The Truth is Powerful
A few years ago, Benjamin Gutschow was so shy that he found it hard to communicate with his soccer teammates.
Ben was so quiet that his coach, Adam Brownold, decided to show the Winchester Thurston School freshman that he not only had a voice but that he needed to use it. One day during practice, Brownold instructed Ben to go to the center of the soccer pitch and scream in front of his teammates.
“As a 15-year-old on a team with entirely all seniors — and at that point, I was still in the closet and was afraid that something would happen or somebody would find out I was gay — that was difficult,” Ben remembers.
“Those were the fears in my mind. But at that moment, when he made me scream in front of my peers, after that there was not much I was afraid of.”
Ben, now 18 and a senior, has become a prominent voice for social justice in Pittsburgh. Currently a community organizer for social and […]