When we first met Zach, he was still partly in the closet. Over the months he inched open the door more and more with his team and friends. Earlier this week, inspired in large part by the positive reaction among his teammates who know, Zach has come out to the world.

Nick Kleidon is a senior at the Breck School in Minneapolis. He played defense for the JV team and his high school career was shortened due to an injury sustained while playing football for the school last season.

He played his final high school game on February 18, and while he may not have been a points leader for the team this season, it’s been a high scoring year for him in other ways. In his off hours, he’s an entrepreneur and has received early acceptance to college, where he plans to study business this fall.

As part of the his school’s graduation requirements, every senior must address the entire high school in a presentation of 4-7 minutes, in his or her own words. Thursday was Nick’s presentation. He told his classmates, and anyone else listening, that he is gay.

As he stepped to the podium, an instrumental version of “Fix You” by Coldplay began and Nick addressed the students.

“My story starts in second grade. I was sitting at my desk when one of my best friends came over to me. ‘Hey dude did you see that girl?’ ‘No,’ I responded. ‘I think I have a crush on her,’ he said. ‘I think I have a crush on you,’ I thought. ‘Nice dude,’ I said with disbelief.

“This is how I lived the first 16 years of my life. It didn’t seem normal to be attracted to your classmates of the same-sex, but what can I say? I couldn’t help it. I simply felt that way. I was attracted, and the term gay never crossed my mind.”

This wasn’t an easy speech, he says, but it was the speech he had to give. His ethics teacher helped guide him through the writing process, and when Nick began to wonder if this was such a hot idea or not, his teacher told him simply: go with what your heart says. Don’t be afraid to share it.

“During my sophomore year, I sought the help of other kids who were going through the same problems. As it turns out, I wasn’t alone. About this time, I started talking to a kid from a nearby school. He was dealing with the same things I was. Fighting to just be normal, not knowing what to do. Through our many long conversations, I learned that I needed to get a handle on what I was dealing with. I kept praying.”

In time, Nick began to understand that being gay was just part of who he is. He came out to two close friends, his sister and her boyfriend. They were all fine with who Nick was.

“My junior year, I started talking with guys, and by the end of spring break, actually hung out with a few friends I had met. I found happiness in making friends with kids who have the same interests as I do. Not just men, but sports, music, computers. Before long, I had my first boyfriend. I was finally dating. For real. I was happy. Truly happy. I kept praying.”

Nick shared his speech with his parents ahead of delivering it. It was a difficult few days for him earlier this week. “We argued about it but came to an understanding.” Nick’s sister read the speech. Two years earlier, she delivered her own senior address from the same podium.

As he continued, “Fix You” began to slowly rise: “And high up above or down below,” go the lyrics. “When you’re too in love to let it go, But if you never try you’ll never know, Just what you’re worth.”

Nick’s presentation continued:

“In the most recent months, I had the opportunity to slowly come out to the Boys Hockey Team. Let me tell you, from the bottom of my heart, I can’t express how supportive and caring this group of guys has been to me. It’s quite amazing. Countless teammates have told me that if anyone messes with me, they will come beat the crap out of them. With the hockey team knowing, the class of 2012 found out soon after. They have been just as supportive.”

This would be a big day for Nick and his team. The day before, the Varsity squad met to discuss what the theme for Thursday night’s varsity game would be. They were playing in an area championship game Thursday night. The team captain looked at Nick and said, “What about rainbow?” They took a vote: rainbow it would be.

“Quite often people asked me why I ended up at this school, and I think this year I have finally figured out the true reason. God has shown me that how I am is how He wants me. I’ve stopped praying to be straight. I’ve stopped wishing to be something I’m not ever going to be. I’ve started praying for my parents, praying for my friends, for the world; in hopes of being accepted for who I am. For how I was born.”

Cue Coldplay music swell (“I promise you I will learn from my mistakes, Tears stream down on your face, And I…,“) and lots and lots of applause – and a few tears, we imagine.

