Danny O’Shea and Ellie Kam coach is proud to be gay in figure skating
Drew Meekins will fulfill his Olympic dream with Team USA coaching skating pair Danny O'Shea and Ellie Kam. The post Danny O’Shea and Ellie Kam coach is proud to be gay in figure skating appeared first on Outsports.
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Drew Meekins had Olympic aspirations when he was a young figure skater growing up on the frozen ponds in Massachusetts, no different from virtually everyone who takes to the ice at a young age.
Yet Meekins’ Olympic aspirations were very much within his grasp. In 2006, at age 20, the hopes of the pair skater took a giant leap forward as he and skating partner Julia Vlassov won the World Junior Championship.
In fourth place after their short program at those Championships, their come-from-behind gold with their free skate put the 2010 Olympics very much within Meekins’ grasp.
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En route to his dream, Meekins was on the U.S. National Team for several years. Yet something happened along the way: a dislocated his shoulder. And it didn’t dislocate just once, but several times.
For a male pair skater — expected to lift and toss his skating partner — a shoulder injury is tough to overcome.
Moving to the senior circuit, he and new partner Jessica Rose Paetsch finished 10th at the U.S. Championships in 2009. He got shoulder surgery in 2011, but he knew his time competing on the ice at the national and international level was coming to an end.
“I was never able to get fully back from the injury,” Meekins recently told Outsports. Yet while his shoulder had failed him, something in him still lingered.
“My love for skating and my Olympic aspirations were still strong.”
So Meekins turned to coaching, where his shoulder wasn’t an issue. Over the last decade he’s worked as a coach or choreographer with many young figure skaters, including Olympic gold medalist Vincent Zhou and various other medalists at the World Junior Championships.
Now Drew Meekins is headed to Milan for his first Winter Olympics as a head coach, coaching Team USA skating pair Danny O’Shea and Ellie Kam.
“It has been the honor of a lifetime to lead us through navigating our campaign to the Olympics,” Meekins wrote when it was announced the team he coached would take one of the two pair skating spots for Team USA at the Milan Winter Olympics.
Drew Meekins had gay role models in figure skating
Meekins has now been out as a gay man in figure skating for many years.
“Growing up as a figure skater, I was lucky that there were examples of gay men around me,” he said. “Looking back I realize I was so lucky to have that representation in my daily life. I saw gay men and couples who were loved and who were praised. I knew them personally.”
Now that he’s not competing as an athlete himself, Meekins is a leader in the figure skating community in the United States. That makes it that much more important to him to be publicly out as a gay man in sports.
“It’s so important to me now as a coach. I encounter a lot of young people, and I want to be the kind of person who can inspire the same courage and self love that was inspired in me.”
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With figure skating having the highest percentage of publicly out gay athletes in any men’s sport at the Olympics — Summer or Winter — Meekins knows that him being out as a gay coach isn’t going to set the world on fire.
Yet he also recognizes the importance of as many LGBTQ people being out in sports including figure skating as possible.
“It’s not groundbreaking for a figure skater to be gay, but in the Olympic world we still need to recognize athletes and coaches who are comfortable being out. There is still a lot of stigma about being ‘tough enough’ to be a leader.”
You can follow Drew Meekins on Instagram.
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The post Danny O’Shea and Ellie Kam coach is proud to be gay in figure skating appeared first on Outsports.
