Officials from a rural high school in Kentucky are coming under fire after it was revealed that an openly gay basketball player was omitted from a two-page spread in the school's 2015 yearbook, Out Sports reports.
Betsy Layne High School, located in Betsy Layne, Floyd County, highlighted its boys basketball team in its 2015 yearbook. It featured all of the seniors on the team except Dalton Maldonado, the team's starting point guard who came out as gay earlier this year.
Maldonado took to Facebook Tuesday to talk about the situation.
"I would hear things that teachers would say, and many media outlets would say I 'claimed' this happened in spite of the pictures and text messages I had from my coaches as proof," he wrote. "Then I had a person officiated with the school tell me what they had learned about the school attempting to cover up the whole story. I recently saw my senior yearbook, I flipped right to the sports basketball page only to find my senior basketball picture missing...which devastated me."
He went on to say that months earlier "a kid tried to humiliate me by calling me a faggot in front of my entire fan base and team at a basketball tournament. I came out to my team on that day, and they all stood by my side in spite of the other team trying to scare and intimidate me because of my sexuality."
OutSports reports Betsy Layne High School officials have "repeatedly refused to answer questions" or dispute the senior's claims. The website also called out the school's alleged decision to nix Maldonado out of the yearbook.
"This is the latest slap in the face of Maldonado and the entire LGBT community by a high school administration that simply won't accept that one of its star athletes is gay and was harassed for his sexual orientation by an opposing basketball team last December," OutSports' Cyd Zeigler writes. "The school's yearbook has omitted its starting senior point guard from the senior boys basketball tribute page in the yearbook, a deeply insulting blow to an athlete who has contributed to his school."
Maldonado's story got the attention of "The Late Late Show" host James Corden, who addressed the athlete's situation Wednesday night, E! Online reports.
"In Kentucky, Dalton Maldonado, a high school senior and starting point guard on the school's basketball team was omitted from the team's yearbook page. Some are saying it's because he's gay. 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. "But his school, Betsy Layne High School, claims omitting him was an oversight. That's a pretty big oversight! He's the starting point guard! Do you know what I mean? That's like not putting Tom Cruise on the poster for 'Mission: Impossible'! They're like, 'Tom! We totally forgot! Oh! We've put Ving Rhames in there twice!'"
Watch the clip below:
