The State of College Sports
Michael Becker and Michael Licker

There are gay and lesbian athletes at Syracuse University. That’s what the coaches, administrators and SU athletes themselves say. Yet in interviews and conversations this semester – with 11 SU athletes, six coaches, the athletic director and various other members of the campus community – no one could name a single LGBT athlete among the school’s 600 varsity players who is “out” to the entire university community.

SU’s administrators and coaches preach that the athletic community is diverse, where everyone is made to feel welcome. While all indications show that the Syracuse athletic department is indeed welcoming to gay and lesbian athletes, none surfaced to tell their story, even anonymously.

It’s an environment that leads some experts and gay and lesbian athletes to wonder if SU and other universities should be making a greater effort to educate and train their coaches and players to better understand the schools’ gay and lesbian athlete populations.

In several weeks of interviews:

• A number of athletes said they know of gay or lesbian teammates, but those teammates are not out publicly.

• Some athletes said certain sports teams on the SU campus are known as “gay or lesbian teams.”

• Only six coaches were willing to comment, out of 10 contacted for this story. Of them, one would do so only through a written statement.

• Three Syracuse athletes said they were urged by teammates not to participate in this story.

• Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel said the Syracuse athletic department preaches diversity and sponsors diversity training for coaches every few years. However, neither Crouthamel nor any of the six Syracuse coaches interviewed could recall the last time a training session took place.

• The Syracuse University athletic department uses a “reactive approach” in dealing with sexual orientation — it’s only discussed if a problem arises.

Crouthamel has been SU’s director of athletics since 1978. During that time, he’s known and worked with more than 4,000 student-athletes and dozens of coaches, including some who have been gay, he said. He declined to comment on the number of gay and lesbian athletes currently at Syracuse.

“Do we have gay and lesbian athletes at Syracuse?” Crouthamel said. “Yes we do. Are team members aware of that? In most cases, yes. Has it been a problem to date?”

Crouthamel made a fist and knocked three times on his wooden desk.

“No.”

“That’s the way society deals with it,” said Richard Lapchick, who teaches diversity training to the management of the Sacramento Kings of the NBA and Sacramento Monarchs of the WNBA. “The typical response we have as a society is that we don’t have that problem. As a society, we’re afraid to talk about gays and lesbians on sports teams.”

Andrea Zimbardi is a former University of Florida softball player who is a lesbian. She settled with Florida after she claimed she was discriminated against because of her sexual orientation.

She said she worries that gay and lesbian athletes won’t attend certain colleges and universities if they find them unsafe environments for gays and lesbians.

“More and more athletes are coming out in high school,” Zimbardi said. “By ignoring (diversity education) they could be missing out on a great athlete. For them to say it’s not an issue is just holding wool over their eyes.”

The athletic department’s reactive policy means that LGBT issues are usually not addressed unless they cause problems on a team.

Crouthamel said the athletic department staff and coaches undergo broad diversity training every couple of years. This training, though, focuses on all issues of diversity, not just gay and lesbian issues.

“It sounds a bit like ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’” Crouthamel said. “But because of the sensitivity of our coaches, they have avoided a lot of issues.”

The department isn’t proactive when it comes to LGBT issues because Crouthamel believes it would cause more problems than it would prevent. Athletes already have enough to think about between classroom and athletic performance, he said. Bringing LGBT issues to the athletes’ attention would only cause them to doubt their own sexuality, he said, just giving them more to worry about.

Several Syracuse athletes supported Lapchick’s assertion that people are afraid to talk about gay and lesbian athletes. Two athletes declined comment altogether for fear of how it would be perceived by their teammates. Three others either wished to remain anonymous or asked that some of their comments be withheld, also out of fear of how their teammates would react.

“That’s the kind of thing that could get me in trouble,” said Michael Powell, a senior lacrosse player who said he did not want to say anything more than that.

John Desko, head coach of the men’s lacrosse team, chose his words carefully.

“If you’re taken out of context,” Desko said, “this could be taken under great scrutiny. There’s a natural hesitation. People are afraid of the consequences.”

April Kater, the SU women’s soccer coach, has no problem discussing issues of sexual orientation, she said. And contrary to Crouthamel, Kater said she takes a proactive approach to discussing gay and lesbian issues. It would be nice if many of her coaching peers felt as strongly as she does about promoting diversity, specifically accepting lesbian and gay athletes, she said. But she said the choice is ultimately up to each coach.

