A gay jock takes off the mask
Touching coming out story from a young hockey player. And have a look at his YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/big93scott
And have tissues at hand.
How one young Ottawa man is fighting homophobia in the locker-room
By Shelley Page, The Ottawa CitizenMarch 16, 2012
Scott Heggart, is the only openly gay athlete from Lanark-Carleton Minor Hockey League.
Photograph by: BRUNO SCHLUMBERGER, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
OTTAWA — Scott Heggart was a big, strapping teenager, who topped out at six foot four. He played football, basketball, softball and hockey.
It was hard enough to share it with his mom and dad.
But as a young athlete, steeped in the machismo of sport, where “about the worst thing” is to be a “fag” or a “homo,” there was one conversation that was even harder.
Telling his teammates he was gay.
Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke and his son, Patrick, a scout for the Philadelphia Flyers, have just launched the You Can Play Project to tackle the “casual homophobia” of professional hockey, where there is still no openly gay athlete. The initiative is in honour of Brendan Burke, their son and brother, who came out shortly before he was killed in a car accident in 2010.
Public-service announcements, with 36 NHL players so far signing on, deliver a simple, powerful message that an athlete’s sexual orientation does not matter. “If you can play, you can play” is a seven-word mantra taken from a piece written by Brendan.
The campaign is a small sign of change in the elite level of sport. One day this attitude may trickle down to places like the locker-rooms of the Lanark-Carleton Minor Hockey League, where Scott Heggart risked ostracization and ridicule to do what few athletes before him, professional or amateur, dared to.
His truth telling didn’t play out as he’d expected.
From the time Scott Heggart could walk, he’d wander around like a pint-sized warrior swinging some sort of sporting implement, whether it was a hockey stick, baseball bat or golf club. And as soon as he could read, he was memorizing stats.
He loved sports, especially hockey.
But by the time he was in Grade 7, he’d come to realize, he didn’t love girls, at least not in that way.
Sure, he had gal pals, but when his buddies were snatching first kisses and going on dates, Scott hung back. He wasn’t interested.
Did he think he was gay? “I’d started to understand who I was, what it meant. And if I was being true to myself, I probably would have come out in Grade 6, but I didn’t want to be that person,” he recalls.
At the time he played basketball at Bridlewood Community Elementary School, and minor league hockey in Kanata. If he owned up to his sexuality, he feared he would have to stop playing.
“The worst thing, from my teammates’ perspective, was to be gay.” If there was the slightest hint you possessed a feminine side, or if you whimpered after slamming into the boards, or if you dared wear a pink shirt, you were ridiculed.
‘Faggot’ this. ‘Homo’ that. But interestingly, never directed at Scott. No one thought the lanky athlete could be gay. And he planned to never tell them.
