Posted on 08/23/2005 8:33:38 PM PDT by Loyalist
Growing up in Qualicum Beach, a town of 5,000 on Vancouver Island, Tyler Hoffman got hooked on baseball at 5 and was umpiring games by age 12.
After graduating from "umpire boot camp," the Academy of Professional Umpiring in Florida, Hoffman launched his pro career in the minor leagues.
Working games across the United States 200 days a year, he ate, worked, played, lived and breathed baseball — truly "one of the boys." But Hoffman, now 29, kept a crucial part of himself out of the locker room.
"You just learn to bottle it up and deny that you're gay when you are in professional sports," says Hoffman, who quit the circuit in 2000 and now works as a recruiting manager in the financial sector in British Columbia.
"You have to play the game so others get a sense that you are one of the boys. You don't want to do anything that would wreck your professional career."
For years, homosexuality was the "H-word" in the world of sport, bringing with it the fear of being ostracized.
But this summer, a group of gay and lesbian athletes, coaches and sports officials is hoping to change that mentality of fear and denial with the launch of a mentoring program by the Richmond Hill-based Gay and Lesbian Athletes Association.
Funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Toronto Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal Foundation, the peer-support program — believed to be the first of its kind in the world for athletes — matches gay and lesbian sports figures (some still closeted) at the professional and collegiate levels. The idea is to share experiences and build a support network.
The program quietly kicked off in June and has been receiving about 20 calls a month.
"Our goal is to make competitive sport more inclusive, so people can feel comfortable being gays and athletes. This program is one of the tools to help gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered athletes overcome their sense of isolation," explains Brian Osler, a spokesperson for the association.
Osler, a Toronto lawyer, is straight but joined the association after a friend, an elite professional Canadian athlete he declined to name, confided to him several years ago about his struggles living a double life.
"He has a great career but has to live a secret life, to pretend to be straight, to survive that environment. He really deserves better than that," Osler says.
It's impossible to say how many gay and lesbians are involved in professional leagues. But an estimate that 2 per cent of the total population is gay would translate to seven gay players in the NBA, 12 in the NHL, 15 in major league baseball, 28 in the NFL and eight in the CFL.
The pro sport circle may be a reflection of mainstream society in some ways, but the issues facing athletes often go beyond generalized homophobia and the threat of violence.
Hoffman, a director with the association, says athletes worry about losing sponsorships and scholarships, being ostracized in locker rooms, being given less playing time by coaches, or missing a chance to be drafted by a professional league.
"You never know how others are going to respond to it — are you going to take that risk?"
Catherine Meade, who competed as a university-level sprinter and has worked at international competitions, including the 1996 Summer Olympics, says sport is a very "intimate" activity.
"You train together and sweat together, spending two, three hours a day, five days a week, together. That's an awful lot of closeness and intimacy with one another," notes the labour lawyer, a co-president of the St. Catharines-based Gay and Lesbian International Sport Association who came out only after ending her university track career.
"It's a double-edged sword. On one level, you want to open up to (other athletes) because you are so close. But at the same time, you are afraid that you'd get a homophobic response if you come out. Then you have to worry about if they'll tell other people and the coach would have issues with you."
Rene Monteagudo, a clinical psychologist with the University of Illinois, says such fears, whether perceived or real, have a lot to do with the importance in competitive sports of a macho image.
"It adds pressure on athletes to exude hyper-masculinity in front of others in locker rooms or fans in the field. There is always tremendous pressure for them to assert that they are heterosexual even though they are not," says Monteagudo, who helped develop the mentoring program.
"You have to prove that you are tough. If you think about it, one way to denigrate your opposing team is to make fun of them by calling them fags. It's a tool athletes have used to demonize their opponents."
Often, he says, closeted athletes become depressed and anxious, preventing them from reaching their full potential. Some may even quit before they make it to the pros.
"We are not trying to `out' gay and lesbian athletes, but help destigmatize the feeling of shame among them, and provide the support and resources to address these issues."