Nick’s decision to step out comes at an interesting time. The hockey world and gay twitterverse have been pulsing lately with reports about a new effort; one that advances the late Brendan Burke’s own goal of gay players being judged only by how many pucks they move to the net. Outsports has confirmed that a new organization started by the Burke family and their allies, called the “You Can Play,” will formally launch during NBC’s telecast of Sunday’s Rangers-Bruins game.

In the spirit of Nick’s address, we too, must be open. One of us has been lucky enough to help out Patrick Burke and GForce on the You Can Play launch. The other one of us (that’s me!) has known about it, too, but held his silence. Pillow talk, donchaknow. But in the interest of fairness, we erected a firewall between this enterprise and YCP. As two old C-SPAN guys, we’re slavishly devoted to media transparency and full disclosure.

But enough of that; we all know what the real story here is. It’s guys like Patrick and his entire family who work tirelessly to, in Brian Burke’s own words, pick up the axe that Brendan used blazing a trail. It’s all the NHL players willing to draw the line on casual homophobia in the locker room, and the fans who do the same in the stands.

And it’s guys like Nick who know that life – like hockey – has risks and rewards, and you never get the second without the first.

“I’ve spent so much time dealing with it and praying over it,” he told us Thursday. “Once I started to see being gay isn’t wrong, after praying so long, at some point I think I was on the fence, but I needed to stand firm in what I’m saying. Everybody was so supportive, so encouraged by what I have to say. So cool.”

The Varsity team won Thursday night in a rainbow victory.

They’re going to the state tournament. We’re going to cheer them on every step of the way. And while he won’t dress for those games, Nick has proven that he too, can play, and he hopes to play in college next season as well.

So cool.

While you’re making the transition from peewees to playing high school hockey, somewhere along the line you realize you’re gay. Did it impact your play?

Zach: I’ve kind of known since I was at a very young age.  I remember in second grade, I was attracted to one of my friends, and it’s just…  That’s just kind of like you don’t voice that feeling.  You’re just kind of like…  When all your buddies are talking about their crushes and all these other girls, you’re kind of sitting around and in your own mind wondering why you think you like him more than you like her, you know what I mean?

As far as the relationship of that to hockey, it’s kind of just always been something that’s always been left under the table. I haven’t really mentioned at all, I haven’t really said anything about it. But eventually, that curiosity leaks out. You don’t keep that in. 

You eventually start talking to people and doing things, and…  I think right around that transition time is really when I was kind of like, “Ok, I’m up in the big leagues now.”  I want to say that hockey actually helped give me that kind of epiphany like “All right, I’m in high school now.  I should start doing high school things.” 

Zach: That’s when kind of like that experimental phase came in, and I figured out what you like, what you really don’t like, and we’ll just leave it at that.  And so I think as I’ve gotten older, as I’ve moved up in high school, I’ve obviously gained knowledge in a number of topics, but more specifically that worldly knowledge of “All right, what am I going to do with my life?” “When am I going to stop caring?”  

And I think, just kind of over the past summer, it kind of started to lead me to come out to more people, and it’s been a good experience, especially having a core group of friends that are really accepting, really caring and understanding, and I think that has helped me come out to the majority of my team right now.

You’re in a good spot.  You’re very lucky. A lot of kids don’t have that core group. 

Zach: Yeah, very true. There are some people that I do know that don’t have that core group and wouldn’t be able to be in the same situation that I am, but I am fortunate.

So, you’re out to a majority of the team.  Did you tell them or did they just hear rumors and put two and two together?  How’d that all go, and how’d they react?

Zach: The first thing you have to understand is how liberal my school is.  I go to a private school that, basically…  It’s a school that as a rule, teaches being gay is ok.  So I think that whole aspect of the school itself preaching this acceptance, I’m sure it’s helped to deal with it in that aspect. 