“I am very proactive,” Kater said. “(The women’s soccer team) is a diverse team. That’s good. I set that standard from the first meeting. I would hope I’m not the only one like this, but that depends on each individual approach.”

Penny Dean, the swimming coach at Pomona College in California and partner of SU English professor Claudia Klaver, strongly disagrees with SU’s reactive strategy. Dean said she’s run into discrimination throughout her time at Pomona, and she feels that failing to educate athletes only strengthens the bias. When she first came out, she placed a pink triangle on her office door, which she said led to years of isolation even while she led her team to national championships.

“You’re telling me that in history class, you learn Hitler killed six million (people) and then just ignore it,” Dean said. “No, you talk about it to prevent it from happening again. By treating the problem that way, you’re saying it’s not really happening. You’re saying kids aren’t being beaten or kicked off teams.”

At SU, if a problem related to sexual orientation arises on a sports team, the athletic department has a system in place to deal with it. Initially, it is left to the coach of the team to handle it. If coaches feel the situation needs more attention, they can contact Crouthamel for assistance.

“(Crouthamel) puts a lot of responsibility on us coaches,” Kater said. “If an issue were to come up, we would try to keep it as ‘in house’ as possible.”

Outside assistance can be brought in. Crouthamel said that kind of help — a specialist who deals with LGBT issues — has only been required once, and the situation was resolved before it became a major problem. He declined to comment further on that situation.

SU coaches have different ways of dealing with lesbian and gay issues on their teams. Softball coach Mary Jo Firnbach said she discusses all kinds of diversity on her team, in an effort to make all her athletes feel welcome.

Kater sits the women’s soccer team down on the first day of practice and tells her players that intolerance about sexual orientation will not be accepted, she said.

Firnbach is careful to explain face-to-face to athletes why they aren’t in the starting lineup, she said. This helps to avoid situations where players feel they’ve been discriminated against for non-softball-related reasons.

“To me, (my players) are two different people,” Firnbach said. “They’re an athlete and a person. I want them to understand that if they don’t play or don’t start, it’s because they’re not hitting the ball.”

Firnbach said her open-door policy will help to prevent a situation like the one that occurred in March 2003 at the University of Florida, when Zimbardi was kicked off the softball team.

Zimbardi, a senior, said an assistant coach was discriminating against her because she was a lesbian. Eventually, Zimbardi filed a lawsuit against the university. The two sides settled the suit out of court.

Zimbardi said she believes Florida’s way of dealing with issues of sexuality contributed to her being kicked off of the team. Before her lawsuit, Florida had no policy in place to protect the sexual orientation of any students, let alone athletes.

Because of the Zimbardi case, diversity training specifically geared toward gay and lesbian issues is now available for all athletic personnel, coaches and team captains at Florida. Zimbardi said that this year the training has taken place at least twice. Florida also now has a written code protecting all students’ sexual orientation.

Zimbardi said SU’s reactive approach could only lead it to a problem similar to the one she faced. Though Syracuse does have a written policy protecting all students from discrimination based on sexual orientation, Zimbardi believes that confronting these issues before they become larger problems could save someone from having to go through what she did.

“It’s not a disease,” Zimbardi said. “No one’s going to catch it if they talk about sexual orientation.”

But Crouthamel is comfortable with SU’s approach.

Commenting on Zimbardi’s situation, Crouthamel said a player would never be kicked off of a team at Syracuse because of sexual orientation. He went on to say that if an athlete provoked a larger problem on a team, the situation would have to be examined further.

“At some point in time, it may be uncorrectable,” Crouthamel said. “If one or two or three or a dozen players are taking a team in a direction that is not in the best interest of the team, then you’ve got to take some action. You’ve got to remove what’s the problem but not before you go through all the options.

“We kick kids off teams that create problems,” he continued.

He reiterated that an athlete would be kicked off a team because of a specific problem, not because of sexual orientation.

SU women’s lacrosse coach Lisa Miller said an athlete’s sexuality is not, and should not be, a problem. Miller, who played college lacrosse at the College of William and Mary in the late 1980s, said sexuality should no longer cause a problem in sports.

“I think it’s a non-issue,” Miller said. “It’s something that female athletes sorted through a long time ago.”

Miller said lesbian athletes aren’t visible simply because of the nature of their commitment to athletics. She said while gay and lesbian students at Syracuse may have time to participate in LGBT events, most student-athletes spend all their time with their books or their teams.

She said the demands on the athletes are so great that they can’t pursue social opportunities. While a social outlet for a gay or lesbian student may be the LGBT Resource Center and community events, the only social outlet for an athlete is the team, Miller said.

