high school wrestler shows support for gay rights with HRC sticker on headgear
Jonathan Correia is a 17-year-old sophomore high school wrestler from East Providence, R.I. In a sign of support for gay rights, he wore a sticker for the Human Rights Campaign on his headgear during matches and practices this season. Jonathan was inspired by the same gesture made by then-University of Maryland wrestler Hudson Taylor last [...]
Video: Bullied teen gets fed up, fights back
By now, you might have seen the video that’s all over the Internet of Casey, a student in Australia who friends say has been regularly bullied. In the video, a smaller student is punching Casey in the face while taunting him as you can hear snickers in the background by the people filming it. Then [...]
Out athlete Greg Congdon breaks silence and tells how he has turned his life around
For a while in the early 2000s, Greg Congdon was a regular fixture in the media for his coming out story. Or rather, his story of how being outed as a high school football player ruined his life. He disappeared from public life in 2004 and took heavily to drinking, but teens still sought him [...]
High school wrestler Jaime Loo comes out
Last month we brought you the story of gay-sports pioneer Roger Brigham, a sports journalist, wrestler and wrestling coach. In that story Roger talked about one young man he felt particularly proud of having coached. This month Roger brings us the story of that kid, Jaime Loo. It’s an inspiring story of a kid who [...]
High school athlete blogs about anti-gay slurs
What do you do when you’re a gay high school track athlete and members of an opposing relay team say that “fags can’t race track”? Or when your coach says to a teammate, “You wouldn’t want to get beaten by some random homo”? These happened to Craig Cassey Jr. and he decided to write about [...]
DeSean Jackson supports bullying victim
Philadelphia Eagles players DeSean Jackson, Todd Herremans and Jamaal Jackson made a surprise visit on “The View” today to show their support for Nadin Khoury, a 13-year-old student set upon last month by seven teenagers who beat him and hung him from a tree while one of them videotaped it. Khoury said he was beaten [...]
Get the gay teen athlete bloggers on ‘Ellen’
Gwen Samelson, an artist and business consultant who lives on Whidbey Island north of Seattle, was so enamored to hear about the three openly gay high school athletes who started a blog that she has set up a Facebook page to try and get them on the “Ellen” show. “Brad, Robert and Ben for ELLEN [...]
Gay high school athletes blog
“Three kids. Three time zones. One mission …” That’s the tagline for a fantastic new blog, “Walk the Road” (with the url www.bradrobertben.wordpress.com), created and written by three gay teenage high school athletes. That’s unusual in and of itself. What makes it even more unique is that the three are not anonymous. The three bloggers [...]
Gay teen athlete: “We are all in this together”
Robert is a 17-year-old living in the South, a big fan of cars, music, video games and the Chicago Bears. He also plays soccer on his high school team and is gay. Along with two friends, Brad and Ben, he will be launching a blog next week specifically to connect other gay and questioning high [...]
Gay, straight teenagers more alike than not
While this is not exactly sports-specific, a recap of new research contradicts some long-held beliefs about being a gay teenager. Basically, according to this excellent article by Jane Brody in the New York Times, gay teens aren’t much different than their straight counterparts. The good news is that recent research finds more similarities than differences [...]
Gay teen athlete’s coming out letter to parents
Brad is a 16-year-old high school sophomore in the Pacific northwest. He runs for his school’s cross-country and track teams and is gay. He plans to attend college, major in either pre-med or international relations and be a competitive athlete. I can vouch for Brad’s identity and that is his picture. I have seen his [...]
Softball player suing coach for outing her
A lesbian teen softball player is suing her East Texas high school coach for allegedly outing her. From Gawker: After outing S.W. to her mother, Newell and Fletcher [the softball coaches] kicked her off the softball team. This all happened in March; Wyatt tried repeatedly to file complaints to the school board about Newell and [...]
Boise State player in rape hazing allegations
Three college football players, including a freshman walk-on at Boise State, have been charged with sexual assault in conjunction with hazing allegations from their high school senior year on the boys basketball team. From Reuters: Police say the five athletes forcibly penetrated fellow members of the high school basketball team and battered and restrained the [...]
Outsports at 10: Corey Johnson
The story of Massachusetts high school football captain Corey Johnson captured the imagination of many in 2000. His was one of the first big stories Outsports covered in our infancy, and it was a story that showed us the potential for what we were doing. Johnson has since moved to New York City. He’s a [...]
High school wrestler charged for ‘butt drag’
A high school wrestler in the Fresno, Calif., suburb of Clovis has been charged with sexual assault on a teammate for using a move that his coaches taught him and that has been around for decades. The “butt drag” involves grabbing the buttocks of an opponent and sticking a finger in his anus. It is [...]
GLSEN sports project sets agenda
Last week I headed to New York City for the first meeting of the advisory board for GLSEN’s new sports project, Changing the Game. The initiative, headed by Pat Griffin, will battle homophobia in sports at the K-12 level. The advisory board meeting included some great people from across the LGBT sports spectrum: Transgender former [...]
Kicker with pink cleats returns to team
High school football player Coy Sheppard is back on his team after his coach kicked him off the team for wearing pink cleats. He wore the cleats to bring awareness to the fight against breast cancer; The cleats were the gift of his 82-year-old great grandmother, and he wore them in honor of his grandmother, [...]
Pat Griffin and GLSEN team up
When the Women’s Sports Foundation lost funding for the It Takes a Team project earlier this year, we were worried that the venerable Pat Griffin would be limited in the work she could do to combat homophobia in sports. Fear not. In addition to co-authoring a great report on transgender athletes, now comes news that [...]