A former Oregon athlete says she’s always known she was gay. She came out to her parents during her freshman year of high school, and started dating a senior on her softball team.
When the 21-year-old arrived at Oregon as a freshman, she says she was very open with her teammates about her sexuality, and that it never became a source of friction on the softball team.
“There were four or five of us that were gay,” she said. “But only two that were really open. I was one of those, and if we were asked, it was like ‘Yeah, I’m gay,’ but the other few were just very secret about it.”
As she has acknowledged, not everyone is as open about their sexuality as she is. In fact, because she currently plays softball for a religiously affiliated university and risks losing her scholarship if the athletic department at her new school discovers that she has publicly outed herself, the Emerald has decided to use a pseudonym for this story to protect her. For the purposes of this story, she will be referred to as “Grace Swift.”
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “openly gay,” and 1 being “completely closeted,” Swift rates herself a 5 during her time with the Oregon softball team.
“I never really made a big announcement or anything like that,” Swift said. “Right from the start, I had known others that were gay on the team because we’d played against each other, and we kinda flocked to each other. And then we’d see each other at gay bars and all, so it just kinda came up.
“We were at a team bonding trip and it just kinda came out. Someone was like, ‘Hey, are you gay?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And it was okay. I believe the coaches knew, too.”
At her new school, however, it’s a different matter. Swift says she’s still very open with her sexuality with her friends and even on the field, but there are times when she refrains from flaunting it.
“Sports-wise, I’d say I’m still a 5, but in the classroom, it’s 0,” Swift said.
The dichotomy between her openness with her sexuality on a personal level, and her understanding of how this openness could jeopardize her career if it is explicitly brought into the spotlight at her current school, represents the atmosphere of receptive caution with which most Oregon coaches and athletes are approaching the issue of homosexuality in sports.
The players’ perspective
The athletes uniformly declare that they would be very comfortable playing with a gay teammate.
“What is most important is that everyone’s honest and open about it,” said Kaela Chapdelaine, a junior guard on the basketball team, “Both (openly gay) people that I’ve played with here and in Canada were very open to answering questions. We didn’t have any problems because they were honest with us and we could talk about it openly.”
Senior post Jessie Shetters echoed Chapdelaine and said that having a gay teammate had never become a source of friction in the locker room in the past, and that the team prided itself on its open, family-like atmosphere.
“Be yourself. It’s like a family,” Shetters said. “Treat us like your family and be who you are. I hope that anyone on this team would be comfortable telling me anything and knowing that I’m not gonna judge them.”
The tennis team agrees that having a gay teammate would not be a big deal.
“I don’t think it’d be an issue,” sophomore Carmen Seremeta said.
“Especially not on this team because we’re all so close,” Claudia Hirt added.
Dominika Dieskova pointed out that she competed against many openly lesbian players on the professional tennis circuit before she came to Oregon.
“This is what people (in tennis circles) say about the tour: You’re either with your coach or with your doubles partner,” Dieskova said. “When I played $10,000 tournaments, a high percentage of girls were lesbian. They’re out. People know.”
Like Dieskova, former Oregon soccer standout Nicole Garbin says she’s also played with gay athletes at times throughout her athletic career, and that she also played under an openly gay assistant coach on a club soccer team she was a part of while growing up.
“I think women in general are more understanding and accepting (of homosexuality) than men,” Garbin said. “The gay coach seemed to try and always make us feel comfortable. She was really open about it, and she knew when it was appropriate to talk about these things off the field, and when it was time to just get it done on the field.”
This sort of discretion helps to take away any potential for conflict before it can even arise.
Swift said that although her sexuality was never a source of friction between her and her straight teammates, she was also very careful about not doing anything that might make them feel uncomfortable in any way.
“Showers (at Oregon) were never an issue because we showered in single-person cubicles,” Swift said. “On the road in college, each person gets their own bed. But when I played travel (club) ball I’d sleep on the couch or on the floor and let (straight roommates) have the bed. Because I didn’t want them to get uncomfortable or think I was hitting on them if I rolled over or happened to brush against them at night. Because that’s just the way it is, some straight girls are like that.”
But on the whole, Swift says there was never any division based on sexuality lines when she was on the Oregon team.
“We all just intermingled very well,” Swift said, “Sure, at times it’d be just us – the gay girls – say if one of the gay girls had girlfriend problems, we’d all rally around. But otherwise everyone got along on the team.”
The coaches’ perspective
Regardless of how receptive most female athletes are to the idea of having gay teammates, the caution with which many coaches approached the subject reflected the sensitive, “pandora’s box” nature of the issue.
Lacrosse coach Jen Larsen declined to comment, while soccer coach Tara Erickson said she did not think it was her place to comment on the matter, given the fact that the university is a public institution.
When coaches did agree to comment, most of them stuck with safe, fairly vague assessments of whether the current atmosphere in collegiate sports was conducive to a gay athlete coming out.
Oregon softball coach Kathy Arendsen said the kind of reception a gay athlete might expect when trying to decide whether to come out varied depending on the values of the community they were located in.
“I think it reflects the community and the world as a whole,” Arendsen said. “At a school like Oregon, yes the environment would be conducive. But I also coached at Mississippi, and I wouldn’t have thought that was a very conducive place.”
Arendsen also emphasized the disconnect between her players’ personal lives and their athletic lives.
“What the kids do in their personal lives is their personal business. Who they’re seeing is none of our business and the only time it comes into our world is if it affects us, if there’s a heartbreak or someone gets engaged,” Arendsen said. “We’re a blended society in every way. Race, culture, religion, sexual orientation and all that together.”
Like Arendsen, most coaches said they did not forsee any problems that might arise through having one of their players come out to the team.
“My view’s always been that whether on the team as a player or as a coach, I see people as people and treat people as people,” women’s basketball coach Bev Smith said. “I don’t think it’s a big deal to be gay in sports. I don’t think it’s any different from being gay in life. I don’t know why there’s such a focus on it in athletics versus a focus on it in politics or business.”
It’s more difficult for guys, but not easy for girls either
Women’s tennis coach Paul Reber thinks this generation of collegiate athletes is probably more open to homosexuality because they are more likely to have grown up around gay people. But even with that added degree of socialization to the issue, he believes it is still harder
for a male athlete to come out than it might be for a female athlete.
“I think in male sports, there’s still such a macho thing about being a top notch athlete,” Reber said. “And I don’t think that in this society, (people) classify ‘gay’ as being ‘macho.’ That factor is probably what’s holding (male athletes) back (from coming out). I don’t think the repercussions for a female athlete coming out are quite the same as it would be for guys just because of that.
“You find more males that are homophobic than females. I think that’s society in general, and sports reflects society.”
Still, Reber also acknowledged the fact that while being a gay athlete carries a weightier stigma for men than it does for women, that doesn’t mean that being a gay woman in sports does not also pose its own challenges.
“I have heard some girls say they would never go to a school where there’s an (unmarried) female as a coach – almost implying that most single female coaches in tennis are gay, which I think is totally untrue,” Reber said.
For Swift, the personal benefits of coming out far outweighed the risks.
“Why deny something that you are just to please other people, why deny something that means so much to you and is such a big part of you?” Swift said. “The way I see it, I have two choices: be up-front with it or deny it. And I chose to be open with it to respect myself and my girlfriend.
“Luckily for me, I had a ton of support from family, friends and teammates to where I did not have to look elsewhere for that support, but on the other hand, not very many athletes can experience that type of environment where it was acceptable to be who you are.”
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