Charley Sullivan: Coaching while out

Outsports publishes the first-person story of Charley Sullivan, rowing coach at the University of Michigan. We particularly like his closing appeal: "And for me, I’m here, I’m queer and I’m a hell of a good coach for it. To other coaches, come on out and play, the weather can be just fine if you make it so and choose the right places to invest your energies. And you just may find yourself being a better and more fulfilled coach than you’ve ever imagined."

Two decades of openly queer college coaching, or, how my both being out of the closet and unapologetically gay has helped make my teams winners.

Charley Sullivan
Associate Head Coach, Men’s Rowing
University of Michigan

This is not a coaching coming out story; it’s a coaching while already being out story, which is, perhaps, a different animal altogether.

I’m a gay college coach who’s been out my whole going-on-20-year career. When Dan Woog wrote about me in his groundbreaking book Jocks in 1997, I’d already been coaching at the University of Michigan for seven years. In the time I’ve been at Michigan, (with a three-year stop at Eastern Michigan University as their first head coach of women’s rowing, and several years teaching high school), Head Coach Gregg Hartsuff and I have built the Michigan men’s rowing team into one of the top programs in the country.