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Colorado baseball coach who said ‘we kill gay people’ apologizes

Colorado baseball coach who said ‘we kill gay people’ apologizes

A Colorado Mesa assistant baseball coach has apologized for making a very harsh anti-gay remark in front of a gay player, Tyler Dunnington, who said he eventually left the game because of homophobia.

Earlier this month, Out Sports told Dunnington’s story about being a closeted professional baseball player for a year before deciding to leave the sport.

“I was also one of the unfortunate closeted gay athletes who experienced years of homophobia in the sport I loved,” he told Outsports in an email.  “I was able to take most of it with a grain of salt but towards the end of my career I could tell it was affecting my relationships with people, my performance, and my overall happiness.”

“I experienced both coaches and players make remarks on killing gay people during my time in baseball, and each comment felt like a knife to my heart. I was miserable in a sport that used to give me life, and ultimately I decided I needed to hang up my cleats for my own sanity.”

It was during his college years at Colorado Mesa University that his career took off. But, it was also the place where he faced some of the most homophobic comments. Although he didn’t give any names, Dunnington recalled a coach who was bragging about the murder of Matthew Shepard.

“We kill gay people in Wyoming,” the coach said.

The school hired a law firm to investigate. The Daily Sentinel, which obtained a copy of the report, reported that McKinney told investigators he said something like that but didn’t use the word “we.”

“As the story spread and more stuff was revealed, it got really tough this week,” McKinney told Outsports in an exclusive interview. “I’m forever in debt to the people in this university and my friends and family. They know my true character. Some of that is in question, obviously, because of what’s gone on with Tyler’s story. But I would never harm anyone on our team. This week I’m sure this has been questions about how I feel about Tyler. I hope he’s OK. I called him this morning to apologize. I want him to have a good life.”

The school will not fire McKinney, but will instead use his genuine interest in making amends to move the entire campus forward on understanding LGBT issues, which included him meeting with queer students.

“I feel so much empathy. The stories that I’ve listened to about them coming out and how tough it’s been, and the gut-wrenching feeling they’ve had, is similar to the feeling I’ve had this week. I want to help them. I want to help raise awareness not just for our team but for our campus.”

The school is working with One Colorado and the school’s gay-straight alliance to install programming across campus to further deepen the acceptance of queer people at the university. The athletic department has also started making strides in making Mesa a more accepting school as they work with the You Can Play project.

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