Sean
Smith was the All-American boy. He was 6-foot-something,
good-looking, grew up in Oklahoma, was a standout athlete,
and even had a quintessentially American name. He had big
hopes and dreams of standing atop a podium in Athens or
Sydney as someone draped a gold medallion around his neck,
the Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background.
In high school, Smith's dreams of the Olympic Games was not
some far-fetched fantasy; he was on his way. At the age of
17 he made the Junior Nationals team and competed with them
in Barcelona. He qualified for the Olympic trials and
participated in them for the first time in 2000. Going in,
he felt he should have finished in the top eight; instead,
he finished 18th, adding five seconds to his personal best
in the mile. Disappointed with his performance, he headed
off to the University of Arizona.
Coming from a club team in Oklahoma, Smith had some trouble
transitioning to the standards and rigors of big-time NCAA
Div. 1 athletics. He couldn't find his groove at Arizona and
transferred to Rutgers after two disappointing years in the
desert.
"Some of it was me not wanting to let go of older training
styles," Smith said in an interview with Outsports. "My body
was changing, I wasn't 6-1, 145 pounds anymore. I was more
muscular. But I wanted to train the way I did in high school
because it was more comfortable, but that wasn't working."
After redshirting for a year due to his transfer, he got
another crack at the Olympic trials in 2004, but he injured
himself playing water polo before the meet and swam badly at
the trials, missing his second shot at the Olympics. What
followed was, now increasingly predictably, a disappointing
junior year at Rutgers.
"I thought everything was going to be better at Rutgers,"
Smith remembered, "and I was going to be an All-American,
and all the things that I had had goals to do, and I ended
up not swimming well that first year."
He entered his senior year with low expectations and more
injuries. For some of the year, he couldn't use his arms to
swim and was relegated to running and biking on land and
kicking in the water. But he found his way at the end of his
senior year, winning two events and set conference records
at the Big East championships.
"I think everyone was pretty surprised," Smith said. "I was
surprised."
He qualified for the NCAA championships but fell short there
as he had in two Olympic trials before.
"That's when I was really depressed and having a horrible
time dealing with being gay and dealing with a guy I was
interested in, and I just couldn't handle it," Smith said.
"I didn't really sleep while I was at the meet."
He had been dating a teammate for much of the year. In the
first month of school of his senior year, the teammate had
expressed an interest in Smith, and the two embarked on an
off-and-on relationship that sometimes seemed to have as
much turmoil as affection.
"We ended up hanging out a lot and got along really well,
but I was always so paranoid of anyone finding out about
anything because I was the captain of the team and I didn't
want anyone to not respect me," Smith said. "I didn't want
anyone to know. So I wouldn't talk to him in social
settings, I wouldn't look at him at practice. It was a very
destructive relationship."
His attraction to men was something he had been working
through for a couple years. He had his first sexual
encounter with another man when he was home for Christmas
one year, spending time with one of his teammates from high
school who was a top-notch swimmer at the University of
Minnesota. The two ended up coming out and being intimate
together. Still, he had been able for years to convince
himself that he probably wasn't like other straight guys,
but he definitely wasn't gay.
"I didn't want to deal with it," Smith said. "I didn't want
to like guys. I didn't want the persecution and all the bad
stuff that comes with it. And I didn't understand it. I
thought that gay equaled being a huge queen and I'd become
effeminate. I was scared, I didn't want to be that. It's not
bad, but it's something I didn't identify myself as."
What opened his eyes was an upper-level psychology course at
Rutgers, taught by Assistant Dean for Student Services Mark
Schuster, about sexuality and sports. Smith says the class
dealt with gender, sexuality, and the difference between
sexuality and gender. He particularly remembers that a lot
of it addressed the role that sexuality and gender, and
society's norms of those things, influence all of our
thinking in day-to-day life and how they're amplified in
sports culture.
"I learned that I didn't have to fit into a role," Smith
said of the class, "that I could completely still be an
athlete and be whatever gradient of gay that I felt."
The class didn't send him diving out of the closet, but it
started to make him feel more comfortable with who he was.
His senior year, as team captain, he came out to only a
graduated diver. He didn't have to come out to anyone else
on the team; despite his best efforts, the teammate he was
dating was doing plenty of talking.
Smith was named an assistant coach of the Rutgers men's team
the year after he graduated. While he had never discussed
his sexuality with the head coach, he knew it was a
conversation he had to have before he accepted the job.
"I don't know how I brought it up," Smith remembered, "but
it was at the end of the year as I was feeling more
comfortable about things. And I said, 'I know that you know
about me.' And he said, 'you know Sean, I don't act like I
know about those things because I don't understand it all,
but all I know is that you're an amazing person, and I've
never heard anyone say bad things about you. I've heard so
many positive things from your teammates as I've pulled
people in to ask them if I should hire you for this that,
even if I did think it was bad, I wouldn't let it stop me
from hiring you.'"
For the 2005-‘06 season, he served as assistant coach for
the team. He was openly gay with all of the athletes, though
he's not sure how quickly the incoming freshman found out.
He said earlier fears of the athletes not respecting him or
his instruction faded as a coach; and he never heard any
anti-gay teasing.
"I think they knew I'd kick their ass if they did," Smith
said.
Smith decided not to coach the following season. It had been
over 15 years since he pursued any vocation or interest out
of the water, and he decided it was time. That decision
looks to have been a good one; the 2006-‘07 season, at this
moment, looks to have been the last for
Rutgers men's swimming as the program has been cut along
with five other Rutgers athletic programs. According to
Rutgers athletic director Robert E. Mulcahy III, the
decision was made to comply with the guidelines of Title IX.
The federal law for years has been widely used to dismantle
men's collegiate athletic programs.
Smith said he has seen years of his hard work be dismantled
by the school administration in one year.
"Rather
than providing more opportunities for women, I think [Title
IX] is more often used as a scapegoat for athletic
departments to be able to cut non-revenue men's teams,"
Smith said. "It will be the death of men's Olympic sports on
the collegiate level if its application is not changed
drastically."
Of the six programs cut by Rutgers only one, women's
fencing, was for female athletes.
Now 24, Smith bartends Friday nights at the
Den
Nightclub in Somerset, N. J., to make new friends and
because he says it's like a supportive gay family. Smith
still lives very near Rutgers, though he says he's ready to
make the big leap to New York City. He is, after several
years of internal torment, finally living life as a healthy
gay man.
"It definitely makes me wonder what would have happened with
my life if I had been able to accept it earlier," Smith
said.
Last summer, Smith swam (left) and competed in the triathlon
at the
Outgames. He said swimming against other top out
athletes was a humbling experience. While he performed well
for someone who hadn't swum much in the previous year,
winning gold in some events for his age group, he didn't
expect former Olympic gold medallists Mark Tewksbury and Dan
Veatch to be in such good shape.
"I think a lot of it was it was the first time I really felt
like I was gay and an athlete," Smith says. "Every other
time I felt like I had to separate the two identities. It
was a good experience to meet people who were similar to
me."
Sean
Smith was the All-American boy. He was 6-foot-something,
good-looking, grew up in Oklahoma, was a standout athlete,
and even had a quintessentially American name. He had big
hopes and dreams of standing atop a podium in Athens or
Sydney as someone draped a gold medallion around his neck,
the Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background. 
"Rather
than providing more opportunities for women, I think [Title
IX] is more often used as a scapegoat for athletic
departments to be able to cut non-revenue men's teams,"
Smith said. "It will be the death of men's Olympic sports on
the collegiate level if its application is not changed
drastically."