Sun coach Curt Miller: Visibility and representation matters for gay men in sports – Minneapolis Star Tribune

June 25, 2021 News Editor

Connecticut Sun coach Curt Miller saluted Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib and Wisconsin men’s basketball director of basketball operations Marc VandeWettering for publicly coming out as gay over the last few days.

“Representation, visibility of these recent announcements are huge,” Miller said.

Nassib’s announcement, which he made on Instagram Monday as Pride Month draws to a close, made him the first active NFL player to come out as gay. According to Fanatics, his jersey was the top-selling NFL item Monday and Tuesday. VandeWettering, who joined Wisconsin’s staff in 2017, came out in a blog post Thursday and is thought to be the only openly gay man on a Division I men’s college basketball staff.

Miller publicly came out six years ago when he was hired as the Sun’s head coach and has led the franchise to WNBA Finals and semifinals appearances the last two postseasons behind a 98-74 overall record.

The fact that Miller is still believed to be the only gay male head coach in Division I and pro basketball “has to change, because trust me, there are more and more coaches like me out there,” he said.

“There’s a bigger problem,” he said. “I know so many coaches have dropped out through the years because there wasn’t enough visibility and representation, they didn’t see advancement, I was the only person, I was the only trailblazer, so people would get discouraged. So I know what this [announcement] means to so many people.”

Miller hopes that he, Nassib and VandeWettering can also be role models for young gay men at the middle and high school levels who want a future in sports, whether it be as players, coaches or administrators.

“It starts at the youth,” Miller said. “So many young gay guys struggle in the locker room, struggle with themselves, struggle with how their friends will treat them. There’s that worry. And so gay men in team sports unfortunately drop out of sports and get out of sports because there’s not enough of this visibility that there’s people like them that they can look to. So this goes so far.”

Accepting LGBTQ+ individuals can have life or death ramifications, too. Nassib used his announcement to highlight that one accepting adult can decrease the risk of a LGBTQ+ youth attempting suicide by 40% and that LGBTQ+ youth are already over five times more likely than their straight counterpart to contemplate suicide.

Nassib added in his announcement that he’s donating $100,000 to the Trevor Project, which offers suicide prevention services to the LGBTQ+ community.

“I’m so proud of him and will support him,” Miller said. “It’s big news. Hopefully some day this won’t be big news. But where I think it trickles down most is young gay guys in middle school, high school, wondering if there’s a future for them, especially in team sports, in those locker rooms where this becomes normalized and normal. It’s going to have a ripple effect for the next generations.”