A coach comes out of the closet

SMITHFIELD, R.I. — Chris Burns stands before his players in Bryant University’s men’s basketball locker room. He is shaking, yet resolute. He’s rehearsed this conversation in his head dozens of times. But that’s just practice. This is game time.

“There are parts of this business that lead me to believe what I’m about to tell you is not acceptable here,” the assistant coach says. “This is something I struggle with. It’s made me consider giving up coaching. It’s made me think I’m not supposed to be here.”



Players are wide-eyed. Burns takes a deep breath.



“I’m a gay man,” he says, at last.

He goes on to say he hopes none of this will affect the players negatively, that he wants it to unite them. Bryant’s players surround him with hugs. They tell him they love him. He can exhale.

“There was an initial shock factor,” senior forward Curtis Oakley tells USA TODAY Sports. “But everyone was, like, ‘Yo, Burns, we rockin’ with you.’ It was all love.”

In recent years, athletes such as Michael Sam, a college linebacker who hasn't made an NFL roster, Jason Collins, a former NBA center, Derrick Gordon, a basketball player at UMass and now Seton Hall, and many others have come out. But Burns is now the only openly gay assistant or head coach among the roughly 3,000 coaches in men's and women's Division I basketball. His Bulldogs will open their season next month at defending national champion Duke.

“One act of courage produces another,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski says. “When I think of this, I think of tossing a big stone into a lake or a pond. The ripples he’s creating are huge. To me, it’s a huge step in the right direction for our sport because it can allow others who don’t feel like they can be who they are to do the same.”

The story of how Burns came to be in that locker room, tentatively telling his truth, is one of freedom won by small steps. He opened up to his family first. He told head coach Tim O’Shea more than a year ago. In recent weeks he informed the rest of the coaching staff and key members of the Bryant athletics department. He confided in the team’s three captains and then, days later, stood before the team.

“Before he went in, he was sick nervous,” Bryant assistant coach Frankie Dobbs says. “You could tell he’s been planning the speech for the last 15 years.”

Truth begat relief. “I can’t say enough about believing in the good in people, the good in human beings,” Burns says, eyes moist. “They can surprise you, energize you, give you a reason to believe in the good in the world.”

Burns, 31, is largely unknown to the wider world but he’s a pillar of Bryant basketball. The sharpshooting point guard led the Bulldogs to Division II’s 2005 national championship game and the banner for that runner-up finish hangs in the Chace Athletic Center. Behind it is a blown-up photo of Burns dribbling around Syracuse’s Eric Devendorf in 2006. Burns scored 33 points that night — six three-pointers, six assists — in a 92-86 road loss.

“I think it helps a lot that he can hoop because it brings the respect factor,” says Oakley, nephew of former NBA star Charles Oakley. The revelation also upped the trust factor. “We’re all like, ‘Yo, what else can he keep from us if tells us this?’ ” Oakley says. “You feel like you can go to him for anything.”

O’Shea arrived as head coach in 2008 as Bryant began its transition to Division I and the Bulldogs will be striving for their first trip to D-1’s Big Dance this season. That’ll take teamwork.

“I thought the pope had a great statement, saying we need to see people as individuals,” O’Shea says. “To me, this issue is very similar. All gay people are not the same. It’s really about the individual. Knowing Chris, his heart, and that he’s a great coach and has the players’ best interest in mind, that’s a big reason why I feel comfortable giving him my full support. He’s not trying to become a celebrity here. My biggest thing is, ‘Team first.’ ”

Burns has another team, too. He had the support of his family and friends as well as advocates in the close-knit LGBT community. Crucially, if he was to be his authentic self publicly, he felt he’d need the backing of an inner circle where he felt most authentic — a trio of best friends, all members of the athletics department.

Burns counted on compliance coordinator Mike MacDonald to hold him accountable and Tristan Hobbes of athletic communications for good humor and director of women’s basketball operations Lauren Tebsherany to pick up his spirit when depression left him crippled in bed; she once wrote him a six-page letter expressing everything she loved about him.

MacDonald and Hobbes are his housemates and they waited in the hallway on the late September day when Burns told the captains. That morning, Tebsherany tweeted a quote from an author, Laurell K. Hamilton: Before I knew you, I thought brave was not being afraid. You’ve taught me that bravery is being terrified & doing it anyway.

