We can’t tell athletes to “stick to sports” when gun violence crashes their own party

“My team around me knows that if I want to say something, I’m going to say it,” Coco Gauff told reporters after she reached her first Grand Slam final, at Roland Garros in 2022.

In this case, Gauff wasn’t referring to something she had stated verbally, but something she had written in bright marker on a camera lens after her semifinal: “Peace. End gun violence”

It was a simple message, and uncontroversial on its surface. It also made sense in the news environment of the moment; there had been several mass shootings in the United States over the previous days. But her words were also a little jarring in that context. Gauff was talking about a very American issue while she was in Paris. She was also interrupting a celebration of her own breakthrough victory to bring up a vexing and deadly serious subject that, for French spectators on a sunny spring day, might have felt a million miles away.

But it didn’t feel that way for Gauff, then 18. Like so many Americans her age, gun violence at schools in the States has touched her personally.

“For me, it’s kind of close to home,” she said. “I had some friends that were part of the Parkland [Fla.] shooting…I remember watching that experience pretty much first-hand.

“I just think it’s crazy. I was maybe 14 or 13 when that happened, and still nothing has changed.”

Unfortunately, we received another reminder of the truth of Gauff’s words on Wednesday. February 14th was the sixth anniversary of the Parkland school shooting; now it will also be known as the date of the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs victory parade, in which one person has died and several others have life-threatening injuries.

When athletes make political statements, even ones as neutral-sounding and apolitical as “end gun violence,” they’re inevitably instructed to “stick to sports.” The alliteration, I guess, makes it an irresistibly catchy taunt. Travis Kelce, the Chiefs’ tight end, heard that sentiment a lot last year when he did promotional spots for another seemingly uncontroversial topic, the Covid vaccine. But can anyone tell Kelce, or any of his teammates, to stick to sports after what happened at the team’s celebration, and to their own fans? The same goes for Serena Williams, whose sister Yetunde was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2003.

Gun violence is a universal concern in the U.S.; it affects urban and rural, black and white, young and old, Democrat and Republican. Sports cuts across those same boundaries; this year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched television show, of any kind, in U.S. history. Gauff knows that gives her an important platform.

“That was just a message for the people back at home to watch, and for people around the world to watch,” she said in Paris. “Hopefully it gets into the heads of people in office to hopefully change things.”

But she also knows that using that platform has to be done with care, and that anything remotely political—even “end gun violence”—will rub some fans the wrong way.

“If I do say something, most of the time I put a lot of thought into what I say.”

Gauff is level-headed enough to know that not everyone is going to agree with her, including her fellow players. If a conservative-leaning U.S. athlete speaks out against gun-safety laws, they also shouldn’t be told to “stick to sports.” They should hear the other side of the argument instead.

Whichever side someone is on, Gauff’s clarity and commitment makes her a role model for how people who play sports can stop sticking to them.