When Your Queer Kid Plays Sports

Today, I’d like to talk about something that doesn’t get discussed honestly enough, and that is:

What happens when your queer kid plays sports.

And I’m going to be a bit more on the serious side than usual because this hits home for me, and the experience was less than pleasant.

So please bear with me as I try to explain.

On the outside, sports are supposed to be about teamwork, discipline, and character.

But for a lot of queer kids?

Playing sports becomes a test of how much harm they’re expected to tolerate quietly and how well they can pretend it doesn’t hurt.

I’m going to share a piece of my own story here.

Not to shock you, but to ground this conversation in reality through MY lived experience because this isn’t theoretical to me.

My oldest was an offensive lineman.

And he was serious about it for a while in middle and high school.

So much so that he spent years working with a college coach to develop his skills and improve his football I.Q.

At one point, he was even called a “prodigy of the game” in an Outsports article.

Not a “player prodigy.”

But someone who studies the game more than most.

You’d think that would be a good thing.

But it wasn’t.

Because what followed wasn’t celebration.

It was suspicion.

The article actually made him a target.

Some of his teammates excluded him from locker room conversations.

Other kids said he wouldn’t even be playing if his dad weren’t an assistant coach.

One quarterback even refused to take snaps from him as a center because he was a … well, I won’t use the word, but he was called the “F” slur.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, his head coach mishandled the entire situation by seeing the article as undue attention instead of praise for being the first out football player in the high school’s history.

Because the coach cared more about optics than safety.

Now here’s the part I want parents and coaches to hear clearly:

None of that was about sports.

Not really.

It was about adult discomfort being placed on a child.

And children always pay the price for that.

We talk a lot about safety here, and I’d like to describe to you what safety should actually look like in youth sports:

It’s locker rooms and dugouts that are actively supervised, not just being “checked on” when someone complains.

It’s slurs treated as violations, not “boys being boys.”

It’s coaches who protect players instead of managing optics.

It’s talent evaluated on performance, not identity.

And it’s zero tolerance for humiliation disguised as “team culture” because hazing with better branding is still harmful.

Here’s the truth:

No trophy is worth a child’s dignity.

Period.

And most importantly: No program gets to claim it’s about character if it teaches kids to endure abuse to belong.

I also want to say something to parents who are scared to speak up:

Advocacy in sports doesn’t make you or your kid “difficult.”

It makes YOU responsible for their safety when the adults in the program are looking the other way.

And if a system only works when queer kids stay silent?

THAT SYSTEM IS BROKEN, not your child.

So if your queer kid plays sports, here’s what matters most:

Not whether they’re exceptional.

Not whether they’re quiet.

Not whether they “keep their head down.”

What matters is whether or not they are safe.

Because sports should build confidence.

Not trauma.

That’s all for now.

And don’t forget to take good care of yourself today.