Seattle Kraken trainer Justin Rogers comes out publicly and the crowd (& the team!) goes wild
penned an open letter to his younger self that was published Friday on the Kraken’s website. It opens as follows:Dear younger JR,Becoming the best you will take time and understanding.That knot in your stomach – the one that makes you feel confused, isolated, lost in the world –invisible to everyone but you?
It will slowly loosen. You don’t even understand the knot, but with time you will learn things about yourself and fulfill dreams so many others like you feel they cannot.In a corresponding interview with ESPN, Rogers said he knew for years he was gay, but it took him a long time to grasp what that meant.
He finally came out to his family with a letter on Christmas Day 2014. (We’re noticing a theme here!)It was only two years earlier when Rogers, who was working as a trainer for Penn State men’s hockey and men’s golf programs, came to realize he could be gay and work in sports. “That’s when I started realizing, ‘I am like those people.
I can associate with those people and I can also be in this sports world at the same time,'” he said. “It was almost like both worlds were meshing at a fast rate together.”For Assistant Athletic Trainer Justin Rogers, the path to understanding his identity as a gay man working in sports took time.
