• Many girls don't play sports because they are afraid someone will call them a lesbian or they are afraid one of their teammates or a coach might be a lesbian
• Transgender athletes were formerly excluded from sports by sex verification policies
• Lesbian and bisexual women in sport are discriminated against based on stereotypes and homophobia
• Gay boys and men in sport keep their identities secret out of fear of harassment from teammates and coaches
It Takes A Team! is an educational program designed to end homophobia in sport.
It Takes A Team! Organizes Ground Breaking Panel at WBCA Conference
It Takes A Team! Director, Pat Griffin, organized and participated in a panel at the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Conference in Tampa on April 5 entitled “Seeking Common Ground: Conversations Among Lesbians, Christians and Christian Lesbians.” The panelists included women from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Athletes in Action, The National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Women’s Sports Foundation. The purpose of the panel was to explore areas of common ground among women in sport who hold divergent views and beliefs about homosexuality and the role of religion in sport. The panel conversation was deemed an important first step ...
Linking LGBT Student-Athletes on the Internet
By Pat Griffin
This year students at the University of Connecticut started a Web site to link LGBT student-athlete campus communities and provide resources for LGBT student-athletes. Find out why they created this Web page and how you can create a similar Web page at your school.
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Director Information
Pat Griffin is Director of It Takes A Team! Education Campaign for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Issues in Sport. Dr. Griffin is a Professor Emerita in the Social Justice Education Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is author of Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbian and Homophobia in Sports and co-editor of Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook for Teachers and Trainers, Routledge. For the past 25 years Dr. Griffin has led seminars on diversity issues and lesbian and gay issues in athletics at numerous colleges and universities as well as at coaches and athletic administrators’ association meetings around the United States and Canada. Dr. Griffin has discussed homophobia in sports on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines,” HBO’s “Real Sports” and ABC Sports. In 2007 Pat was selected as one of the “Top 100 Sport Educators” by the International Sport Institute. She played basketball and field hockey and swam at the University of Maryland. She coached high school basketball and field hockey in Silver Spring, Md., and coached swimming at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.