Gay basketball player excluded from high school yearbook

The school who failed to include an out gay US high school athlete in its basketball team yearbook tribute has responded to claims their actions were intentional.

Outsports reports the Betsy Layne High School administrators deliberately left Kentucky teenager Dalton Maldonado out of a two-page spread which featured images of every other player on the senior basketball team.

“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,” Maldonado wrote on Facebook.

He said the omission was another attempt by the school to cover up an incident last December involving homophobic slurs from a rival team which left him in tears.

As news of the incident has spread across social media, Floyd County Superintendent Henry Webb said the omission was “through error”.

“We do acknowledge that none of these images may be as meaningful to the student athlete as his individual basketball picture and we apologse to him and his family for the error,” he said in a statement on behalf of school administrators.

Maldonado has slammed the school and said he would make sure no other Floyd County LGBT teen would have to “face this type of discrimination”.

“Earlier today, after receiving many good wishes and lots of support from all over the country, I received a call from the superintendent of schools,” he said.

“He went on to say that they were going to make a new annual and he hoped I knew they were so proud of me. However, here is the picture that should have been in the yearbook, along with the rest of the senior basketball players!

“I don’t care if I was in other parts 100 times – my individual picture wasn’t in there! I find it unbelievable that their “investigation” took less than one whole school day and once again they’re just letting it go.

“I will not stop fighting this. No one deserves this.”

Words by TROY NANKERVIS.