In his recently published In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity, researcher Eric Anderson investigates the links between sports, men, masculinity and homophobia.
"The answer lies not in homophobia, but in masculinity," says Anderson, a sports sociologist at the University of Bath in England.
Athletes must meet certain masculine expectations in sports — and the higher an athlete rises, the more isolated he becomes from the non-athletic world.
For his book, Anderson interviewed dozens of gay high school, collegiate and professional athletes, including a Canadian NHL player he dubbed "Aaron."
"The longer they are in sport, the more they fear being perceived as anything but an athlete — anything but masculine. It's more than just about homophobia in sport, but the idea of masculinity in sport."
Texan native Andre Espaillat couldn't have picked a more macho sport. In 1983, he joined the motorcycle road racing circuit, a pursuit typically accompanied by lots of beer, bikini-clad women and "testosterone-charged hot sweaty men in leather." He started competing internationally in 1996.
Espaillat's story is exceptional because he was already "out" when he began competing — something that helped "prove to others that we're normal people in everyday life."
Espaillat, who retired in 2002 at 47, competed with a rainbow gay-pride flag on his bike and has a personalized licence plate that reads "WFF" — an unabashed nod to the moniker bestowed on him by fellow racers: "World's Fastest Faggot."
"On my way up the racing ladder, I tried to disprove the common misconception that gay men are sibilant, passive, effeminate people who'd never get involved in a dangerous and aggressive sport," says Espaillat, who now lives with his partner in Dallas.
Was he successful?
Earlier this year, when Espaillat posted on a local Internet message board asking for others' views on gays in sports, he got a pleasant surprise.
A former motorbike buddy, a straight man who never made a secret of his politically and socially conservative views, wrote back: "I am glad you are involved in our sport, not because you are gay or straight but because you are a good man, honest and trustworthy, and our sport needs that. I will ride with you anytime."
Why do we need to know someone's sexual preferences? Just throw the ball.
I agree. I don't need to know the sexual preference of any athlete I watch play. I think it's an agenda thing.
And then comes the hate crimes when someone feels like they were hit to hard on the field because they're gay. Keep it in the closet please.
Just don't throw it foofie.
Poor babies. They need to get a life. If we can't force our morals on them. They shouldn't force theirs on us. I'm NOT interested in their private lives.
This is fine, but I would prefer our homosexual athletes keep their sexuality out of the limelight. They are not homosexuals competing for the glory of sport, they are men or women competing for the glory of sport. I feel the same way about teachers, coaches, Boy Scouts and Scoutmasters, Bosses, subordinates and everybody. One does not need to "come out of the closet" to be real. One can come out of the closet with close friends if that is important.) But coming out in public is nothing more than the homosexual agenda working on the public relations issue to become "normal". Forget it. You are not normal. Be happy competing as "men" and "women" and leave the other aspects of your life to yourselves.
This is where you are wrong. They ARE homosexuals competing, otherwise why would this article even exist? It's not about the sport but about their sex lives. If it's about the sport, then why aren't there other groups like heterosexuals and prostitutes and....you get the idea. These people need approval. You really need approval only if you're insecure or obviously wrong and know it. Othewise they would enjoy the "glory of the sport" and live their lives like 99.9% of the other coaches do...........in private!
50-Yard Rash
Synchronized Shrimping
Faceball
Crack and Feel
Pants-off-alon
Enumclaw-Style Equestrian Riding
What does sex have to do with sports?
Just shut up already.
When I was ten years old, my parents decided to take me to San Francisco. As soon as I arrived, I couldn't help but notice all the men in town were wearing shirts that said "1986 Gay Olympics." Let's just say that visit to San Fran was quite an eye-opening experience.
No I agree with you. The whole point is they are oriented towards their privates and should be thinking about the sport. Heterosexuals don't think, "I'm gonna throw this javelin past the 200 foot mark, for all the sad people of my sex" What is with these guys?
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