But you also have to realize that a majority of highly conservative kids were kind of ignorant.  That’s another issue. You know, they won’t send their kids to this very liberal school, and so the majority of the student body is very liberal overall, but also in general even more liberal as far as kind of the, what’s the word… socially progressive. So that whole thing has helped a lot.

It softened up the ground and provided you a little bit of cover – that the school culture was accepting.

Zach: There two girls at school I’m real close with, we’re very close. In June of this past summer, I came out to both of them.  One of them dates this kid that also plays hockey, James [pseudonym]. I’ve been able to share a lot with her about what I have to deal with. It’s good to have someone to talk to, And she often talks to James about that,  which I was perfectly fine with.  James was really cool about it, and he talked to me about it at the beginning of the year, and the three of us have actually grown to be really close friends especially over the last couple of months

So James actually ended up telling a couple of kids on the hockey team who just really wouldn’t care.  Sometimes I’ll make jokes, just kind of simple jokes that eventually people have caught onto, in the locker room, I’m talking about jokes that kind of some of the kids who I haven’t flat-out told or James hasn’t flat-out told or somebody else hasn’t told. That kind of hinted that, and somebody will.. . Everything is gay when you’re playing hockey. Everything is gay and everyone’s a fag.  That’s one thing that you just have to get over- it’s like, “That’s gay,  you’re a fag.”  That’s just what it is.

So, somebody calls something gay.  Like, “Kyle, you did that. That’s so gay.”  And I’ll just turn and be like, “What’s wrong with that?” and just kind of smirk.  So these comments and these kind of jokes which are harmless but can be pretty funny catch on, especially when people know that I’m actually gay.  That’s funny. 

It’s just as funny if you don’t know, but eventually whenever you say the word “gay” or you say “fag” or something like that, why is he making a joke?  Well, that’s because he’s gay. (laughs) That’s been basically the main strategy of how I’ve come out to the majority of my team, and I’m convinced that – I would say 90% of my team knows-the other 10% is just either oblivious, ignorant or they just don’t understand.

So have I had any problems from that?  No, I haven’t had one kid legitimately be like disgusted or whatever or despise me for it, and that’s been one thing that’s encouraged me to come out to more people.

It’s like, honestly, I’ve heard “gay” and “fag” so many times for so many years, it doesn’t offend me anymore.  That’s one thing that I think eventually those words are going to be just as off-limits as the n-word or something like to where you don’t say them in front of people. Until then, it’s humor or whatever you want to call it. 

But what was it like though as a younger kid hearing “gay” and “fag” thrown around the locker room, where you might not have felt so comfortable? What was it like hearing that?

Zach: I never…  It really took that epiphany when I transferred from youth hockey to high school hockey of realizing like, “Oh man, is this word actually me?” And before that epiphany, it’s been really just a word. 

The word didn’t have any true meaning to me until I really realized, you know, “Man, this is who I am. This is what I’m attracted to.”  And so, I think, realistically, it didn’t really offend me at all.  I didn’t think twice of hearing it, you know, quite a few times I didn’t think twice of saying it, until I had that realization, I was gay.

Do you think Coach knows, and if not, how do you think the coach would react? 

Zach: It’s actually funny you ask that, because just this past weekend we had a tournament, and I came out of the locker room after we won.  I came out with one other kid and our coach was watching the game that was following ours, and we were just up at the glass and people started texting, and my coach was like, “What the heck, guys? You come right out of the locker room and as soon as you do that, you start texting your girlfriend.  What’s up with that?” 

And the kid next to me was like, “Oh no, this isn’t my girlfriend.  I’m texting my mom.”  And I’m like, “Oh no, this isn’t my girlfriend.  I’m texting my, umm….  Umm…  Nevermind.”  And I kept texting. And the coach is like, “What? Your significant other?  Your whatever? I don’t care what you guys do, whatever you want to call it.” 

