Two year ago, when this video was filmed, Matt Lynch had yet to coach a college game and had just started recruiting players for a program that was being rebuilt from scratch. Two years later, Lynch has shown that he has what it takes to build a winning program.
“I want to prove that Matt Lynch as a person can coach basketball,” Lynch said in the video, the latest in the Outsports Being Out installment. “This is a place where I have the opportunity to be a first-year head coach, and I’m betting on myself here.”
“Here” was the University of South Carolina Salkehatchie and Lynch made the bet pay off. His teams have won 44 games in two seasons, which included a conference title in his first season and saw him being named his conference’s coach of the year this season.
Lynch has done all this as the only openly gay head coach in men’s college basketball, a distinction he acknowledges but doesn’t dwell on.
Get off the sidelines and into the game
Our weekly newsletter is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
“I don’t really feel any pressure from being one of the first out men’s basketball coaches,” he said. “I’m just Matt Lynch. That’s just who I am as a person. You know the color of my eyes, my … orientation, you know my hair color, all of that stuff is just a part of who I am as a whole, and I don’t really focus on that. I focus on the opportunity at hand.”
Lynch came out on Outsports in 2020, out of a job and yet determined to no longer hide. His journey at Salkehatchie was so compelling it earned him a major New York Times profile, which said he took the worst job in college basketball and “turned it into a slam dunk.”
But Lynch was just happy to have a job and put his energy into rebuilding the program, which included raising money, recruiting players and finding them housing, to mundane but necessary tasks like ripping out the locker room carpeting. It all paid off and confirmed what Lynch believes about the nature of coaching.
“The thing I love most about coaching is the ability to build relationships,” he said. “And I joke with all my guys that like, ‘Hey, I’m coming to the wedding, whether I’m invited or not.’ You know life is about people, valuing people. And what better occupation to do that than coaching.”
As for his orientation, Lynch let his team know about him in the preseason and then it was on to the X’s and O’s of being a ball coach.
“I was very blessed to not have my [being gay] come up very often last year,” he told Outsports in 2024. “I hope that continues. I hope to be judged by my character and my ability to lead a group of young men towards a collective goal. I pray that in time this becomes a nonfactor, and I can just be an old ball coach.”
Two years after first coaching and five years after coming out, Lynch sees being out as a process.
“Being out means being my true authentic self,” he said. “I would say that initially I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just come out and that will be a one time occurrence,’ but in reality I still find myself coming out almost every day, five years after coming out.
“Visibility is important. Hopefully it shows to the younger people in sports that there is room for everyone.”
Subscribe to the Outsports newsletter to keep up with your favorite out athletes, inspiring LGBTQ sports stories, and more.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
