College gymnast wins 2 NCAA titles after embracing life as a gay athlete
Cooper Kim won the NCAA national title in the floor exercise, and the team event with Stanford. He now comes out publicly as gay.
Mark
Cooper Kim didn’t expect the last two weeks.
Few people really “expect” to win a national championship — and then do it. Let alone two in the same weekend.
While the athletes on the Stanford Cardinal men’s gymnastics team all knew they had a great shot a team national title, Cooper Kim didn’t expect what he accomplished at the NCAA Men’s Gymnastics Championships earlier this month.
At the NCAA National Championships, Kim performed a floor exercise for the ages, earning the top spot and an individual national title with his athleticism and artistry.
Many athletes had a shot at the individual floor title. Kim shined above them all.
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“I went into that knowing I could possibly All-American,” Kim told Outsports in an interview from his west campus dorm last week. All-American honors are bestowed on the top eight finishers at Nationals.
“Winning it never fully crossed my mind. I kind of went into it and let my routine happen, I let it flow. and it worked out.”
That’s a major understatement. Kim’s score of 14.466 was a massive number and earned him an individual national title.
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Stanford wins the NCAA men’s gymnastics championship
His No. 1 finish also helped Stanford in a major way win the team title. Stanford won it’s sixth National Championship in the last seven seasons, creating a dynasty that rivals Oklahoma for the greatest ever.
Kim earned All-American status in three events, including another Top-3 finish in high bar. His other All-American top-8 performance was vault.
Yet it’s that floor exercise that stands out. It’s Kim’s favorite event, and he embraces the particular artistry of it.
“You’re seeing a lot more people integrating their own style into it,” Kim said of the evolving floor competition. “It used to be this very [monotonous] – all the routines looked the same.
“But what I’ve seen recently is a lot of people adding in their own little flair. Artistry that feels cool to them.”
Cooper Kim expresses himself as a gay athlete
Yet going into the season, there was a goal well beyond All-American status that he held. More important, in a lot of way.
The young gay athlete wanted to share all of who he was. Ahead of this past season, he shared that goal with his team.
“There was another goal that I was unsure of telling them about,” Kim said about a pre-season meeting with his coaches at Stanford. “But I’m very glad I did. I told them I really wanted to tap into my authentic self and show off my true gymnastics and my true personality in the gym.”
He was talking with his coaches for the first time about being a gay athlete at the highest levels of college sports. It was territory often uncharted publicly by male athletes before him.
Yet Kim opened the conversation, and his coaches and teammates responded beautifully.
“They were so supportive of it, and I could tell throughout the season they just let me be me in the gym. It helped me so much.
“Not only did it help me in the gym athletically, but also as a person outside the gym. I felt so free. It helped me to excel and tap into the gymnastics that felt right to me.
“All my support staff supports me for me being me.”
It’s exactly the environment Kim hoped to find at Stanford. Recruited by other schools like Michigan — where he grew up and who beat Stanford for the national title last season — he thought he had found a place on The Farm that would fully embrace him.
He was right.
“That was the biggest thing I was looking for when I was being recruited,” Kim said. “Do I see myself fully expressing myself here?
“At Stanford, even beyond my team, everyone here isn’t just accepting, but they are willing to listen. I feel like, though we all come from different backgrounds, they’ve fully listened to me and fully understand where I’m coming from.
“That’s what has allowed me to succeed in athletics and academics.”
Coming out as a gay athlete is evolving
Still, Kim isn’t out to everyone in his life. With this article, of course, he will be. Coming-out conversations are not always easy to start. Over the years, Outsports has found many athletes embrace our starting of conversations like this with loved ones and friends.
Kim knows his family is supportive. He’s dipped his toes in the waters with his family and others close to him, and that’s been met with an embrace.
Still, the young man aiming for a spot at the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics has some conversations ahead.
In the meantime, as he balances the wild life of a Stanford academic aiming for medical school, with winning national championships, he knows he has to find escapes whenever he can.
“I get off campus as much as I can. With my teammates or my friends. Just go get boba, go get lunch, get some ice cream. If you’re always in go-go-go mode, it’s exhausting.
“We’re not robots.”
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