NASHVILLE  The day before Thanksgiving break, the members of the Belmont University women’s soccer team gathered in the locker room after a strength training session. Their coach, Lisa Howe, had something to say.

She told them that she was a lesbian, and that she and her partner of eight years, the team’s former assistant coach, had decided to have a baby.

“She said she wanted to talk about her personal life one time only and there would never be a discussion again,” recalled Erica Carter, a senior on the team.

But the topic was far from finished. It continued the next week when the players learned that their coach was leaving her job. And it has swelled into a full-blown existential debate at this fast-growing private university.