WHAT I KNOW NOW: Sport Psychologist, Dirk Smith
Name: David “Dirk” Smith
Hometown: Denver, CO, USA
Where you live now: Cologne, Germany
What you wanted to be when you were a teenager: When I was a teenager, I was very passionate about amusement parks and roller coasters, so I aspired to become a roller coaster designer/engineer and to one day own and manage my own theme park.
What you do now: Now I am an exercise and sport scientist (PhD student), sport psychologist, sport (primarily swimming) and strength & conditioning coach, sports diversity leader, managing editor, director of continuing education and development for sport professionals in both sports diversity and sport psychology. A bit of a mouthful!
What you’re most proud of: I am most proud of the work I am doing that is having a positive impact on the LGBTQI community, especially in regard to sports and exercise.
3 words that describe your teenage self: Unassured, naive, passionate.
3 words that describe you now: Confident, focused, unapologetic.
What you would tell your teenage self: I would tell myself that one of the most important things I can do is to continue pursuing the things I am interested in and passionate about regardless of other people’s opinions. “People are going to criticize, inject their opinions and make fun of you, you are not receiving much support from your teachers, friends, and most of your family, other than your parents. But if you continue to pursue the things you love, you will find your path and ultimately find success. You will meet friends and find a community of people who will love and support you for who you are, they will help you grow, become a better person and help you find yourself. You will become part of something greater than yourself and find yourself accomplishing many of your hopes and dreams in life.
What you wish you knew about coming out that you know now: I wish that I knew how much my parents loved and supported me no matter what, I was so worried back then how they would respond to me coming out and it stressed me out to no end. But they have always been loving and supportive since the beginning, in fact when I was a kid, my dad made sure to take us to places (coffee shops, restaurants, festivals, etc.) that were in different neighborhoods with diverse communities to help us see and learn about the diversity of our society. This way, we would meet people of all different ethnicities, skin colors, religions, cultures, etc. My dad loves to recount a story where he took us to a coffee shop in the gayborhood of Denver, knowing exactly what area where we were in and joking that my mom was getting jealous by all the looks the the other guys were giving my dad. He took us there to help us see the diverse communities of people in our city. I didn’t realize any of this until years’ later, but it helped me to understand that all my teenage fears of rejection from my parents, especially my dad were completely unfounded. My dad taught us well that diversity is and should be an important part of our lives, so when I did come out to him, he was more supportive than anybody else.
What you love most about being a part of the LGBTQ+ community: So, the reason why I had such an abrupt shift from roller coasters and amusement parks to exercise and sports stems from a brief few years in between high school and college where I hadn’t quite figured out my path. I ditched the roller coaster/amusement park ambitions because I had enough of the criticism, bullying, teasing and harassment from people in all aspects of my life who didn’t bother to understand, support me, or help guide me to channel this energy into my future endeavors and it killed my passion and motivation for this career path. While I was “out” during this time, I wasn’t active in the community, and I didn’t understand “pride” or anything like that. Although I was interested to being active in the community, I didn’t know how. I felt alone, isolated, and I hit a low point in my life where my mental health tanked. I had no friends, no real hobbies or interests and nothing really happening in my life. When I was a kid, I was a sucker for inspirational sports movies, and I loved the Olympics. So, during this low point in my life happen to be around the time of the Summer Olympics and it inspired me to return to competitive swimming (which I did as a kid). I still wanted to become part of the LGBTQI community and meet new friends, so I sought out my local LGBTQI swim team, the Denver SQUID Aquatics Club and joined. Within a year my life did a complete 180 and I found myself happy, surrounded by so many friends who offered lots of love and support and helped me find my way. I participated in my first pride festival and marched in the parade, and I was introduced to the Gay Games which is a large scale, international, multi-sport event that is for the LGBTQI community. When I participated in that, I soon realized the scope of the movement I became part of and I felt like I had become part of something greater than myself. This led me down my current path in pursuing a career in sport and exercise because getting back into swimming, especially with an LGBTQI swim team that shared my interest, really helped me learn to accept myself, to grow as a person and find the kind of community and social support I needed and felt like I never had before. Thus, it inspired my work in sport and exercise that has always been focused on helping other people learn how sport and exercise can be a form of self-expression that has a positive impact on their lives, the way it did mine. Events like Gay Games helps us to see and discover that we have more in common than what separates us, to bring people together under a common purpose and celebrate ourselves and each other. I have long been inspired by such events and always dreamed about being part of such a movement, but I never believed that I could find that within the LGBTQI community itself until I realized that it was there all along. In the 10–15 years since I first joined that swim team, I have found my passion in continuing to grow and develop as a professional, athlete and individual. I am continuously pursuing more opportunities to accomplish my goals and mission in this regard, and I’ve gotten the opportunity to connect with and meet people from all over the world who have helped me see just how truly big and diverse the LGBTQI community is. When I first starting to figure out my sexual orientation, I felt alone, alienated, and isolated. I felt like the only one with these kinds of feelings, but nothing could be further from the truth. In every culture, every society, every community, there are people within the LGBTQI community who take the best parts of their culture and shape into something that works best for them. My passion for sports is a direct result of these experiences and guides me today in my work, hoping that the work I do helps to support someone when they need it most, just as the LGBTQI sports community did when I needed it most. This is truly what I love most about it all.