“Without them being there, I could have found an excuse not to do it,” Burns says. “Those three carried me.”

MacDonald says, "Chris' job is all about relationships — when he's recruiting or spending time with players. He's doing this to be authentic to them, to take off the mask. He's doing this so a 15-year-old can be himself. He's 31 and done hiding, so others don't have to."

Only openly gay hoops coach says sports veil isn't real USA TODAY Sports' Scott Gleeson with the exclusive story of Bryant University's Chris Burns, the first openly gay Division I men’s basketball coach.

Half a lifetime ago, Burns was that 15-year-old. He grew up as a typical basketball junkie: Posters, SLAM Magazine, growing collection of basketball shoes. (He's up to 140 pairs now, including every Jordan.)

"He used to play with the Little Tikes hoop" as a toddler, "then as he grew he got the Nerf hoop in the basement," his mother, Susan Marchesano, recalls. "My husband and I would be in bed at night and hear him playing. He'd be emulating Michael Jordan down there. It was basketball 24/7."

Burns didn't crack the roster of his eighth-grade basketball team. He made the freshman team in high school, but as a 4-11 guard didn't play much. Then he sprouted 12 inches his sophomore year — and as his stature grew, so did his playing time. By his senior year, Burns was named Mr. Basketball in New Hampshire.

And all the while, he started to sense his attraction to men. The basketball court had always been Burns' safe haven. But as he grew older he felt the game he fell in love with as a child was holding him hostage.

“Basketball had always been my rock,” Burns says. “It was my best friend, something I knew I could rely on no matter what, something that helped me escape. It gave me purpose and an identity at a very young age. But as time passed I felt trapped in that identity, like I had to choose one or the other.”

His mother feels her son's pain. "He's loved basketball since he was four years old," she says. "He took to it like a fish to water. It truly is his best friend. Coming out to everyone is risking losing that."

She cries softly as she speaks to USA TODAY Sports in an emotional conversation before her son went public. "If I could talk to his best friend, I'd beg him to let my son be free," she says of basketball. "And I'd say, 'Thank you for being his best friend. Thank you for keeping his secret, for holding him up when I couldn't, when no one could understand his pain.'

"Being gay isn't who Chris is. It's a part of him. He's more than a gay man. He's more than a basketball player. He's more than a basketball coach. I hate this pain he's gone through, but it's made him someone I'm so proud of."

As a player, Burns steered Bryant to four consecutive Division II NCAA tournaments, including a 63-58 loss to Virginia Union in 2005's national championship in which he was named player of the game. Then Burns spent three years in New Hampshire with the semipro Manchester Millrats, two as a player and the last as a coach. From there he was an assistant coach at Rhode Island College for two seasons and returned to Bryant in 2012.

When he'd played at Bryant, he was still discovering his true self. But as a coach there, he knew he was hiding it.

“There was me as a dedicated basketball coach,” he says, “and me as a gay guy where I’d find myself in another world.”

Burns had started this double life in high school and college, dating girls and "doing enough" to fit in and maintain a heterosexual image for his teammates and friends.

“I’ve been in survival mode since I was 14,” he says.

During the emotional chaos that accompanied his hidden life, Burns met Anthony Nicodemo.

"From the moment I saw him, I was attracted to him and interested in him," Burns says. "And then he turned out to be a basketball coach. We ended up in the same place a lot and connected. After a while, it just kind of happened. We didn't grasp what it meant at the time."

They'd often talk about being the best man at each other's weddings — to female partners.

“He’s the most significant relationship I ever had,” Burns says. “I found out who I was with him. There’s not a person in the world who knows me better.”

Eventually, their bond stretched deeper than friendship. They fell in love. And they grew to accept their sexual orientations.

"The only problem was, he was ahead of me," Burns says. "The more I sensed him being prepared to do something big, the more I fell into fear and denial. I went to a dark place. It turned into two people going in different directions. I was going the wrong way. That's how powerful and strong the fear was for me."

Nicodemo coaches Saunders Trades and Technical High School in Yonkers, N.Y. They'd parted ways by the time Nicodemo came out in 2013 as one of the few openly gay high school basketball coaches in the country. A media storm followed. Burns was in agony as Nicodemo found relief and freedom.

