Meet John Kim. He’s the 22-year-old captain of the Virginia Military Institute swim team, a 45-member, Division 1 swim team. He’s also gay.
In a moving essay published by Outsports, Kim writes about coming out to his friends and teammates on National Coming Out Day earlier this month.
The night before my life completely changed, I sat in my room exhausted from a full day of classes and swim practice at Virginia Military Institute. As thousands of other things went through my mind, I kept saying to myself that tomorrow was the day. How are my teammates going to react? How are they going to treat me after this? What are other people at school going to think? How is the rest of my family going to react? What are my roommates going to say?
Related: This gay autistic swimmer refuses to let anything stop him from being #1
The next day, after classes, Kim went to swim practice. The first person he told was his co-co-captain.
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“She was very supportive and stood next to me when I asked my coaches if I could talk to them privately,” he recalls. “The reactions I got from them were support and happiness. I asked my coach if I could tell the team, and he agreed. I asked the team to hop out of the water, and everyone gathered around.”
That’s when he made the big reveal.
“Hey guys,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you something that I’ve been meaning to share for a while because I consider you all more than just teammates, but friends and brothers and sisters: I’m gay.”
There was a pause. Kim heard a few murmurs and then… cheering.
Related: How two college swimmers helped each other come out
He writes:
After practice I got back to my room and got messages from teammates saying how proud and happy they were of me. I then decided to come out to the world. I posted my coming out on Instagram, and have received amazing support from friends, family, former teammates and even former swimmers I coached over the summers.
Read Kim’s full coming out story over at Outsports and scroll down to see some shots from his Instragram account…
ramonaharper41
Stay at home mom Kelly Richards from New York after resigning from her full time job managed to average from $6000-$8000 a month from freelancing at home… This is how she done it
……. ghgfhghgfhfgh
???USA~JOB-START
fur_hunter
ramona…..why don’t you take your job and shove it up your C*NT. We don’t care about it. And stop putting your $H!T on a forum where it does not apply. Get it?
Creamsicle
Handsome, brave, strong, and possibly fast tracked in the military(no idea what the school’s technical relationship with the military is)? Woof! And 240 with a dude 30 Speedo? That’s a lot of beefcake in one tight package.
fur_hunter
VMI was one of our rivals in football…actually on Thanksgiving day…when I was the Hookie Mascot and went to Virginia Tech. It was a different world then…the mid-sixties. I am so glad to see that there is more acceptance today.
Kangol
Beautiful story, beautiful young man.
prarie pup
I know this is absolutely off-topic–and kinda “bitchy queen”–but he’s a bit on the plus-size to be a swimmer, yet he’s the team CAPTAIN? I’m guessing their team is ranked somewhere near the floor.
Kangol
He did pretty well at the team’s first meet and decently at the second, so maybe you ought to revise your bias about his size.
GayEGO
John Kim is absolutely fabulous and I am so glay he was able to come out and be himself in the Virginia Military Institute. Back in the early 1960’s when I was a Navy musician who played the flute, I did not dare come out, I just had to joke with my teammates and then drop it. I had a friend who was discharged when the Navy found out he was gay, so sad! I was honorably discharged in 1963 after I met my lifetime partner in 1962, whom I introduced as my roommate.
GayEGO
Whoops! I misspelled glad! Sorry about that!