Person you most admire: Kenneth Felts. Ken is a former personal training client of mine who became a really good friend. When I first met Ken, he was 85 years old and he wanted to start training with me to help him improve his fitness and strength, which is really important to maintain as you get older. We had been training together for many years and developed a close friendship during that time. A few years in I could tell that Ken was gay, but that he wasn’t comfortable sharing it. So, during I sessions I shared stories from my own experiences and tried to help him safe in sharing his experiences with me. It worked and he eventually and officially “came out” to me. He struggled with his sexual orientation throughout most of his life and it was really a large burden he carried on his shoulders for decades. Unfortunately, Ken grew up in an era where being gay was criminalized, LGBTQI people would lose their jobs, their livelihoods, arrested and beaten regularly. This was an era where LGBTQI people were kicked to the curb of society and literally beaten down, well before Stonewall, at the height of the Lavender Scare. During the time, Ken at a fleeting romance with another young man that he fell in love with, but he had to decide if he wanted to pursue it at great risk to himself and his life, or to stay in the closet and live the life “expected” by him by his religious upbringing and conservative society. He chose the latter and lived with the secret and the heartache for decades thereafter. Ken had planned to take this secret to the grave, but I was one of the few he ever shared it with. For years I encouraged Ken to write his memoirs and share his story, because it is a powerful story, and it offers a unique insight into what many people went through during that time. A few years later, I had already moved to Germany and while Ken and I stayed in touch, he was struggling with some major health issues. To be honest, we both felt like he didn’t have much time left. Even more so, the weight of all this burden he carried was really pushing down on him to the point that when I visited the USA in 2019 and had lunch with him, well he wasn’t doing so good. Physically and mentally, he was sick and was just counting the days at that point. Shortly thereafter, the pandemic hit and that made things worse. During the lockdown, Ken told me he was finally sitting down to write his memoirs as a way to keep himself productive since he couldn’t do much outside the house. That meant however that he had to relive some memories that he had hope to forget and brought up a lot of feelings he had suppressed for years. This really took a toll on his mental health as he reflected a lot back on what “could have been” as opposed to what was. It all came to a head one day when his daughter visited and he was crying, she had asked him what was wrong, and he just blurted out how much he had missed the man he loved all those years ago. He officially came out as gay to his own daughter and shared his story. His daughter showed him nothing but love and support, helping him work through those feelings and reflecting a lot back on how it impacted their relationship. Later that week he made a post on his Facebook page publicly coming out to friends and family for the first time. His daughter’s wife then shared the story with a local newspaper who published it and within weeks his story had gone viral. The news about a 92-year-old man finding the confidence, strength, and courage in himself to come out as gay really spoke to a lot of people and his story had spread quicker than Covid-19 itself. It was surreal seeing his photo on newspapers all the way here in Germany and all over the world of the man whom I spent many hours with getting to know and who thought I would be the only person he ever told that he was gay. His story hit the national and international news and he was truly a viral sensation. A local news anchor in Denver filmed a documentary about Ken and his story, unpacking it in greater detail that ultimately won them a local Daytime Emmy award. In the last two visits to Denver where I got to see Ken, he went from a frail man who was struggling to hold on to a man who is just glowing in confidence and free from the burden he carried all of his life. After coming out, Ken’s physical health had improved immensely as did his mental and social health, he even met and fell in love again. I knew all those years prior that Ken’s story would be inspirational, even if he didn’t always believe it himself. He published his book and is a chronicle of his life experiences throughout times and offers quite an insight into what the world was like from his perspective. I am most happy to see that he has seen and experienced how inspirational it is to LGBTQI people all over the world. Today, Ken isn’t just surviving or holding on, he is truly thriving, and he is experiencing some of the best years of his life because he took a leap of faith, despite living through generations of people trying to stop him, and he chose to come out and live his life authentically. He is happy, healthy, and thriving. He has become an active part of the LGBTQI community, including participating in pride festivals, the Denver LGBTQ Center, and other events. I’ve learned a lot from my friendship with Ken, and I know I will forever cherish the opportunity I’ve had to be part of his journey.
If you could change one thing about the world, you would: I would work to make the ability to travel and experience different countries and cultures more accessible to everybody. I firmly believe that everybody needs to spend time outside of our hometowns and outside of our bubbles, even for just a bit, and experience different cultures, languages, people, and communities to learn from and get to know. One of the most valuable experiences in my life has been moving from the US to Germany to pursue graduate school because in the few years I’ve been here, I’ve met so many people from all over the world who have helped widen my perspective and helped me learn a lot more about the diversity of culture in the world of which we exist. We often talk about “world peace” and all that jazz, but the biggest force that will help us achieve that is to learn from each other, embrace the diversity of our communities and learn that we have much more in common than we realize. Allow that diversity to help shape our community and we will find ourselves all growing to learn, understand and know more than we could ever achieve as individuals.
What inspires you now: Lately, it has been the drag queen, Tandi Iman Dupree who is most famous and well known for the viral video of her lip sync performance of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” at Miss Black Gay America 2001 (YouTube “best drag queen entrance ever” you will find the video). I work with a few different professional sports teams as a sport psychologist and one of the teams we’ve been working on building confidence in performance. I use Dupree’s drag performance as an example of being able to channel nervous energy and anxiety into a performance through confidence. Her performance is a perfect example of this because the stunts and dances that she does in that video require her to be absolutely confident in her abilities in order to pull it off. She is most definitely nervous going into it, especially during her entrance, but she channels that nervous energy so well into the routine that she really wraps us into her performance and truly owns it. She exudes confidence, passion, strength, style, and pure skill during that performance, and she’s having fun as she does it. With her help, I am using that as an example of what we can truly aspire to achieve as athletes in our own pursuits as well. In turn, it is inspiring me to channel more of that confidence into my own work and performance, even more than I did before.