And so I mean it’s like-I don’t think it will be long before my coaches know.  Do they know now?  I doubt it.  They’re not involved in our everyday life enough to really fully get to know that.  They’ll ask a teammate about another teammate’s social life randomly if they have a question about it, but in general it’s like they’re not going to find stuff out on their own.

Just the fact that he floated “significant other” tells me the guy can handle it.  You’d said before that you probably didn’t think it was necessary or appropriate to do the big, dramatic, “Hi, team. I’m Zach, I’m gay.”  Do you still feel that way because pretty much everybody knows?

Zach: I mean, as of right now, I’m planning on – I want to take my boyfriend to the prom.

We’re voting for you for prom king.

Zach: Thank you! (laughs).  I think the prom is in April and I think that it will be kind of like, “If you didn’t know, here’s evidence, morons,” kind of thing.  As of right now, I don’t think there is  a reason for me to stand up in front of my whole team and flat-out tell them. 

I think if you were to spend any amount of time with the team, you would understand where the reasoning for that comes from in that everything is turned into a joke.  So I mean, realistically, there’s no reason for that.  If they’re really questioning, they can ask me, and I will tell them, but I don’t think they care enough to really need that personal statement from me.

Next: A gay NHL player and thoughts about his favorite team

When did you start to play hockey. Were you always a D-man?

Zach: It was rough at first.  I kind of switched off through squirts and in peewee I found myself as defender for my first two years.  You know peewees, bantams – you know all those terms, right?

We don’t know much about the kid ranks. You started playing as a squirt?

Zach: Your first year, you start as a mite.  You have Mite 1, Mite 2, Mite 3, then you’ve got your two years of Squirts, your two years of peewees, and  your two years of bantams. So, as a bantam, you’ll be an eighth-grader and then, or a as a second-year bound you’ll be a freshman in high school, and then your three years of high school will be high school hockey.

Walk us through the early years. 

Zach: I played 3 years of mites, and that’s standard, but my birthday’s in lateso I’m rather young for my grade, so one of the options was to stay back an extra year on that peewee -bantam switch.  I did never play bantams. I just went right from – I played peewee for 3 years, an extra year playing with the kids younger than me, as an A-peewee they were a grade under me, and then I went right from my third year of peewees to play JV at my high school my freshman year. 

How old were you when you started as a mite?  Is that like 5 or 6?  7 or 8?

Zach: I’ve been skating since I was, I want to say when I was two, my parents bought me a pair of skates  and they basically brought me to skating lessons.  I actually learned more of the motions of figure skating for the first two years, so that was as a 3 or 4 year-old, maybe I think a 4-year-old. 

As a 4-year-old I was kind of learning the basics of skating, doing fish patterns on the ice  and stuff like that.  Finally, as a 5-year-old, they put me in Mites – maybe a little bit early, and I started with the hockey equipment, started to kind of kind of do drills and stuff like that – not playing in games yet, but doing drills and skating in between cones, and sliding under sticks on cones and whatever else we did back then.

You came from a hockey family and your dad was a coach. Did he play?  Brothers that played?

Zach:  My dad’s the youngest of large family and he’s got four older brothers and all of them played hockey.  So, he grew up in a hockey family.  When he was a kid, he used to flood the grass area right by his house to kind of make his own ice rink, and he would shoot pucks back there. 

So, he was playing very young as I believe a sophomore in high school, he was playing football with his buddies and he was injured. He was done for hockey.  He grew up around here, you know-hockey blood.

What does playing that mean to a family?  It’s a commitment all the way around, right?

Zach: It’s more of a commitment, and then it really turns into a lifestyle.  You’re not only- it’s not just adding hockey to your schedule, it’s making hockey your schedule, and that’s one of the big things that I don’t think people realize.  Yes, there’s some really intense families in other sports and stuff like that, but there’s really no kind of hockey on the side, hockey as a kid. 

If you’re in the sport, you’re in the sport. It’s that commitment that not only you make as a kid, but your whole family has to make, and I don’t think most people fully understand that.  I mean, it’s really 24/7, you know, playing hockey all the time.  Hockey this, hockey that- it’s never anything different.

