Photos by CHAD RHYM – Sports Editor
Despite the millions of people who are openly gay, the number in the world of sports is slim.
Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner won the Naismith College Player of the Year award two years straight, she finished as the second all-time scorer in women’s National Collegiate Athletic Association history with 3,283 points and she is the top shot-blocker ever, passing both the men’s and women’s college marks with 748 blocked shots. To no surprise, in the 2013 Women’s National Basketball Association Draft, Griner was selected as the first overall pick.
Juniors Nyke Faust and Dernaria Wiley are both openly gay. Faust is also an athlete but sometimes in the world of sports, gay athletes are pressured to stay in the closet. Photo by Porter McLeod.
In an interview with SI.com on April 17, Griner stated that she is gay. Griner is one of two active openly gay athletes in American professional sports.
According to University of Georgia professor Dr. Joey Gawrysaik, Griner’s coming out was not met with much shock because it was expected.
“When you’re a female and you play sports, society expects you to be a lesbian, it’s kind of a stigma that they’ve been given,” Gawrysiak said. “And it’s just more of this idea of what we consider good female athletes in our society to be. If you’re good you must be a lesbian, and that is not a good ideology or a good stereotype that exists. That’s why I don’t think it’s that big of an impact, because people already suspected that Griner was a lesbian.”
Clarke Central High School head varsity girls basketball coach Carla Johnson has only had one openly gay athlete, junior Nyke Faust in her years of coaching at CCHS.
“There’s only been one that has ever come out and outright told me. You can go by assumptions, but Nyke Faust is the only one who came out openly and told me up front,” Johnson said. “Any other athletes here have never said ‘Coach Johnson I’m a gay,’ or ‘Coach Johnson, I like girls.’”
Faust began playing basketball in the seventh grade for the Burney Harris Lyons Middle School basketball team. Despite seventh grade being the first year of Faust’s basketball career, it was also the year she decided to come out of the closet. Faust describes her coming out to her CCHS teammates as a simple experience.
“Half of my teammates already knew me, so it was really no surprise for anybody. Like I didn’t have to tell anyone, because everyone already knew. I
think my coaches knew, but I told them anyway. My coaches and I are close so I can tell them anything,” Faust said. “My team has never treated me differently. Nobody had any problems with it, they treated me regularly.”
Not only is Faust openly gay, but she also has a girlfriend, junior Dernaria Wiley. Wiley and Faust have been dating since their freshman year.
“Our love is like a best friend love. It’s a you help me and I help you kind of situation,” Wiley said. “We actually build each other. There’s no disrespect in our relationship. We have enough respect for each other to listen to each other whenever one of us needs to be heard. It’s more of a internal bond than an infatuation. It’s something deeper than that.”
Although Faust says her experience thus far with her teammates has not been difficult, Johnson says that openly gay male athletes might face more challenges than openly gay female athletes.
“I think when you’re a male athlete people want you to dominate. I hate to say this but it’s kind of like the male mentality,” Johnson said. “I think it would be harder in a male locker room for a (gay) male to just interact with (his teammates) than it is for females.”
Gawrysiak’s thoughts on gender are parallel to those of Johnson’s.
“Sports such as football and hockey would probably not be as accepting, there is a lot of contact, more than there is in basketball or baseball,” Gawrysiak said. “And if there’s contact, people are going to have the idea of ‘I don’t want to touch a gay person, and I don’t want a gay person touching me.”
Junior quarterback Cameron Johnson would be accepting of an openly gay teammate under certain conditions.
“As long as he’s not coming on to me or disrupting anyone on the team, I’ll be fine,” Cameron said. “He’ll just be another player like everyone else.”
Varsity football special teams coordinator and running backs coach Aaron Cavin believes that as long as a player does not negatively affect the team’s chemistry, their sexualilty is not an issue.
“My opinion on a gay athlete is as long as the team chemistry is good, no problem. But just like anything else if we have a person on the team who hurts the team in a negative manner, like they party too much, they steal or do something like that and it causes the performance of the team to go down, then it’s an issue,” Cavin said.
Although Cavin is willing to accept openly gay athletes on the varsity football team, Gawrysiak believes that coaches might be a key reason as to why there are so few openly gay athletes.
“If you look at the college level, high school level and even the youth level the coaches that we have there pass a lot of influence to the athletes. Some
teach the athletes the culture of ‘You throw like a girl’ or if they do something bad they play like a ‘sissy’,” Gawrysiak said. “These are derogatory statements that have been around forever in sports, and now players have the understanding of ‘if I do like men I have to hide it, because if I don’t I’ll be an outlier, an outcast and I’ll be bullied.’”
On April 29, Washington Wizards center Jason Collins came out, and is now the second openly gay athlete in American professional sports. Gawrysiak believes that athletes such Griner are the key to a future of more openly gay athletes in sports.
“With Brittney Griner I was very excited when she decided to come out as gay. With her probably being the biggest name in women’s basketball, maybe her coming out will help a little bit, to maybe lead the way for other gay people to come out,” Gawrysiak said. “I think it’s going to take somebody like Brittney, a big name in a big sport to lead the way.”
