Stereotypes have long held that there are no gay male athletes – but most female athletes are lesbians. However, ever since The Front Runner, authors have tackled the theme of gay male athletes far more often than females.

Sweet Turnaround J changes all that.

The second novel by Peggy Beck, it explores the life of 16-year-old Janey Holmes after her old school closes, and she joins a team that has not won a game in three years. Along the way she confronts her own temper, and falls in love with another girl.

Like Janey, Beck was a sports fanatic. Her father encouraged her love of athletics; her mother, concerned about raising a tomboy, was less enthusiastic. Growing up in Minnesota in the 1950s and ’60s, Beck played every game imaginable –including football. But as she grew older, social strictures made coed play impossible.

With no real sports available, she went through “bad emotional stuff,” Beck says. Recognizing her attraction to women made life even tougher. She gravitated to politics and folk singing. At Sarah Lawrence College, she wrote but did not show her work to anyone. “My whole life was secret,” she says.

After earning a Ph.D. in the history of consciousness, she wrote fiction, poetry, articles and essays covering mythology, folklore and history. In middle age she recalled that she once wanted to be the best female basketball player in the world and decided to revisit that dream.

“I wanted to write about a girl obsessed with basketball,” Beck says. “But I realized I didn’t know anything about it anymore.” She spent a year watching every practice of a team in New Mexico, where she lived. She went to the Amateur Athletic Union 15-year-old Nationals where she interviewed coaches. She attended other tournaments, and then became an assistant high school coach and a seventh grade girls’ coach.

She studied videos, read coaching books and interviewed plenty of players. “I wanted to get it right,” Beck says.

She got it so right the first draft of her novel was 1,000 pages.

The lesbian element is important. Janey falls in love with her new best friend. The chapter where they kiss and make love is implied. Over the next two chapters, the reader agonizes as the girls can’t deal with what is going on. Janey goes through hell when Alejo won’t talk to her.

During her long research, Beck had watched girls trying to figure out their feelings for other girls. She’d also heard the anti-gay remarks so typical on teams and in high schools. Because Beck had felt and heard the same things, her writing is strong and real.

But it did not become truly powerful until Beck changed the narrative from third person to first.

Sweet Turnaround J is not, however, only about lesbians.

“It always comes back to basketball,” Beck says. “The gym is like the theater – every day is a rehearsal for a play.” The novel includes alcohol abuse, parental issues, coaching issues – all the things teenagers of every sexual orientation deal with regularly.

But sexuality is often part of high school sports, and Beck does not shy from it. When Janey finally talks with a teammate, the other girl asks, “How did you know you were gay?”

“I always was,” Janey says.

The coach encourages Janey and Alejo to follow their feelings. That doesn’t always happen, Beck knows, but through her research into coaches and coaching styles, she realizes that the best coaches are supportive of all their athletes, whatever their personal feelings may be.

Like many young adult novels, Sweet Turnaround J is making its way slowly into libraries and onto suggested reading lists. Bloggers who discuss homophobia in women’s basketball have been positive and helpful.

One reviewer said that the author’s “depiction of relationships is often missing in the male sports books, which focus more on narrative action. Beck’s portrayal of a multicultural team with all the signifiers suggests an observant eye and much research… (We) discover the important lessons and human strength that basketball or any sport can teach in the drive toward winning games and learning life’s lessons.”

“I live in a complete fantasy world, where everyone will want to read it,” Beck admits. While she has heard nothing negative so far, she understands that a gay protagonist may cause some young readers to steer clear.

Beck hopes that does not happen. “I’ll feel really badly if it gets pigeonholed. I think girls who aren’t lesbian can find a lot in the book to enjoy and learn from,” she says.

“There are no sports books for girls, gay or straight,” Beck says. “They’re the lowest of the low on the totem pole. Hundreds of thousands of girls play sports. They need to read about their world.”

Visit www.sweetturnaroundj.com for more information, including ordering information and links to basketball websites.

