Gay lacrosse
coach struggles to find his way

"Frustrated Coach" had nowhere else to turn. Alone with his secret, the college lacrosse coach sat down at his computer seeking others like himself: gay men who played and coached competitive, high-level sports but remained trapped in the closet.

"I am totally closeted, not married, totally gay, and no one would guess," he wrote in an online chat room for gay athletes, coaches, and fans. "My family, my team, my university, and my career are not even remotely gay-friendly."

Over the next two years, Frustrated Coach revealed his hopes, fears, and secrets with his trusted but similarly anonymous peers on OutSports.com. The 33-year-old coach shared his regrets about pursuing "serial one-night stands" with strangers as he grappled with his identity.

He disclosed a recent bout with colon cancer. His upbringing in a fundamentalist Baptist church that scorned homosexuality. The emotional void he felt in hiding. How a psychologist urged him to date women to make sure he was truly gay. Alcohol binges he sought to dull the pain. The 24-hour involuntary commitment in a psychiatric hospital on suicide watch.

Gradually, the coach grew more comfortable in his own skin. On Halloween 2004, he told his parents, both devout Baptists and the children of missionaries.

The coach's parents were devastated. So were his older brother and sister. The family's youngest child was a sinner, an abomination in the eyes of God. Communication stopped.

Frustrated Coach returned to his computer, gaining more confidence even as his family shunned him. Over the ensuing 18 months, he began to confide his secret to a select group of friends but no one connected to lacrosse.

On June 10, 2006, Frustrated Coach again logged on to www.outsports.com. This time, he signed his online post using his real name: Kyle Hawkins, head coach, University of Missouri men's lacrosse.

The practice fields at the Mizzou lacrosse summer camp were a stew of sweat, testosterone, juvenile humor, and adolescent chest-thumping. "What are you, some kind of fag?" one camper said to another who messed up a drill.

"Get off me, you have AIDS!" another shouted, to a chorus of teenage laughter.

Hawkins remained silent. He knew that these were high school students, with all the immaturity that entails. He also knew the locker room's unforgiving culture and that antigay insults are common in team sports, from junior high hallways to NFL stadiums.

At the camp, Hawkins revealed his secret to some ex-players working as assistants, and a few returning players, team leaders with compassion and sensitivity. Still, when the entire team returned to school in September, he kept quiet.

"If you're treating it as special, you're still not treating it as equal," Hawkins said. "If I sit my kids down and say, 'Let's talk about my sexuality'... What straight coach does that?"

The players knew anyway. There were whispers he'd been seen at one of the few gay bars in the town. Then some reporters trolling the Web saw his Outsports posts and sought out Hawkins when Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen called a reporter "a fag."

The online lacrosse community began its own debate. Among the questions: Should a gay coach be allowed in the same locker room as his straight players?

For the team, Hawkins's status as the only openly gay men's coach of a major college sport became the two-ton elephant in the room. Everyone knew, but no one was talking.

"It's awkward," said Blaine Skrainka, a junior attackman and the team's vice president.

The Tigers' lacrosse program is a club sport; players buy their own equipment and uniforms and pay annual dues of nearly $2,000. But while the team lacks varsity status, the players are just as committed. They practice five days a week and must abide by NCAA rules, from grade requirements to mandatory study halls on road trips.

"Everybody who plays on our team loves lacrosse," said sophomore attackman Charles Nagel. "They love the sport enough where they're not going to quit just because the coach is gay."

Still, a dozen key players, including the team's star goalie and cocaptain, didn't return to the team this season. None cited Hawkins's sexuality as the reason they left. They said they wanted to devote more time to school or internships, or they complained of the financial burden or a lack of playing time or personality conflicts with Hawkins.

One former player wrote derogatory comments about Hawkins on Facebook, the social networking Web site. The coach attributed the outburst to immaturity and alcohol, not hatred.

He acknowledged, though, that the number of players who left is higher this year. "They're young people and they have an issue with me," he said, whether the issue is his sexual orientation or something else.

