Abi

As an athlete, you don’t want the attention of it. Athletes feel like they are being defined for being gay, like they’re ‘the gay one’ on the team. At the end of the day it shouldn’t matter, but first of all, there has to be someone on the team who makes it normal. I don’t want to have attention for it, but I feel someone has to start the conversation. I know there’s still homophobia in sports and around hockey clubs. So if you manage to reach some people and get them to understand that it’s not OK to judge people, and no one should feel entitled to judge someone, then you’ve done something right.

Anastasia

Women’s ice hockey is pretty open to gay athletes, but I found that in rowing and track it was slightly harder to come out. Each sport’s mentality is different, and thus causes coming out to be a different experience.