John Amaechi, Professional basketball player

b. November 26th, 1970

“I am gay, black, British … and I am now asserting my activism.”

“It was absolutely my ultimate goal to play in the NBA,” says Amaechi. In 1995, his dream became reality.

John Amaechi is the first NBA player to speak publicly about being gay. In 2007, three years after retiring from pro basketball, he became one of only six male professional athletes in the four major U.S. sports to come out.

Esera Tuaolo, an NFL player who came out in 2002, said of Amaechi, “What John did is amazing. He does not know how many lives he’s saved by speaking the truth.”

Amaechi, the son of a Nigerian father and a white British mother, grew up in England. When he started playing basketball at 16, his right hand was nearly severed in an accident. As a result, Amaechi became ambidextrous, which helped him become a better basketball player. Amaechi played basketball at Penn State University, where he was twice selected a First Team Academic All-American.

“It was absolutely my ultimate goal to play in the NBA,” says Amaechi. In 1995, Amaechi’s dream became reality. He played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, followed by the Orlando Magic and the Utah Jazz. In 2000, Amaechi made headlines when he turned down a $17 million offer from the Los Angeles Lakers. Opting to stay in Orlando earning $600,000 a year, Amaechi remained loyal to the Magic, who hired him when no other team would.

Amaechi’s memoir, “Man in the Middle” (2007), explores the challenges he faced as a closeted professional athlete.

After the NBA, Amaechi returned to Britain, where he turned to television sportscasting and covered the 2008 Beijing Olympics for the BBC. In Beijing, Amaechi also served as a human rights ambassador for Amnesty International. He appeared on several episodes of “Shirts & Skins,” a Logo reality series, where he mentored a gay basketball team and shared his experiences as an out athlete.

Amaechi owns Amaechi Performance Systems. He is a psychologist with a management consulting company specializing in workplace diversity and workplace climate and culture challenges.

Amaechi established the ABC Foundation, which builds sports centers in Britain and encourages children’s involvement in sports and their communities.

Kye Allums, Transgender Athlete

b. October 23, 1989

“I had to come out because it was too hard not being myself.”

Kye Allums is the first openly transgender athlete to play NCAA Division I college basketball. Allums was a star shooting guard on the George Washington University (GWU) women’s basketball team.

Born Kyler Kelcian Allums in Daytona Beach, Florida, he was the oldest of four children. Nicknamed Kay-Kay, Allums was a self-described tomboy, who identifed as male from childhood. “I’ve always felt most comfortable dressing like a boy, but my mom would take all of my clothes and force me to wear girl clothes,” he says. Allums would put boys’ clothes in his backpack and change before going to school, then change back before he got home. He says it was the only way he could go to school.

Allums received a basketball scholarship to GWU. In his freshman year, he played in 11 games for the Colonials and missed the final 20 due to injury. As a sophomore, he started 20 of 26 games.

That same year, Allums began to distance himself from Kay-Kay and opened up to some of his teammates. “I do not like being called a girl. I’m a guy in a girl’s body,” he said. Thereafter, he told his head coach Mike Bozeman. Allums says his teammates, coach and family have all been supportive. 

Allums was advised not to begin taking male hormones or undergo gender reassignment surgery while remaining on the women’s team. If he did, he would risk losing his scholarship and ending his college basketball career. Allums says he’s undecided about when he will continue his transition.

After suffering a total of eight concussions and not starting any games his junior year, Allums announced he would not be returning to the Colonials for his senior season. “I alone came to this decision and I thank the athletic department for respecting my wishes,” he said.                        

In 2011, Allums began telling his story at speaking engagements and other forums. “It meant a lot to me to help and affect others in a positive way,” he says about sharing his experience with young people struggling with similar issues.

As for his future, Allums says, “I’ll just be trying to make some kind of difference in the world and look forward to my life.”