"Not being able to be there the way I wanted to, that was heartbreaking," Burns says. "All the positive response was great, but it was those negative responses where I wanted to be there, to give him someone to lean on. But that's who he was to me, breaking down walls. I've always been the logical, cynical guy. He's always been the dreamer who believes he can change the world."

Now the logical, cynical guy is trying his hand at change. And the dreamer is happy for him.

"Courage comes in so many different forms," Nicodemo says. "As a player, (Chris) was a leader. He wasn't the kid to pump his chest. But he always had that edge, that chip on his shoulder. I think he's the perfect role model for this."

Burns told his mother he was gay on a late night in April of 2013. His older brother Tim, the first family member to know, joined him as he told his mother of the internal struggles of living with a secret. There wasn't a dry eye in the room.

"It broke my heart for him when I found out," his mother says. "I kind of had some thoughts, but I was still surprised. He was so relieved to get it out. He acted like he had killed someone. I was mad. I said, 'Did you think I wouldn't love you?' "

Burns told his father he was gay at a bachelor party and Jim Burns immediately expressed support. When Burns’ mother told his 20-year-old twin half-brothers, Matthew and Jeffrey, “they were like, ‘Oh, cool,’ ” his mother says. “That’s it. They come from a different day and age where they’re more accepting. All of his brothers, his dad and stepdad, they’re all supportive of him. He’s loved.”

But that was his personal life. His professional life was another matter.

"I understand the pros and cons of telling the world because when you're recruiting kids, you need to win over the parents and there are a lot of people who are closed-minded and don't know what being gay means," his mother says. "A lot of people won't understand. My Christopher can handle it, though — both the positives and the negatives."

To be, or not to be, out. That was the question — daily, for years.

Some mornings he’d wake up and think: “Today’s the day. I’ll tell them.”

But it was never the day. His indecision led to bouts of anxiety. Basketball seemed taxing, not fun anymore.

And if he did come out, what then? One question begged another. Would his players respect him? Would his coaching staff support him? How would the university handle it? Would his rivals use it against him in recruiting? Could it cost him his job?

“It becomes: What do I love more?” he says of what he often thought then. “Being a basketball coach? Or being able to be myself?”

Being a coach always won. His mother says telling his team was "that last thing for him to feel like he's 100%."

Burns had for so long heard the homophobic language that's so common to male locker rooms that he'd become desensitized to it. Even if it wasn't meant maliciously, even if it didn't spell out hatred, he believed those casually tossed-off slurs meant he wouldn't be accepted if he told his truth.

Coaches demand respect, accountability and trust from their players. How could he ask his for that kind of investment knowing he couldn’t return it? Burns, known for connecting with his players on the court, felt disconnected off of it.

"If someone asked him what type of girls he's into, he had a physical reaction to it," says Tebsherany, his friend. "Especially around his players, he was tired of lying."

Burns aspires to be a head coach someday. He wonders how being the only openly gay assistant coach in all of Division I basketball could affect that. He knows the politicking that getting to the top can take — and the image that universities traditionally prefer.

"There's this perfect picture of a head coach with a wife and kids," Burns says. "It's all about the family with the white picket fence, and I know I don't exactly fit into that."

O’Shea worries about that, too: “My biggest concern, initially when he told me, was his future as a head coach. I think he’ll receive a great deal of public support. But an athletic director might have a bias with him being gay. Chris understands that. He’s made the calculations that living authentically is most important here.”

Burns does want to get married someday, down the road. "It's 2015," he says. "It's time for a different media guide picture."

Some closeted athletes say they've thought of suicide as a way out. Burns says he never considered it. "But I've been that low," he says. "I've had those dark thoughts. You look for ways to make the pain go away. You look for ways easier than telling people who you really are."

That's the point when Burns found his love for the game, his best friend, dwindling.

"It got to a point where I was like, 'Maybe I don't love this as much as I thought I did,' " he says. "The older I got, and the more mature and comfortable I became with myself, the less I felt like basketball was there for me."

In the end, Burns decided it was time to stop being a coach or a gay man. It was time to be both.

Follow college basketball reporter/digital editor Scott Gleeson on Twitter @ScottMGleeson. Email: sgleeson@usatoday.com