PORTLAND, Ore. — The soccer coach appeared out at two dozen or so of his gamers and felt nervousness course by means of him like a rip present. His coronary heart pounded, and his voice felt unsteady.
Kaig Lightner (pronounced “Cage,” a phonetic shortening of his initials — Ok and J) had been pondering of this second for the reason that summer time of 2013 when he based the Portland Community Football Club, a program for instructing soccer to principally first- and second-12 months gamers. -generation immigrant youth who lived in his metropolis’s most distressed neighborhoods.
In the 4 years since, Coach Kaig had turn out to be a good friend, an ally and even, to a few of his gamers, a father determine.
How would they react as soon as he informed them he had been raised as a lady?
He had all the time requested his gamers to be open and trustworthy about their lives. That he had not modeled such deep honesty crammed him with regret.
The election of Donald Trump — who had promised to nominate conservative judges and whose vp, Mike Pence, had opposed homosexual rights and was seen as supporting conversion remedy — had ignited a way of foreboding and uncertainty inside the lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and transgender. group. Lightner definitely felt it. He apprehensive that the gamers — tweens and youths on this afternoon — would go away his membership. Or that their households would lower ties, regardless of how good this system had been at mentoring and offering a protected house to develop up in.
Lightner thought of all of this, took a deep breath and knew he wanted to talk up.
“I have not completely shared with you one thing about myself.”
“It’s an essential factor for me to share with you as a result of all of us must be who we’re.”
“I’m transgender.”
One participant chuckled nervously however walked to Lightner for a hug. Most appeared straight at their coach in a form of surprise and awe.
Born Katherine Jean Lightner and raised in a cushty suburb east of Seattle, nothing about Lightner’s adolescence was straightforward. Lightner, who consented to the usage of his former identify and gender id all through this text, remembers a paralyzing worry that started round age 4 that he was a boy caught in a lady’s physique. When his household referred to as him Katie, he protested. It sounded too female. Kate was higher by a shade. He refused ballet classes. His mom purchased him a tailor-made costume. He wore it as soon as, then vowed to by no means put on it once more.
As the years went on, Kate favored dishevelled pants, sweats, billowing T-shirts and baseball caps turned backwards. A favourite birthday present was a shiny crimson Michael Jordan baseball jersey.
“The means she offered, she did not appear to be a typical lady,” recalled Leslie Ridge, a good friend who attended highschool with Lightner within the Nineteen Nineties. “And due to that, she was made enjoyable of regularly, particularly by boys. It was brutal to see how painful that was for her.”
The bullying taunts and sense of unease ignited a horrible inner storm. “I started to consider myself as a freak,” remembers Lightner. “The feeling was that I do not belong right here. I do not belong in any house.”
Sports grew to become a refuge.
An glorious softball, basketball and soccer athlete, Lightner discovered that on fields and courts he may very well be judged solely based mostly on efficiency.
“Sports saved me alive.”
After rowing crew on the University of Washington, Lightner moved to Portland after commencement within the early 2000s. There he coached soccer for youths between 8 and 14 on a staff that originally appeared a lot the identical because the white, prosperous ones on which Lightner had grown up enjoying.
After altering his identify to Kaig, Lightner approached a fellow soccer coach he considered a reliable good friend and defined that this was a primary step in the direction of changing into a person.
The response was laughter.
“It did not take me lengthy to understand that teaching as an out trans particular person at the moment, within the years round 2005, ’06, ’07, was simply not going to work,” Lightner mentioned. “I used to be not going to be protected.”
Lightner left teaching for some time. He flew to Baltimore for breast elimination surgical procedure and commenced weekly classes of hormone alternative remedy. His voice deepened. New layers of muscle wrapped round his shoulders. His jaw grew sq., and his face sprouted the beginnings of a beard.
Eventually, he took a job as an teacher for after-faculty packages within the working-class outskirts of Portland, residence to the town’s inhabitants of immigrants from Africa, Mexico, Central and South America, and Asia.
Lightner rapidly noticed that the ample sports activities alternatives within the metropolis’s wealthier communities barely existed for the children he was now working with. He had all the time felt like an outsider and now noticed that the gamers he coached — the kids of working-class immigrants in one in every of America’s whitest cities — considered themselves in a lot the identical means. Considering how he may finest assist, Lightner centered on what had saved him going by means of all these years of adolescent anguish.
“Soccer had been my principal means of discovering therapeutic and connection, and I wished that for these children, too,” he mentioned.
After a 12 months of cobbling collectively seed cash, Lightner shaped the Portland Community Football Club in 2013 with grant funding and donated tools from Nike. The membership was a rarity as a result of all people had a spot. Nobody acquired lower. Lightner emphasised creating expert gamers greater than turning out stars. Families paid $50 to affix, however lower than that was OK. Not paying a dime was fantastic, too.
At his first observe, held in a worn nook of a public park, 50 children confirmed up. Soon it was 75. Then 100. The membership performed throughout the winter, spring, summer time and fall.
“Coach Kaig grew to become a continuing in our lives,” says Shema Jacques, one of many program’s early stalwarts. Jacques, now a 22-12 months-previous Marine, first picked up the fundamentals of soccer in a Rwandan refugee camp however honed his recreation at PCFC “From the beginning, I may inform he believed in us. He can be there for us for something we would have liked. I had by no means skilled somebody being like that earlier than.”
Lightner was open about being a transgender man to everybody in his life besides the gamers and households of PCFC, and the dissonance ate at him. So on that rain-swept day in 2017, he gathered each participant who had proven up for a chat earlier than observe.
“I need you guys to find out about me, and I additionally need you guys to know that I’m nonetheless me,” he mentioned. “I’m nonetheless the identical particular person I used to be 5 minutes earlier than you all knew this, proper? I’m nonetheless the identical man who comes out right here, will get you guys to be higher soccer gamers, will get on you if you’re not enjoying laborious, loves you it doesn’t matter what.”
He noticed nothing however acceptance as he appeared into his gamers’ eyes. One of them was Jacques.
“Suddenly, listening to that, all of it made sense,” Jacques mentioned. “This is why he is aware of what it’s like for thus many people — not being accepted, making an attempt laborious to slot in. I really felt extra related to him as he spoke, and I’m not alone. He was nonetheless the particular person I appeared as much as and wished to be like.”
Six years later, the one factor that has modified about PCFC is its development. There are extra coaches and a small administrative employees. The roster of registered gamers has swelled to 165. It can also be about extra than simply soccer now. During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Lightner obtained a grant that allowed PCFC to supply its households with recent groceries, rental help and assist tapping into social providers.
“None of the households deserted Kaig as soon as he spoke his reality,” says Carolina Morales Hernandez, whose younger son and daughter have grown up in this system.
“Sometimes individuals be a part of, and they’ll name me and say, ‘We heard this and that about Kaig,’” she provides. “I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, it is true, yep. The head of the PCFC is a transgender particular person, however that modifications nothing. Everybody is welcome right here.’”