Still Short Of The Goal - Brief Article

IN THE 25 YEARS SINCE PRO FOOTBALLER DAVE KOPAY CAME OUT. THE TEAM-SPORT CLOSET DOOR HAS OPENED ONLY A CRACK. BUT IT'S AN OPENING THAT SOME YOUNG PLAYERS, LIKE-19-YEAR OLD GREG CONGDON, ARE BEGINNING TO SLIP THROUGH

Twenty-five years after he became the first pro football player to come out, former National Football League running back Dave Kopay is still waiting. "I now think it may take another 25 years before an all-pro American ballplayer announces he's gay while in the sport," says Kopay, 58, whose revelation came two years after he retired from nearly a decade of playing for the Washington Redskins, San Francisco 49ers, and other teams. "Most ballplayers could care less who you screw. It's the hierarchy--the management and marketing people--who get nervous. It wouldn't be a big deal to most fans."

At the time, many thought Kopay's 1975 announcement would be the catalyst for deep change within American team sports, both pro and amateur. Instead, change seems to be more gradual and beginning at the grass roots, in high school sports rather than in the limelight of the pros. In fact, former high school football player Greg Congdon--who survived two suicide attempts as he reconciled being a high school jock with being gay--had never heard Kopay's story during his own struggle.

"I knew only of Greg Louganis, but I never paid attention because I'm not into swimming," says Congdon, now 19 and the recent recipient of the Colin Higgins Foundation's Courage Award for "standing up to ostracism and small-town bigotry to become a role model."

News of other team-sport pros who came out (after retiring) must surely have reached Congdon's hometown--Troy, Pa., population approximately 1,300. Former pro athletes such as Oakland A's and Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke, New York Giants offensive lineman Roy Simmons, and San Diego Padres outfielder Billy Bean all made headlines with their announcements. "But Troy is a deeply secluded sports town," says Congdon. "The town doesn't like change."

After two years each of high school varsity football and wrestling, Congdon was outed by a nurse who worked at a hospital where he was sent after a suicide attempt. The nurse told her son, a teammate of Congdon's, prompting Congdon to file a lawsuit, still pending, against her and the hospital. After the outing, Congdon's parents accepted him, but coaches avoided him, along with 648 of the other 650 students at Troy High School (two girls still spoke to him). His former teammates threatened to make his life a living hell should he return to school sports in the fall; he did not return. "My world collapsed; my friends turned into enemies," says Congdon, whose story caught the media's attention, turning him into an activist.

The most brutal sports, including football, have the tightest locks on their closet doom, say Congdon and Kopay, for reasons similar to those behind the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy: Independent thinking is eschewed for strategy executed by tight teamwork. "Jocks in team sports are not allowed to show fear," says Congdon. The vulnerability implied by men loving men is not part of the game plan.

That's a rule that gay men understand all too well, Kopay says. "If you're gay, you respond to that with action; you overcompensate," says the author of the 1977 best-seller The David Kopay Story. "You prove that you're tough. I overachieved in relation to the talent I had. I wasn't a naturally tough guy. I had to learn to be tough, especially after getting the hell beat out of me playing ball in college."

Both Kopay and Congdon are encouraged by tales of peer acceptance of gay players, such as Corey Johnson's stow. Johnson, a high school football cocaptain in Topsfield, Mass., came out to his team last year and found that most coaches, students, and teachers were supportive. "I recently read that Corey's team was coming back from a game they had won," Congdon says wistfully, "and one of the guys on the bus said, `Let's sing a song for Corey! Let's sing "YMCA"'!"

But Kopay worries that Johnson's experience remains the exception. "My advice to young gay athletes is not necessarily to come out," says Kopay, who met with a volley of hate when he came out. "You have to first look at your surroundings and what kind of life situation you're going to be put into, which is what Corey did--to his advantage in his case."

Congdon adds, "I'm worried that gay teens will read about Corey and feel they have this security blanket. That may not be there [for them] like it was for Corey. Unfortunately, it just doesn't go Corey's way in the majority of cases. Especially in small towns like Troy."

Whether or not people remember Congdon's name or Kopay's, their experiences are still paving the way for others. But the two men agree that finally unhinging the team-sport closet door will ultimately require the self-outing of "someone of superstar category in major league sports--football or baseball," says Kopay. "I think then we'd find fans in the stands singing `YMCA' too."

Find previous Advocate coverage of Dave Kopay and Corey Johnson at www.advocate.com

Foster has written for the Los Angeles Times, Utne Reader, Harvard Business Review, and Details.

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