A College Soccer Player Used A Game Of Hangman To Come Out To Her Team

Sometimes coming out to friends requires a tearful and serious conversation, but sometimes (like when you're pretty positive that they'll be cool with your sexuality) it can be a little more fun. Case in point: Lindsey Farrell, who came out to her soccer team via a game of Hangman.

Farrell is a soccer and lacrosse player at McDaniel College in Maryland. In a new short documentary made by her high school friend, Mark Dragon, she recaps the day she came out to her team in detail — and it's one of those heartwarming coming out stories that give us a little bit of faith in humanity.

As Farrell says in the video, she and her team were kept inside during practice one day on account of the rain. On days like that, they often play Hangman and listen to music, so a friend of hers who already knew that Farrell is gay suggested that she come out to the team and their coach by spelling it out on the Hangman board.

After a little goading, Farrell wrote out enough blank spaces to spell: C-O-A-C-H, I-M G-A-Y.

Her friend made the game easy (since she knew what it said) by shouting out the correct letters one at a time. And when the team finally realized what Farrell had written, she said that a silence fell over the whole room.

But then, she saw that "tears were coming out of 17 of my best friends' eyes," and her coach jumped up from the back of the room to give her a hug.

“It was overjoying to know that I have another mentor, another 20-some girls behind me and supporting me behind my process," she said. And even though it took a little bit of convincing before Farrell agreed to come out through the game, it certainly isn't a decision she regrets. She says in the video that even as she was writing the word "gay," she knew that it was right.

"It was so easy to write, because that's who I am,” she said.

Not everyone is as lucky as Farrell to have such an amazing support group behind her, but we have been seeing more and more positive coming out stories on television and in real life. And maybe the more we see stories like these, the more they'll happen.

[H/T: Outsports]