Miami Marlins Team Up with SFGN, Other Organizations for LGBT Youth Project
The You Can Play Project “seeks to challenge the culture of locker rooms and spectator areas by focusing only on an athlete’s skills, work ethic and competitive spirit.”
There’s a palpable shift in Patrick Burke’s tone when he speaks of his younger brother Brendan. The articulate, confident New England law student and Philadelphia Flyers scout becomes slightly subdued. Gentle, even.
But Burke, 30, is far from the business of gentle. He handpicks players for a National Hockey League team with a legacy of aggression — the Flyers were notoriously dubbed the Broad Street Bullies during their heyday in the early 1970s. He aspires to be the General Manager of an NHL team. His brusque and red-blooded father, Brian, was GM of three teams in his career. Burke knows first-hand the resilience and grit it takes to manage a professional sports team.
Burke calls Brendan his best friend. But his best friend is gone. Twenty-one-year-old Brendan passed away in a car accident on February 5, 2010.
Just three months before his death, Brendan came out to the world as gay in an intensely public way.
At the time, his dad was GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, one of the most historic franchises in the NHL. Toronto is relentlessly scrutinized by media and followed with diehard passion by its fan base. But instead of hiding from the swarm and speculation that would inevitably follow his father’s high profile, Brendan bravely faced the world with his secret.
He put his story into the hands of ESPN hockey personality John Buccigross in December 2009, who wrote a first-person reflection of Brendan’s coming out to his family.
“Patrick approached me about it and I certainly [knew] the reach of ESPN would benefit Brendan’s message,” Buccigross remembered. “I knew it would be a big deal in Canada since Brian Burke was the GM of Toronto but the impact was a little bigger than I thought.”
Brendan’s coming out sent a jolt through the hyper-masculine hockey world, a sport where there are more gay slurs on the ice than natural front teeth. He’s often considered the first person with such close ties to the NHL to publicly identify as LGBT.
It was the public and fearless coming out that doubled the shock when a car accident on a snowy highway in Indiana stole Brendan’s brilliant light. The world was just beginning to get to know his vibrancy, zeal and passion for LGBT issues.
About a year later, Patrick Burke was working closely with GForce Hockey, a hockey team and advocacy organization comprised of gay male players.
“I had talked to the cofounders and said, look, I wanna do more,” Burke said. “I didn’t know a damn thing about the charity world… So I said to them, I have this idea… I have a motto, ‘If you can play, you can play’ and I think this thing has some legs.”
His motto proved to have more than legs. It had wheels.
A year later, Burke officially announced the You Can Play Project. The organization “seeks to challenge the culture of locker rooms and spectator areas by focusing only on an athlete’s skills, work ethic and competitive spirit.”
“After talking to different groups, seeing what was out there, three of us decided that the only way it was going to be done right was by doing it ourselves,” Burke said. “We didn’t want to give it to somebody else to half ass.” That’s a Burke man, for you — never one to mince words.
YCP just celebrated its first birthday and has already made a lasting impression in professional sports. In addition to youth outreach, the organization has created a series of video campaigns to fight homophobia that include endorsements from prominent players around the league. Most recently, the NHL and the NHL Player’s Association formally announced a partnership with YCP.
The NHL became the first major American professional sports league to officially partner with an LGBT advocacy group on such a large scale.
“Brendan’s willingness to speak out spurred the conversation in the hockey world. It wasn’t being talked about, not being considered,” Burke says. “You Can Play would’ve never come into existence if he hadn’t done it first.”
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Miami Marlins Team Up with SFGN, Other Organizations for LGBT Youth ProjectNot a Marlins fan by any means but this is a good thing. The part about the Marlins is in the article but is not in the portion of the article that I posted.