I feel like maybe I knew as early as second grade.

My friends at the soccer academy would call someone they didn’t like ‘gay.’ It was tough for me. They never urged me to tell our parents; it took a full year more before I told my parents.Copyright 2020 Bethesda Magazine. It was going to be a big step for me, and it wasn’t going to happen yet.I have a thick skin. He later attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, spent a year away at college, and then turned professional in 2013.

That was the last real year where I was thinking: What’s going on here? Collin Martin, a soccer player for Minnesota United, announced on Twitter Friday that he is gay, becoming the only openly gay male player in any of the major North American sports leagues. We have work to do with the use of that language.It was an interesting time. Maybe I didn’t feel it was OK. Maybe I didn’t feel that I’d be completely accepted. I had a unique experience with that type of language because it’s language I would use as well as my dearest friends at B-CC. All rights reserved. "Previously out professional athletes, like soccer player Robbie Rogers, basketball player Jason Collins and football player Michael Sam, are no longer active, making Martin distinctive.“Sports in general, no matter the level — college, youth, professional — people are going to accept you wholeheartedly as long as you are yourself and you’re honest with your teammates,” Martin said.Besides his teammates, Martin was already out to friends and family, so he said it was a decision he made for other people. Still, his parents were among the last people he told. (His family is Episcopalian.) During my second season, I told my two dearest friends from B-CC and some other friends, including my D.C. teammate Chris Rolfe, who went to Wake. But I was dropping lots of hints. On June 29, 2018,Collin Martin wrote a tweet heard ’round the world. …I knew something was there; I just didn’t like girls.

I think my brother Trevor already had guessed, and my younger brother, Tyler, may have heard it from my close friends who I’d already told. “It was so comfortable for me to then let them know that I wanted to take another step,” he said.“I’m the only one out right now," said Martin, 23, who previously played for DC United. “I’ll tell the guys I am going a on date, and the next day I hope they ask me about my date.” They do, he said, “and that makes me feel special.”In an interview with NBC News, Hudson Taylor, the executive director of Athlete Ally, a group that aims to end the homophobia in sports, said Martin joins a select group of male professional athletes who came out publicly. He was a member of D.C. United for four seasons before being traded to Minnesota United in January 2017.In the public worlds of entertainment, media, the arts—even politics—such an announcement barely registers as news. In the end, they were completely supportive. Coming out is still a fraught decision, even in a supposedly enlightened era. Only openly gay major league men's soccer player Collin Martin endorses Buttigieg Minnesota United soccer player Collin Martin, the only openly gay male athlete in … “My assumption is there are LGBT athletes on every team, and if they’re not on the team this year, they have been in the past two years or five years,” he said.Martin said the timing of his announcement was a conscious choice: Friday night is the team's pride game.With a tweet, Martin becomes the only openly gay male player in all the major North American sports leagues.Let our news meet your inbox. Collin Martin, the Minnesota United footballer who came out publicly last June, has sent a message of positivity to other gay players.

It took a lot to keep up that lie. When you think you’re gay, it takes awhile to understand that—especially as a kid.In high school, I had no thought of dating anybody, no thought of acting on certain feelings of wanting to get with a guy or letting it be known.

The 24-year-old mid-fielder grew up in Chevy Chase as a soccer prodigy. “I’ve been thriving on my own, and very comfortable in my own body and in a professional setting for a while now, but I think other people need to hear that,” he said.He credits his teammates' acceptance with making the public coming-out process easier.