Sean Lindsay, a senior midfielder for the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team, said it’s not that athletes don’t have time to get involved, it’s just that they have already found their niche.

“As a student-athlete you come to school and you already have friends,” Lindsay said. “You don’t have to come in and adapt. People who aren’t in athletics, they go out and find themselves.”

But even within teams, some athletes are in the dark about the sexuality of their teammates. When asked about the possibility of lesbian athletes on the women’s soccer team, defender Sheila Menz first dismissed the thought.

Menz said she didn’t know firsthand of any lesbian athletes on her team, but she had heard “rumors” about the sexuality of some of her teammates.

“You keep your sexuality private,” Menz said. “It doesn’t have a bearing of how you play or what you do.”

Menz said the No. 1 rule mandated by the athletic department is to respect your  teammates, regardless of their ethnicity or sexual orientation. She interpreted that as a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, similar to that of the United States military.

After initially seeming surprised at the prospect of having a lesbian teammate, she later said that she suspected some members of the women’s soccer team were lesbians, but she hadn’t brought it up with any of them.

“Girls talk about boys,” Menz said. “They don’t talk about girls.”

SU football head coach Paul Pasqualoni issued a written statement in response to a request for comment.

“We promote an open environment for all of our student-athletes,” Pasqualoni said in the statement. “With more than 85 players in this program, we have to be accepting of people’s differences. As coaches we support the student-athletes both on and off the field.”

SU field hockey player Rosanne Geraty pointed out that team members come from different backgrounds, and many of them have never been exposed to gays or lesbians. But she said she believes the more gays and lesbians that people know, the more comfortable they become with the idea of having them as teammates.

Her teammate, Jessica Dahle, also said that athletes don’t want to be known for their sexual orientation but for what they do on the field.

Almost everyone interviewed for this story agreed the environment is different for men’s sports than women’s sports. It’s not just a trend in sports, but in society, where it is becoming more common by the day to show a lesbian kiss on basic cable.

Julian Pollard plays defensive end for the Syracuse football team. After he agreed to a phone interview, he said teammates told him not to speak for fear it was against team rules.

“I personally wouldn’t have a problem if I had a gay teammate,” Pollard said. “It would take some getting used to. I have gay friends and it’s never been a problem.”

But Lapchick, director of the Institute of Diversity and Ethics at the University of Central Florida, said it would cause a huge stir if an athlete from a major college sport, such as football, were to come out.

“Sports is one of the most homophobic cultures in a nation of homophobes,” Lapchick said.

“Football players get a bad rap in a lot of areas,” Pollard said. “People take us sometimes to be heartless just because we play an aggressive sport. Some people are cruel. It’s not just football players. Football doesn’t change views on sexuality; it’s how you’re brought up. It’s your faith. It’s your beliefs.

“If someone says a (derogatory comment), they said it,” Pollard added. “Football didn’t say it. When you sign up to play football, you bring yourself.”

Adrea Jaehnig, the director of SU’s LGBT Resource Center, said athletic stereotypes and added pressures of sports make it more difficult for an athlete to come out compared to a normal student.

“Any time you adhere to gender norms,” Jaehnig said, “the guys are supposed to be strong, tough and macho. Coming out in that environment is very challenging. People think a guy who is really buff couldn’t be gay. That puts a lot of pressure on individual athletes.”

Said sports psychologist Richard Lustberg: “You see two girls walking out of a high school arm-and-arm you wouldn’t think anything of it. You see two football players walking out arm-and-arm and see what happens. Think about Robert Redford making out with Ben Affleck on stage — implausible. That’s how we’ve been brainwashed.

“People should be thrilled to see Robert Redford and Ben Affleck make out,” Lustberg said. “How’d you like to see Will Smith and Danny Glover on stage make out?”

SU track and field team member Alisha Ricardi, a sophomore, agreed that it’s easier for females than males to come out in the athletic world. In fact, she said she hadn’t even considered that a male teammate might be gay. She said that teammates’ sexualities are rarely discussed.

Instead, Ricardi and her teammates try focus on the competition, she said. But she acknowledged that there are lesbian athletes out to their teammates. She also said certain teams at SU are rumored to be “lesbian teams.”

Reluctance to come out as a college athlete may mirror another societal trend, Crouthamel said. Many gay and lesbian students often wait to come out until after college, when they are more comfortable with their sexuality, a number of sources said. Crouthamel wondered if students are ready to make that choice.

“Some are and some aren’t,” Crouthamel said. “But as more athletes appear to be coming out, that may encourage some athletes who felt uncomfortable.”