LGBT History month

Bibliography

• "Allums to leave women's team - Sports." The GW Hatchet. 27 May 2011.
•  Associated Press. "YouTube - GW Transgender Player Deals With Wave of Publicity."  YouTube. 17 May 2011.
• Beiser, H. Darr, "Transgender Male Kye Allums on the Women's Team at GW” USATODAY.com. 17 May 2011.
• "Kye Allums, Transgender George Washington University Basketball Player, Takes The Court." The Huffington Post. 17 May 2011.
• "Kye Allums: First Transgender Man Playing NCAA Women's Basketball." Outsports.com. 17 May 2011.
• "Kye Allums, Division I Athlete, Tells Us How Being Transgender Feels” Lemondrop.com. 17 May 2011.
• "Player Bio: Kye Allums" GEORGE WASHINGTON OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE.  27 May 2011.
• "Transgender Player Leaving George Washington University Women's Basketball Team - by John Atchison." Helium.com. 27 May 2011.
• "Transgender Women's Basketball Player Kye Allums of George Washington Discusses Concussion-marred Season.”  ESPN. 17 May 2011.

Website

• GW Sports Profile

Out in Sport: Basketball Exec Rick Welts Steps Out of the Closet

Gay men and women exist in every field of human activity, but in some fields are less visible than in others, In male team sports in particular, the culture is hostile to openly gay sexuality, so the pressures are strong to remain closeted. The closet, though, has costs of its own, as Rick Welts, executive director of the Phoenix Suns basketball team learnt twice. First, on the death of his long-term partner, he was forced to carry his grief alone and in silence. Later, he lost a second partner who tired of sharing the closet with him. 

Now, he has come out publicly as described in a story from the New York Times. This is an extract:

Although he had opened up to his supportive parents and to his younger, only sibling, Nancy, Mr. Welts feared that if he made his homosexuality public, it would impede his rising sports career.

“It wasn’t talked about,” he said. “It wasn’t a comfortable subject. And it wasn’t my imagination. I was there.”

But this privacy came at great cost. In March 1994, his longtime partner, Arnie, died from complications related to AIDS, and Mr. Welts compartmentalized his grief, taking only a day or two off from work. His secretary explained to others that a good friend of his had died. Although she and Arnie had talked many times over the years, she and her boss had never discussed who, exactly, Arnie was.

Around 7:30 on the morning after Arnie’s death, Mr. Welts’s home telephone rang. “It was Stern,” he recalled. “And I totally lost it on the phone. You know. Uncle Dave. Comforting.”

Even then, homosexuality was never discussed — directly.

For weeks, Mr. Welts walked around the office, numb, unable to mourn his partner fully, or to share the anxiety of the weeklong wait for the results of an H.I.V. test, which came back negative.

Sometime later, he began opening the envelopes of checks written in Arnie’s memory to the University of Washington, and here was one for $10,000, from David and Dianne Stern, of Scarsdale, N.Y. In thanking Mr. Stern, Mr. Welts said they “did the guy thing,” communicating only through asides and silent stipulations.

“This was a loss that Rick had to suffer entirely on his own,” Mr. Stern said, reiterating that he was following Mr. Welts’s lead. “It’s just an indication of how screwed up all this is.”

When Mr. Welts left the N.B.A. in 1999, he was the league’s admired No. 3 man: executive vice president, chief marketing officer and president of N.B.A. Properties. By 2002, he was the president of the Suns who still kept his sexuality private — a decision that at times seemed wise, as when, in 2007, the former N.B.A. player John Amaechi announced that he was gay, prompting the former N.B.A. star Tim Hardaway to say that, as a rule, he hated gay people.

But again Mr. Welts paid a price. Two years ago, a 14-year relationship ended badly, in part because his partner finally rejected the shadow life that Mr. Welts required. “My high profile in this community, and my need to have him be invisible,” Mr. Welts said, with clear regret. “That ultimately became something we couldn’t overcome.”

 - NYTimes.com.