For a gay athlete, facing off against homophobic jock culture the toughest challenge

Shelley Page, Postmedia News 


Scott Heggart from Lanark-Carleton Minor Hockey League. 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 Heggart dreaded: telling his teammates he was gay.

Bruno Schlumberger / Ottawa Citizen


OTTAWA — Scott Heggart was a big, strapping teenager, who topped out at six-foot-four. He played football, basketball, softball and hockey.

And he had a secret.

It was difficult 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 player. The initiative is in honour of Brendan Burke, their son and brother, who came out shortly before being 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 his minor hockey league, where 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 Heggart could walk, he'd wander around swinging a hockey stick, baseball bat or golf club.

He loved sports, especially hockey.

But by the time he was in junior high, 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 his school and minor league hockey. 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 you whimpered after slamming into the boards, or if you dared wear a pink shirt, you were ridiculed.

He never planned to tell them, but the situation ate at him. "I thought there was no way they would accept me."

So he withdrew. His parents, Julie Wilson and Randy Heggart, wondered what had happened to their "happy boy."

"We knew he was wrestling with something but we just couldn't imagine what," recalls Julie.

They asked, he shrugged. He had every reason to believe his parents would be supportive. But even if he told them he was gay, how could he admit that he was gripped by self-loathing and suicidal thoughts?

"I started looking around me, at all the hate that is directed at gay people, and that really threw me off the deep end."

So he tried to think himself straight.

"I really mentally punished myself for my thoughts. It wasn't a psychologically healthy thing to be doing." And when he realized he couldn't alter his identity, he thought of killing himself.

"I spiralled downwards. And it became this constant mental pain that I was dealing with."

After a year of intense suffering and loneliness, he knew he had to seek help.

He emailed his older sister, Sonya, asking to meet.

"Is this about a girl?" she asked. Of all the questions.

When he said no, she replied, only joking: "Is this about a boy?"

"I looked her in the eyes, and I said, 'Yeah, I'm gay.'"

They talked, cried, hugged. Sonya, like the rest of her family, would later say she never suspected Scott was gay. In retrospect it "made sense," in part because he hadn't been girl-crazy like his older brother.

Telling Russell was harder. He was nine years older, another jock.

But Russell listened quietly, then asked if it was a phase. "I still love you, I still consider you my best friend," he said.

With his sister by his side, Scott told his parents: "I'm going through a really rough time. I want some more freedom in my life to express myself. I need to feel at home in my own house. I can't go on like this . . . I'm gay."

His parents were somewhat relieved.

"When you said you had something important to tell us, I was thinking it was obviously something very grave and I wasn't sure what we were facing," his dad Randy would later say.

Mom Julie says that if she'd really thought about it, she might have "put it together." They had attributed the past months of moodiness to a "rocky adolescence."

This had been the easy conversation. But Scott, then 15, couldn't imagine taking the next step and telling his teammates. He would also be moving to a new school for Grade 9. So he chose another, very teenage, way to continue the conversation.


During the first week of Grade 10, Scott recorded a video of himself telling his coming-out story. He posted it to YouTube.

This video would eventually receive more than 52,000 views.

He told his parents he planned to post one video each day for the next year as he documented his experience of coming out as a gay jock. He hoped he could work out his anxieties anonymously online, as well as solicit support.

"Our reaction was total fear because the Internet can be a scary place," says Julie.

The 365 videos, posted anonymously to his own YouTube channel, are intense, instructive, intelligent. In one series of poignant interviews, he asks his family whether they thought he was gay, and what their reaction is now that they know. He asks his dad to offer advice to other fathers.

"This isn't about you," Randy says to the camera. "This is about your child. They haven't changed; it's your perception of them. If you loved your child before you found out they were gay, that shouldn't change . . . If you think you're having a hard time, imagine how they felt."

Scott's family became examples for others. "Your parents are awesome," wrote one online commenter. "They should co-author a book, go on speaking tours and counsel other parents."

Scott received support from teenagers around the world who shared similar fears, as well as from older gay men offering advice.

