Onward Christian Coaches

If it's your first day of basketball practice, and you're just about to meet your new coach, what would you say if this was the first thing out of your coach's mouth?

"I’m a Christian that happens to be a coach. … My values are very important to me. … I’m very blessed to have my staff here. This is something very unique, I think, for Division I women’s basketball to have a staff that the entire staff is married with kids. Family is important to us and we live it every day."

If you were religious, particularly Christian, you might be very pleased that a coach shares your values. But what if you're a member of a different religion, or non-religious? What about if you're gay?

Those are just a few questions being raised after the University of Missouri introduced their brand new women's basketball coach, Robin Pingeton, and these were her welcoming words for her players and her staff. On the surface, it seems as if Pingeton is counting her lucky stars that her entire staff is heterosexually married, and that she's going to bring to her coaching game a heavy dose of Christianity.

To some, like blogger and sports guru Pat Griffin, statements like these are red flags that indicate a potential low level of tolerance and acceptance for LGBT athletes and coaching staff.

"When the coach leads with a description of herself as a Christian and boasts at her first press conference about how straight her assistant coaches are, you have to wonder about what kind of team climate she will promote for student-athletes who are not Christian or who are not heterosexual," Griffin wrote on her blog, noting that as a coach for a public institution (the University of Missouri is a state school after all), these comments are inappropriate at best.

Is Griffin right?

Outsports.com writer Cyd Zeigler Jr. gives Pingeton the benefit of the doubt ... for now. For Zeigler, the proof will be whether lesbian players or team staff feel comfortable playing or working for Pingeton once she gets her coaching program in order. He notes that a lesbian former player of Pingeton's wrote a comment on the University of Missouri's school newspaper Web site, saying that Pingeton was definitely Christian, but she didn't turn her basketball team into an Army of Pat Robertsons.

"As a player, she NEVER pushed her personal religious beliefs upon myself and I never witnessed it being done to any other teammate. We were not subject to Bible studies," said the player, although she didn't disclose her name in the comment.

The truth is that time will tell if Pingeton allows her religion to co-opt her coaching. But it's only natural to view Pingeton's comments with some skepticism and nervousness, given the track record of some in the athletic world to use religion as a wedge issue to create an unsafe environment for gay and lesbian athletes.

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