Did it define your social circles as well, where your best friends played too?

Zach: As far as even my parents’ friends and stuff like that, they’re no longer their old friends from high school or whatever.  Their core friends are my hockey team’s parents, so there’s really that bonding experience even from a young age.  I remember playing squirts and peewees, and my parents would be bonding with- especially in an out-of-town tournaments, you know- living in the cities, we travel around the state. We play a weekend tournament, we stay in a hotel, the whole nine yards. 

I remember my parents and a whole bunch of other teammates’ parents- there’s this annual hockey tournament that takes place, and we all stay in the same hotel.  For three years of peewees my parents went up there with all these other hockey families – basically, you end up with the same group of kids and their parents. 

They’d get drunk and party [laughter]. You have parents climbing on tables, and I mean this is a true bonding experience, for the kids especially, kind of watching this weird side of their parents that’s coming out, but also, this is how our parents got to be really close friends.  So I mean, really- it does define your social circles- your hockey experience, your hockey team, your hockey family all become more than just your hockey family.  They more or less become your core group of friends when you play hockey.

What was it like making the transition to high school play?  You skipped a year of bantam and went to playing JV?

Zach: I skipped two years of Bantam. I skipped Bantams over all.  Realistically, I could have played Bantams U, which is youth hockey- it’s not through the high school- up through my sophomore year, and then as a junior I could have been playing my first year of high school hockey. 

I actually transferred schools my freshman year high school, to a private school.  It would have been very hard to still play for the youth association socially, but also the drive would have been absolutely ridiculous to get to hockey every day. Skipping bantam made sense and we made the right choice, switching me over to play JV hockey as a freshman.

What sort of player were you growing up? characterize where your performance.

Zach: You know, one thing that’s really overlooked, especially nationally, when you live in a hockey state like I do, and you have a kid in hockey and you kind of realize it a little more, youth hockey is big politics shit.  It gets bad. I mean, you have your best players sometimes playing on the worst teams because the parents don’t get involved in the details, and the parents don’t plan little events for the hockey teams or plan parent parties or do shit for the team or the association.

It’s really, it gets bad, so as far as my skill level, I would say I was better than average.  As far as the team that I played on, I was usually…  There’s A squirts, A bantams, A peewees, there’s B-1 and B-2, which B-1 is sort of a step up from a B+ team, I guess, and B-2 would be a B- team, and then the C scores would be a C team.  I would typically play in the B+ team. 

A few times, I think one, maybe two years, I was on an A team.  As far as the difference between teams go, you get a couple more games, a couple more out-of-town tournaments, maybe one more out –of-town tournament as an A team player compared to a B team. C at any level is pretty much a joke.  You can’t expect much from it.

Next: “Out in the locker room.”

Note: None of the Mites pics are of Zach. They were all pulled from the web to add simple graphic elements to the post. 

Over the next few weeks, we’ll publish installments of our conversations with him. We asked him about  his years from mite to high school player, the hockey family and culture, what it’s like to be a gay player, what an out NHL player may face and his plans following graduation.

“Zach” is a nom de rink and we agreed to protect his identity. As the season progresses, he may choose to be more public as an out gay player, but no matter what he decides, we thank him for his time, sincerity and trust.

Speaking of trust, we’re all too aware of stories similar to this that have surfaced in the last few years; stories that turned out to be fabrications or of questionable authenticity. We understand that some may approach this with a degree of healthy skepticism. We keenly understand how fragile trust can be.

Lastly, as we were pulling the interview together, news of Jack Jablonski’s injury surfaced. His story of heartbreak and hope has reverberated around the wider hockey family. Jabs and Zach come from the same world and share similar passions for the game as high school players.

Gay or straight, the risks of injury are there for all players at any level of the game. We’ve asked Zach to stay safe and to be extra careful out there and we ask everyone to consider a donation to Jack’s fund.

