On Pride Night, Valley reflects on LGBTQ inclusion
STORRS — When the Uconn women’s basketball team took the court for the final home game of the regular season against Villanova, the Huskies donned new navy blue warmup shirts that included a rainbow-striped logo celebrating Pride Night at Gampel Pavilion.
LGBTQ+ acceptance is a fairly new phenomenon in women’s basketball, and Uconn assistant Morgan Valley has witnessed the evolution firsthand over her career as both a player and coach. Valley was not out to anyone when she played at Uconn from 200004, largely because she said she threw herself so completely into basketball. She almost never saw positive depictions of the LGBTQ+ community in the early 2000s, and that included within college sports.
“I was just pretty much solely focused on basketball, which probably should have been my first key,” Valley said with a chuckle. “I think I had a similar journey to most people my age … It was like, ‘Oh that girl, she’s gay,’ was a negative. It was just the times. You didn’t hold anything against them, but it was talked about in a way that, now it’s like nobody cares? I mean, people care, but they don’t at the same time.”
Valley was far from alone in the closet during her playing days. Diana Taurasi, who was in the same class as Valley, came out in 2017 when she married former Phoenix Mercury teammate Penny Taylor. Sue Bird, another former Uconn teammate from 2000-2002, also came out in 2017 by publicly announcing her relationship with USWNT star Megan Rapinoe, now her fiancee. Bird and Rapinoe recently appeared on the “Pablo Finds Out” podcast with Pablo Torre, and Bird discussed the pressure she felt as a young women’s basketball star to hide her sexuality.
“It was basically told to me
that the only way I was going to have success from a marketing standpoint is to really sell this straight girl next door,” Bird said on the podcast. “At 21, I was afraid of all of it. I openly admit this. The way I feel now about all of those conversations, I have opinions, I have thoughts, I have no problem talking about them publicly. But at 21 I was afraid, and now you’re telling me that my career might not take off ? So I just had it in me that this wasn’t something I’d share publicly, even though I was living my life that way.”
Bird said she had relationships with women in college in secret, but Valley said she never even considered exploring her sexuality until she graduated college. Things changed when she started dating her wife, Lauren, in 2016, but Valley, now 42, was not open about their relationship until her early 30s.
“It was like don’t say anything, don’t talk about it, And it was like that for me for a long time. Then eventually it was like, I don’t really care,” Valley said. “Especially when you make a decision to get married to somebody, it’s like you have to be comfortable in that because you’ve chosen to commit to someone, and you don’t want to hide that … I’m not very outspoken, but it’s just who I am.”
Since she returned to her alma mater as an assistant coach in 2021, Valley said Uconn has completely embraced her and her family. She has a 1-year-old son JJ who the players adore and ask about constantly, though he hasn’t made it to many games this year — Valley said she’s strict about his schedule, and they often play in the middle of nap time.
“I haven’t felt anything other than accepted and supported here since I got here,” Valley said. “Coach (Geno Auriemma)’s kids are older, but when I played … they were always at the gym, and it adds a human aspect. When you see your coaches, you see them on the court for two hours a day, three hours a day. You don’t see them interact with their kids, so I felt like when I played having them come to practice was awesome, because you got to see this different side of Coach.”
Valley still finds herself pleasantly surprised by how comfortable athletes can be with their identities in 2024. Huskies sophomore Ayanna Patterson posts regularly with her girlfriend, USJ guard Jordan Farrell, and Valley said prospects will casually mention girlfriends to her during recruiting calls without even knowing that Valley is married to woman.
“It’s really making me feel like proud that they’re comfortable,” Valley said. I think when you’re not (comfortable), there tends to be struggle. Whether you maybe start drinking, or maybe you start doing things that are uncharacteristic for who you are because you’re struggling and don’t know how to cope with it .Seeing young people be comfortable, it makes me feel happy for them that, that they’re able to be exactly who they are.”