“My name is Brian Sims. And the story that most people like to hear me talk about is, I was a college football player, and how I sort of came out to my college football team. I’m very fond of telling people that my team came out to me, I didn’t really come out to them.”

Brian Sims, state bench press record holder and LGBT activist, tells the story of how he came out to his overwhelmingly accepting football team at Shippensburg University, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.

Sims has been featured as one of the main coming out stories for an international campaign entitled I’m From Driftwood.

The campaign aims to share coming out stories from across the globe and includes 50 stories from across America – one for each state.

“Out of nowhere the guy turns around and says, ‘Yo Sims! Are you gay?’” Sims laughs. “And it completely caught me off guard and I really quickly said, ‘Yeah man, thanks for asking!’ and we both sort of stood there and it was one of those things that felt like five minutes but it was probably five seconds and he says, ‘Cool man, thanks for telling me!’

“And we just sort of kept on walking like it hadn’t happened – we got to the car, picked up some beer [and] walked back.”

Brian tells the story of how his coach found out he was gay after he made a remark about Sims liking it “on all fours” and his teammates started to converge on the coach.

The next day, the coach stood up on a table, addressed the entire team and said, “I need everybody’s attention. Yesterday, I said something really fucking stupid. I’ve spent my whole career teaching you guys what it means to be teammates and yesterday you guys had to teach me what it means to be a teammate.”

“I knew my team would be alright when they had to pull my coaches aside and say ‘You better be alright with this because we all are’,” Sims said.

Watch his video below:

To hear other inspiring coming out stories (or even share your own!), take a look at I’m From Driftwood here.