After the jump, we start with Zach’s thoughts on the hockey experience and how that’s evolved for him over the years.

Let’s start at the top, what has playing hockey mean to you?

Zach: I mean it’s really a lot more than just the game itself.  It’s really more of the overall experience, especially for me.  Everything- it’s not just the game, it’s not just the practices- It really expands more, I guess it’s a fuller experience. Going to hockey, it’s like you go from school- you bus there, you drive over with your buddies, you go get food first, you know, that’s quality bonding time at your Noodles or your Chipotle or wherever you go before the game, and then you go to the locker room and you sit in the locker room and hang out with your buddies for another 30 minutes, crack jokes, you know- that’s more fun.

You get out on the ice, and especially Junior League puck, it’s just, you know, a Gong Show, and it’s just a bunch of fun.  And then practice, that you know, you’ve got to go up to the workout room and do that whole thing.  So I mean, really, it’s more the whole experience for me, the full on, it’s not just the game or what comes along with the game, it’s the time with my buddies.

What’s a typical practice and game day like?

Zach: It depends on the day; there’s like a Saturday game and then there’s like a weekday game where we have school prior.  More and more frequently we’ll have a school day game, and I mean that’s even more intense.  I mean you have all the boys from junior and varsity wearing their khakis with their white shirt and a tie and their hockey jackets from school.

We like to eat. You know-we go get food, and we go over to the arena to catch the bus and go wherever we’re going. We get there and do our team jog around our rink before our game, So, it’s, really, It’s a full night’s work. I mean- you’ve got to really put homework aside and just get on with what you’re going to do.

How has the experience changed over the years?

Zach: It’s definitely changed over the years.  I mean, originally it’s a lot of…  It’s hard to explain.  You develop a sense of actually- what’s the word I’m looking for, appreciation, I guess over the years, you appreciate it in the long run, now looking back…  Now I see how much I appreciate the game itself and actually being able to go out and play, but I also appreciate kind of the whole hockey experience.

When you’re a mite or a squirt at 8 or 9 years old, it’s kind of the day-to-day that you worry about, not the big picture, so I think at 8 or 9 you don’t appreciate what you’re doing as much. 

Your parents see it, your parents understand this is something real here. This is it, and all the while you’re just looking to go steal the puck from little Bobby over in the corner.  It’s really a bigger picture that develops over the years.

Again, it’s very different.  At first, you don’t really realize the fact that while playing in youth hockey, you’re playing with kids that are maybe a year older or a year younger than you or the same age.  As for playing high school hockey, you’ve got kids that are four years older than you.

These are kids that you’re afraid of in the hallway, walking through middle school you try to avoid because they’re older than me. They’re big kids, or whatever. Playing high school hockey it’s the same thing.  It’s like, “Man, this big-ass kid is going to come over and check me. What am I going to do?”  You have to learn quickly, or else you’re not going to succeed as a high school hockey player.

Did you always play D?

I play D… Well, the sport’s kind of switched up. As a kid, you get to play both, so you’re you’re not really defining what position you’re going to play.  The alternate goalies, you know, I would play goalie for one weekend and let in 14 goals in one game, and you know, you just move on.

You were a sieve?

I think so.  I definitely was one when I played, I think, 2 games. My dad actually coached me when I was …  up through peewee, he coached me, so in doing that, he was a very fair giving ice time giver and also a very fair with goal-tending, and for me, I think I didn’t get my fair share. 

He saw the position wasn’t for me, although everybody else played 4 games of goalie, I got two games of goalie and then that was it. 

Dad pulled you as goalie?

[Laughter] You know, I want to say that second game, my second year of squirts, I want to say the whole third period, we pulled the goalie because we were down like 14-2 and we’d rather have the sixth guy on the ice.

NEXT: “Growing up Hockey”

If you’d like to get in touch with Zach, drop us a line and we’ll forward it, otherwise, feel free to comment.