But, for those college athletes who do choose to come out, life can become more challenging almost instantly. Both Ryan Quinn and Jordan Goldwarg took that challenge. Both are former varsity college skiers, Quinn at the University of Utah and Goldwarg at Williams College.

Both said they had positive experiences on their teams, mostly because of receptive teammates. But they agreed that their experiences might have been different than those of other collegiate athletes because of their teams and in Goldwarg’s case, because of the small size of his school. They agreed that an athlete’s experience could be greatly different on a football or basketball team, where the masculine stereotypes and the media scrutiny are greater.

When Quinn and Goldwarg came out to teammates, they looked for a positive reaction. They felt at worst they would receive the silent treatment. Both decided to come out because they felt they could no longer keep a significant part of themselves from their teammates.

“Nothing really changed between myself and my teammates,” Goldwarg said. “On sports teams people rouse each other. It just became another point people could use to make fun of me. They made fun of me for being Canadian, so then they could start making fun of me for being gay.”

Another side of the issue is the constant use among athletes of slang and often offensive terms that mean gay. In a culture that insists male athletes should be strong and masculine, terms such as “fag” and “gay” have come to mean weak. Instead of being commended for his football skills last season, New York Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey was criticized for calling Dallas Cowboys head coach Bill Parcells a “faggot.”

During the NCAA basketball season, North Carolina State guard Scooter Sherrill said opposing fans probably taunted Duke guard J.J. Reddick because when he makes a shot, he runs down the court “with his hand up like he’s gay or something.”

Lindsay said he doesn’t remember any specific occasions of a lacrosse player calling an opponent a “fag,” but he said he’s probably heard it before. He said if that word was used, it was meant as a putdown.

Crouthamel said he believes that when athletes make these comments, they rarely think before speaking. Of all the practices he’s watched, he’s never heard slurs pertaining to an athlete’s sexual orientation, Crouthamel said.

But Ricardi, the track athlete, said she hears members of the men’s cross-country team using slurs all the time.

SU cross-country coach Jay Hartshorn said she has heard her athletes use derogatory terms toward gays and lesbians in the past. Whenever she hears this speech, she makes an effort to correct it, she said. But she acknowledges that she can’t control every situation, such as when team members are out running on their own.

“It’s been discussed before,” Hartshorn said. “We don’t just sit down and discuss it but if someone says something like, ‘Oh, it was so queer,’ I’d tell them that they might want to choose a different type of word. There have been times where I haven’t liked someone’s language choices and called them out on it.”

Such language choices affect sports’ reputations, said Quinn, one of the skiers.

“It’s too bad because a lot of athletes have the reputation of just being brute guys who aren’t intelligent and are just good at their sport,” he said. “Comments like that contribute to the stereotype. I’d be more mad if I were one of Shockey’s teammates. I would have called him out on that.”

Outsports.com founder Jim Buzinski said he wonders why athletes such as Sherrill use the term “gay” derisively.

“He wasn’t saying anything about Reddick in a positive way,” Buzinski said. “It’s still a slur because in (Sherrill’s) mind (Reddick’s) not a man. He could have called him ugly or stupid instead.”

As stereotypes about the LGBT community are slowly broken, the environment for gay and lesbian athletes in athletics seems to be improving.

In 1975, former NFL running back Dave Kopay became the first team sport athlete to come out after retiring. Quinn and Goldwarg believe it’s going to take a famous and well-liked athlete to come out to make great changes, they said.

Etan Thomas, a former Syracuse basketball player and current forward for the NBA’s Washington Wizards, agreed. If an athlete from a major college sport were to come out, he or she would have to be an ambassador, like Jackie Robinson was for baseball as the major leagues’ first black player, Thomas said.

“They would have to be that spokesperson,” he said. “To come out in that environment would require that certain type of person. I’m just not sure that’s what a lot of people want.”

Despite recent improvements, the realm of sport remains a difficult place in which to come out. Whether it’s the fear of ruining team chemistry, media scrutiny or losing friends, homophobia exists and persists.

As long as that is the case, gay and lesbian athletes at Syracuse University probably will likely be reluctant to come out to their teammates, coaches, and even themselves.

“Athletes take classes together, live together, eat together and socialize together,” said Eric Anderson, a gay man who used to be a high school track coach in Orange County, Calif. He teaches sociology at the University of California at Irvine.

            “It’s harder to come out and get rejected,” he said. “You could lose your teammates, classmates and roommates.”

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