Because he had come out as gay during his senior year.
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For Dalton Maldonado, he wants the story out there so that the gay students who succeed him at the Kentucky high school he just graduated from won’t feel so excluded. Since then, the teen said he’s been repeatedly harassed – which the school denied, despite various eyewitnesses coming to Maldonado’s defense.
According to Dalton Maldonado, who played on Betsy Layne High School’s basketball team for THREE YEARS, he was removed from the team’s yearbook page.
“Descriptions of pounding on bus windows, vehicle chases through the streets of Lexington, hotel lockdowns and police escorts went beyond hyperbole, to reach the bounds of outright fabrication”, school officials wrote. I find it unbelievable that their “investigation” took less than one whole school day and once again they’re just letting it go!
Floyd County Schools Superintendent Henry Webb told USA Today High School Sports he was investigating the omission, which he said seemed to be due to “sheer human error.” He noted that Maldonado appears in 15 photos throughout the yearbook and has the school’s full support.
But several teammates and adults, including the assistant coach, corroborated the details, Zeigler says, adding that school administrators claimed the student had fabricated his story. They took Outsports’ first article about my experience and swept it under the rug, as if the harassment and humiliation never happened! I refuse to let this happen again!,’ he continued. While it might be too late to put Maldonado back among the seniors on the school’s basketball page, at least he’ll be able to know that he wasn’t left out on goal … or that if he was, the person responsible will have to deal with serious repercussions. I will not stop fighting this.
‘No one deserves this, and I’ll make sure no other LGBT teen in Floyd [County] has to face this type of discrimination!’ he added. Sadly, he hasn’t spoke to his older brother since December because of his coming out. But now he’s on his way to the University of Louisville, where he’s interested in studying a range of subjects – law, business and sports administration (he won’t continue with basketball).
“A kid tried to humiliate me by calling me a f****t in front of my entire fan base and team at a basketball tournament”.
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“My classmates were wonderful”, Maldonado said. “That’s right! He’s a gay basketball player-or as I like to call him, a basketball player, because, you know, there’s no such thing as gay basketball”, Corden said.
