Sports
Gay college football player Scott Cooper comes full circle
Applies life lessons to new role in alumni relations at Augsburg
As a linebacker on the Augsburg University football team, Scott Cooper found a place where he could be himself – a gay man who loves sports.
It was a journey that had previously included being condemned to hell by his pastor and church elders because of his sexual identity.
Cooper was born and raised in St. Charles, Mich., and was the youngest of six children. He was a farm kid who gravitated toward sports including baseball, ice hockey and soccer.
His family was, and remains, members of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod – a theologically conservative sect of the Lutheran church.
WELS doesn’t believe that you are allowed to pray with people from different churches, women are not allowed to have leadership over men, and marriage is only allowed between a man and a woman. They believe that gay people who don’t repent will burn in the fires of hell.
After attending a Lutheran grade school, he was sent to a Lutheran private prep school where he earned All State honors while playing football, basketball and baseball.
The high school he was attending was a prep school for the ministry college he would be attending next – Martin Luther College – where he played NCAA Division III football.
Cooper knew he was gay and began questioning faith, God and the Bible. He was also driving 90 minutes to Minneapolis to explore his sexuality. He experienced a tipping point one afternoon in his adolescent psychology class at Martin Luther.
“The professor had a Ph.D. in gender and sexuality studies, and he told us to cross out in our book where it said that it is not a choice to be gay, and replace it with that it is a choice,” says Cooper. “I argued with him and there was a scene. My time at that school was the same culture that I grew up in – a bubble.”
Cooper left the college behind and moved to Minneapolis. He worked as a nanny, trained horses and worked at a fitness center.
“I was trying to find myself and I also started dating a guy,” Cooper says. “My friends weren’t having it and my family wasn’t having it. Everything in my life up to that point had been church related and it was time for me to start over.”
In the summer of 2011, Cooper discovered Augsburg University and it seemed like a good fit.
“It turned out to be an amazing fit because I could talk about being gay there,” says Cooper. “For the first time, I felt like I could be myself.”
In his second semester as an Auggie, he joined its NCAA Division III football team and played as a linebacker. He dragged out his NCAA eligibility by taking half the semester course loads.
“I never hid that I was gay and the team kind of knew. I finally broke down crying in the spring of 2013 and announced it to all of them,” Cooper says. “The following fall was ‘big out Scott’ and my teammates had my back.”
Cooper received national attention as an openly gay college football player in the spring of 2014 when he was asked by his coach to speak on National Coming Out Day and by introducing his partner at the time at Augsburg University Senior Day.
“I had no intention or notion to make a social statement, though I did speak at a couple campuses and professional organizations,” says Cooper.
After graduating with a bachelor’s in communications, Cooper remained in Minneapolis and began working as a high school special education teacher.
Self-described as super competitive, Cooper has run marathons and played in softball tournaments with the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA). He also began coaching and competing in CrossFit.
His relationship with religion and his family remains fragile.
“We went through a rough couple of years and there have been a lot of baby steps. Religion is a huge part of their lives and it is uncomfortable for me,” Cooper says. “I don’t go home for the holidays because of the religion aspect – it’s a super fine line.”
These days, Cooper has come full circle back to the place where he first found acceptance. He is working in alumni relations at Augsburg University. He says a recent training at the university opened his eyes on diversity and inclusion.
“I thought I was a woke gay man, but I learned so much in that training,” says Cooper. “I can be a better advocate and ally and I am prouder than ever to be back at Augsburg.”
As for his love of sports, it is still in full swing. He is playing ice hockey, basketball, golf, softball, cycling, snow skiing, water skiing and showing horses. Nothing is off the table.
Over the years, he has reflected on the national attention to his journey as a gay athlete and the thought changes that come from being an adult.
“I love sports and I am still sassy and bitchy as ever. I knew it was important to share my story as a gay athlete, but I don’t think my story was amazing at all,” Cooper says. “I am more interested now in the other marginalized parts of our community. There are still big fish to fry.”
Sports
US wins Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey
Team captain Hilary Knight proposed to girlfriend on Wednesday
The U.S. women’s hockey team on Thursday won a gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Team USA defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime. The game took place a day after Team USA captain Hilary Knight proposed to her girlfriend, Brittany Bowe, an Olympic speed skater.
Cayla Barnes and Alex Carpenter — Knight’s teammates — are also LGBTQ. They are among the more than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes who are competing in the games.
The Olympics will end on Sunday.
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
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