Sophomore Sam Fosdick said he quit the team after chafing under Hawkins's leadership. "I left because of a disagreement with the coach," he said. "His being gay had nothing to do with it."

Hawkins grew up in a St. Louis suburb, in a household so strict he was forbidden to cross the street alone or play cards and games of chance. He was the good kid, the one who found acceptance in his church youth group even as he struggled with a reality he wouldn't acknowledge for years.

He maintained the charade at Arizona State University, where he was president of a Baptist student group. Summers were spent as a missionary back in Missouri.

His eyes opened to the possibilities beyond a life devoted to the church on a 1991 mission trip to Russia. He learned Russian and watched the fall of Communism.

Back in St. Louis after college, he lived with his parents and taught high school history. No one knew the first thing about lacrosse, and the school needed a coach for its new team. Hawkins, familiar with the sport only in passing, got the job. Four years later, he was recruited by Missouri to steady a program in disarray.

He relied on his teaching skills as a coach; he took pride as a communicator, even as he hid his personal life. And he was successful: In his first eight years, his teams compiled a record of 112-49, including a conference championship in 2004.

But that all happened before he came out of the closet. What would happen now?

Hawkins knew that he would be watched: "If I grab a kid on the sidelines and have a hand on his shoulder and point with the other hand at the field, which hand is he worried about?"

University leaders vowed to stand behind him, citing a school nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual identity. But his first season as the nation's first openly gay male coach on the collegiate level was not an easy one.

October 14: Time was running out in the first quarter of a game against archrival Kansas. Hawkins and the opposing coach sought more time on the clock from the referee.

"We don't care what faggots think," the official said. He then compared gay men to child molesters.

Hawkins didn't hear the insult, but others did and told him afterward. The coach was outraged. He quickly complained to the Great Rivers Lacrosse Conference's commissioner and head of officials.

The referee sent an apologetic e-mail to Hawkins, calling the matter a botched joke. He was suspended for at least one year, a punishment that won't affect his other job, coaching freshmen at a local high school.

The slur and variations on it have been something of a theme. In September, at a game at Illinois, Hawkins heard a fan call him a fag. And at one practice, a member of his own team referred to the Fighting Ilini as faggots; his teammates glared.

It's all "a learning experience" for his players, says Hawkins.

When a player asked Hawkins to volunteer at a fraternity blood drive, the coach replied that sexually active gay men aren't allowed to donate blood, because there was too great a risk that the sample could be contaminated with HIV.

The player's response, a mixture of compassion, curiosity, and outrage at what he perceived as an injustice, heartened Hawkins. It also made him angry.

Why weren't you asking those kinds of questions before you knew I was gay? the coach thought to himself.

In October 2006, the NCAA hosted a meeting regarding gays in college sports. Among the topics: "negative recruiting," in which coaches urge prospects to reject a rival school because its coach is gay.

Hawkins worries about negative recruiting. But the most visible change for the gay coach trying to convince adolescents to play for him is a surprising one: Missouri has become a magnet for gay high school lacrosse players.

Three such athletes have already committed to Missouri next year. The connection makes Hawkins uncomfortable. "If you're gonna make a decision based on a coach, make a decision based on the coach's coaching ability," he said.

He doesn't want those players to assume they'll receive preferential treatment simply because they're playing for a gay coach.

"If there are a couple of kids who are shortsighted enough to make a decision to come here because of my sexuality, there are bound to be a couple of kids who have decided not to come here [because I'm gay]," he said. "That's just as shortsighted and stupid."

So life outside of the closet is still complicated, though in different ways. And regardless, Hawkins says, life is better. At 36, Hawkins is in his first committed relationship, dating a man for the past six months. The two spent the Christmas holiday in Ireland.

And he insists that disclosing his true identity has made him a better coach. Keeping the secret took its toll and kept his mind off the playing field.

"Instead of being able to focus on lacrosse, I focused a significant amount of [energy] worrying about who thinks I am gay, who knows I am, who will react poorly if they find out, who will not," he said. "I don't think about those things anymore." (Alan Scher Zagier, AP)