Jenelle DeVits featured in Compete Magazine

Friend of the FGG Jenelle DeVits is among the student athletes featured in "Out on Campus" in this month's issue of Compete Magazine:

Jenelle Devits’ story as a student-athlete at the University of New Hampshire is one that stands as a reminder that everything is not rosy. The spring 2009 graduate began her college career as a freshman walk-on on the women’s basketball team. Her teammates knew, her coaches knew, and other students on campus knew. There were other lesbian members of the team, in fact, and everyone was made aware from day one of the team’s policy of respect and acceptance. That policy came directly from the coach – a lesbian.

Then everything changed.
After the coach she had her freshman and sophomore years left the program – some believe due to carrying the stigma of having a “lesbian team” on the recruiting trail – Devits found herself out of favor with the replacement coach. The team, which according to Devits was equally split between gay and straight players, began to take on a different shape. She was one of two lesbians left on the team, and was very active on campus when it came to gay issues.
“(With the new coach) I felt my sexual orientation definitely had something to do with it.”

The incoming freshmen, she says, were from backgrounds that made it difficult to initiate them into a culture of inclusiveness. The team was becoming more “feminine.” If there wasn’t a blatant intent to make the roster heterosexual, she believes, there definitely was motive.

Devits, who is now enrolled in Hofstra Law School, ended up leaving the team after her junior year. But by that time, she had already been channeling her energies into making her campus even more progressive. That says a lot for UNH, which is ahead of the rest of the state when it comes to progressiveness.
In 2008 Devits joined several other gay student-athletes, including Purdue champion swimmer Andrew Langenfeld and Rutgers swimming coach Sean Smith, in creating Our Group, an outreach and support organization for GLBT high school and college student-athletes and allies.

“We had similar goals and similar motives in helping student-athletes become more accepted in athletic departments,” said Devits, who says her main goal is to let others know “they are not alone.”

Read the full article, which profiles other outstanding men and women, and the issues facing student athletes, HERE.