It Took a Team

Since its inception four years ago, The OutField has chronicled – and lauded – the work of It Takes a Team. We’ve covered the small organization’s large work in areas as diverse as anti-gay recruiting by college coaches, the preparation of an educational kit on LGBT issues in sport, and the rise of transgender athletes.

But this is our last column about It Takes a Team. In December, its sponsor – the Women’s Sports Foundation – announced the end of funding for the project. Budget woes in a soft economy doomed the decade-old program.

It Takes a Team began auspiciously. Concerned about homophobia in sport, tennis great Martina Navratilova raised funds to combat stereotypes and educate participants. Though what was then called The Project to Eliminate Homophobia in Sport became part of the Women’s Sports Foundation, Navratilova insisted it address male issues as well as female.

From the start, the Women’s Sports foundation had a hard time getting other LGBT or athletic organizations to support the project. Its first directors were paid very little and administrative aid from the WSF was minimal, limiting its impact and visibility.

A key moment occurred when Pat Griffin – a professor of social justice and former coach at the University of Massachusetts – joined with Mount Holyoke College athletic director Laurie Priest, former Massachusetts Department of Education Safe Schools Program director Jeff Perrotti and former Oberlin College athletic director Michael Muska to develop educational materials.

The result: a 15-minute video, curriculum materials and action guides, “Safe Space” stickers, posters, and a list of resources addressing LGBT issues in sport – provided help to athletes, coaches and administrators. It came at a crucial time, when student-athletes began coming out of the closet and a new generation of coaches moved into positions of power.

In 2004, director Lisa Thompson left It Takes a Team. Griffin – who had just retired from UMass – was hired at a higher salary. She worked from her home in Massachusetts, but was given administrative assistance at WSF’s Long Island headquarters. In 2005, the program’s name was changed to It Takes a Team.

Griffin took her job seriously. She traveled widely, speaking to athletes, coaches and administrators, and at PFLAG and athletic conferences. She developed strong relationships with the National Collegiate Athletic Association and National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Eighteen national advocacy organizations – from the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and Anti-Defamation League to OutSports .com and the Transgender Law Center – endorsed It Takes a Team and linked to its Web site.

A monthly e-newsletter reached over 3,000 subscribers. Griffin answered countless questions, and offered advice on ways to make sports teams safe and welcoming for LGBT athletes.

“Coaches and administrators really relied on us,” Griffin says. “They knew to come to us with questions like ‘What’s a fair transgender policy?’ or ‘How do I address negative recruiting by coaches in our conference?’ We came a long way.”

The organization had its most success at the college level, perhaps because of the older age of participants. “There’s much more work to be done in high school,” Griffin notes.

Her greatest satisfaction came from advising student-athletes about their legal rights, then following up to hear that progress was made. She was especially heartened when parents supported their LGBT sons and daughters.

For five years, It Takes a Team raised money through grants and donations. In 2009, as funds dried up for non-profits across the country, the WSF decided to end the program.

The wealth of resources will remain on the WSF’s Web site (www.womenssportsfoundation.org/Issues-And-Research/Homophobia.aspx). However, there will be no more research, conferences or educational materials.

Griffin vows to continue her own work – including her blog (www.ittakesateam.blogspot.com). “I’m not done,” she says firmly. “I have such a passion for this. I’m looking for my next venue, figuring out how to keep going. I want to stay in the game.”

She adds: “My goal was always to put myself out of business. It hasn’t happened yet. I hear too many stories and get too many calls about negative recruiting, anti-gay locker room environments and comments made by coaches and athletes.

“Our work is not done. We’ve got a foothold in the world of sport. I’m sad to see It Takes a Team end now.”

Griffin is heartened that her group was alone in working on LGBT issues in sport. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has a sports media desk. NCLR, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the student-led Our Group, OutSports.com and individuals on campus around the country “won’t go away,” Griffin says. “We’re no longer a lonely voice in the wilderness. We’ve got lots of company now.”

Dan Woog is a journalist, educator, soccer coach, gay activist, and author of the “Jocks” series of books on gay male athletes. Visit his Web site at www.danwoog.com. He can be reached care of this publication