The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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April 7, 2007

Missouri: For gay coaches, acceptance remains uncertain

The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The history of openly gay coaches at any level, in any sport, is a short one.

Even harder to find than openly gay athletes, gay coaches risk more than just losing their privacy. Their careers, reputations and financial security are also at stake.

“You’ve got to be better than everybody else,” said Eric Anderson, a former high school and college track coach in Southern California. He is now a sociology professor at the University of Bath in England who studies gays in sports.

Anderson, 39, came out in the early ’90s as track coach at Huntington Beach High School in Orange County, Calif.

He was threatened, harassed and had his car defaced in the school parking lot.

One runner was violently assaulted by a Huntington Beach football player because the coach was gay.

An assistant principal tried to fire Anderson after an anonymous accuser falsely said the track coach was abusing minors on his team.

But seven years after detailing those experiences in an autobiography, he calls the climate for gay athletes and coaches far better.

“Just like the clothes I wore at the time are now completely out of fashion, so is homophobia,” Anderson said.

Yet coaches such as Kyle Hawkins at Missouri have been loath to acknowledge their sexuality to the larger sports world. That makes the success of Internet havens such as Outsports.com that much more vital, said Cyd Zeigler Jr., a sports buff who co-founded the Web site in 1999.

“The gay community really didn’t embrace sports,” he said. “And the sports community didn’t embrace gays.”

The online forum has allowed Hawkins and other gay coaches and athletes to “explore without taking a leap into the deep end of the pool,” Zeigler said.

Zeigler is less effusive than Anderson when chronicling the advances made by the sports world and its acceptance of gays in its midst.

He compared actions made by the head coaches of year’s Super Bowl teams.

Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith replied positively to a reporter’s question about whether pro football was ready to accept an openly gay player.

“We don’t get into people’s personal lives in that way,” the coach responded. “We judge players based on one thing. Can they play football? If you can play football, you can get into the locker room.”

At the same time, opposing coach Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts was the honored guest at a fundraiser by the Indiana Family Institute, a group that lobbies against same-sex marriage and the rights of gay people to adopt children in that state.

In February, few former teammates, opponents and coaches embraced the admission by former NBA player John Amaechi that he is gay.

All-star forward LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers reacted by criticizing gay athletes who remain in the closet as “untrustworthy.”

Philadelphia Sixers forward Shavlik Randolph said he would accept a gay teammate “as long as you don’t bring your gayness on me.”

Amaechi was the sixth professional male athlete from one of the three major U.S. sports — football, basketball and baseball — to openly discuss his homosexuality. Each waited until retirement.

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