There were also nasty comments. "He learned to develop a shell to some of the worst comments, and that prepared him for dealing with people," says Julie.

The most wrenching videos are those in which he talks about his fears of telling his teammates. His anxiety is palpable.

In one video, seen more than 30,000 times, he says: "In hockey the homophobia is bad in the locker-room. But the worst is when I played football. It was a pretty fun sport, but there was so much hate and so much fake macho-ism that they put on, that I just couldn't stand it."

He admitted to his followers that he was really scared about the consequences of coming out.

"Are you even going to be able to play sports anymore because you can't put up with what you're going to have to put up with?"

The number of people following Scott grew — he has had more than 530,000 views — but by the time he completed his 365 posts, he hadn't told his teammates or classmates.

He couldn't do it. He imagined fans at hockey games chanting that he was a 'fag.' He feared being banned from the dressing room.

His loneliness was immense. Then, in Grade 11, he met a boy online named Brock, from Toronto. They hit it off.

This relationship gave him courage, first, to set up a Facebook page. "I'd never joined Facebook because I didn't want to lie."

And then, when hockey season was over and just before softball season began, he decided it was time.

He changed his Facebook status to say he was "in a relationship." He also posted a picture of himself with Brock.

And then hewaited.

"None of us slept," dad Randy recalls. "There were a lot of tears."

Says Julie, "We hoped for the best and prepared for the worst."

By the next morning, there had been no reaction to his status change, so Scott went to school wondering if anyone had noticed, or if he'd been blacklisted. Friday and Saturday came and went.

Then, on Sunday evening, one of Scott's best friends from hockey sent him a private message on Facebook: "What you did man, it takes a lot of courage and I'm proud of you. And I've been talking to a lot of people and they all say the same thing."

His inbox filled up with messages from teammates and classmates, every last one expressing respect and support.

One teammate wrote, "If I was in your shoes, I wouldn't have had the balls to do that."

Some of Scott's teammates apologized for previous slurs. A former football teammate apologized "on behalf of everybody" for making him "feel so uncomfortable."

And so it went.

Julie was "so proud' of his teammates. "They recognized how much courage it took and they recognized how much trust he was putting in them."

Scott Heggart became the only openly gay athlete on any of his sports teams.

He played another season of basketball, softball and hockey, and when it came time for graduation, he took Brock to the prom.

He did so shyly, but with aplomb.

Scott, now 21, still can't make sense of why his teammates had seemed so homophobic, yet supported him unconditionally given the chance. He's come to learn that "kids say stuff they don't mean, and just because they say anti-gay things it doesn't mean that they "hate homosexuals."

He says most coaches tolerate or even encourage an atmosphere where making fun of homosexuals, even for comic effect, is OK. He remembers certain coaches participating in the anti-gay banter. He hopes that sports leagues will adopt a policy of "zero tolerance" for the hurtful, chronic assaults against gay athletes, imagined and real.


Scott's sometimes tortured and provocative videos would have likely remained anonymous, if it weren't for Jamie Hubley.

In the hours after learning of the 15-year-old gay Ottawa teen's suicide last October, Scott posted another video. This time, he put it on his Facebook page.

He asks, "So he liked figure skating more than hockey. He liked singing more than fighting. He liked boys more than girls. Why did it matter? Why did our society allow for so many people to judge him for showing more courage than I can ever dream of having?"

That video, with some 30,000 views, drew many viewers to his other videos. It also prompted an invitation to participate in the No More Bullies campaign at Ottawa-area schools. He is a featured speaker.

In recent days, he has posted one more video: "If you can play, you can play," featuring Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson, and Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf, among others.

"I can't begin to tell you how much of a difference that type of campaign would have made to me when I was going through my stuff in Grade 8," he says. "Campaigns like this will help teenagers accept themselves for who they are."

Still, what is missing is for one professional football or hockey player to come out. But Scott, perhaps more than anyone, understands the challenge. "I hope I see it in my lifetime."

In the meantime, Scott Heggart will keep telling his story about coming out as a gay jock.

Ottawa Citizen