Ex-WNBA Player Claims She Lost Coaching Job Because She’s No Longer Gay

Former University of Southern California and WNBA basketball player Camille LeNoir claims that a college revoked an assistant coach job offer because she implied in a 2011 YouTube video that Christianity is the reason that she no longer identified as a lesbian.

“If you’re in a same-sex relationship, it’s is not worth losing your soul,” she asserts, among other things about her faith, in the aforementioned video, which at this writing has about 70,000 hits.

Camille LeNoir was drafted by the Washington Mystics of the WNBA in the second round of the 2009 draft, although she didn’t make the roster. She later played professionally in Greece. LeNoir is now suing New Mexico State University for discrimination on the basis of religion and sexual identity in a California federal court. She is apparently seeking $6 million in damages.

LeNoir claims that-then New Mexico State head coach Mark Trakh offered her the job in April 2016 and then took it back about 48 hours before she was getting on a plane for Las Cruces, the Washington Post reported.

“For most of her basketball career, LeNoir identified as gay…Trakh retracted the job offer, LeNoir said, and advised her to remove the video if she ever wanted to work in college basketball. LeNoir said she was devastated…’I felt the job was taken away because of my heterosexuality,’ LeNoir, 31, said in a recent interview.”

New Mexico State has denied the discrimination allegations, adding that Trakh lacked the authority to offer LeNoir a job, but the school apparently did include the following in legal papers, according to the Post.

“In court filings, New Mexico State says that LeNoir’s feelings about homosexuality shared in the video ‘would have had an adverse impact’ on her ‘ability to effectively coach and recruit players who identify as LGBT.'”

Sexual orientation discrimination is illegal under New Mexico law as well as violating the policies of the university.

LeNoir currently operates a basketball training business for young people and is an assistant coach at a Los Angeles-area Catholic high school. As a collegian, she scored about 1,300 total points while averaging approximately 11 points per game in helping USC make the NCAA tournament twice. In September, Narbonne High School in California where she starred retired Camille LeNoir’s number.

Separately, retired WNBA player Candice Wiggins claimed in late January that she was bullied during her time in the league because she was heterosexual, the San Diego Union reported at the time.

[Featured Image by Reed Saxon/AP Images]