“We have some good players, but none of them are going to be drafted,” he said. “My job is to prepare them to go and get real jobs and to be successful after they leave Oneonta.”

One afternoon in the spring of 2009, Mahar pulled the team out of practice after some players described one of his drills as “gay.” Mahar said he had been hearing such language on the bus and during practice.

“Regardless of how you feel about whether being gay is right or wrong,” Mahar said he told the team, “the language is not appropriate.”

For McIntosh, it was a welcome signal.

“I had never heard a coach say that before,” McIntosh said.

That summer, McIntosh decided to confront his sexual identity. It had been a good year — he had adjusted well, and Mahar had recently named him one of four team captains for his senior year.

“I started thinking: ‘What is the matter with me?’ ” McIntosh said. “ ‘Why can’t I beat this?’ That’s how I thought, too: ‘I’m going to beat this.’ And I finally just gave in and just said, ‘This is who I am,’ and I decided I don’t want to live this way.”

McIntosh told those closest to him first: two friends, his sister, his brother, his parents. His sister, who is also gay, directed him to Outsports.com, which McIntosh described as a revelation. Through the site, he became reacquainted with the story of Andrew Goldstein, a Dartmouth lacrosse player who in 2003 revealed to his team that he was gay. McIntosh tracked down Goldstein and sought advice.

“I didn’t feel alone anymore,” McIntosh said.

McIntosh’s family had known that something was amiss, but “I didn’t know what he was struggling with,” said his mother, Cathy McIntosh. She realized he was gay about a year before he broke the news, she said. “I figured he’d tell me when he was ready.”