It’s All Good: Giant’s Wide Receiver Victor Cruz Tackles Bullying Posted by Max Pete on 01/14/14 | Filed under Videos, General Awesomeness, Sports, Its All Good

It’s hard to image that one of NFL’s most loved players, Victor Cruz, was bullied a lot growing up.  In a recent video, Cruz spoke out about facing racial discrimination growing up, while lending support to a teen named Joey Kemmerling, who had been bullied for being gay.

"Sports have been a source of pain for me," explained Kemmerling. "I dealt with a lot of bullying, particularly from my school's sports teams." The teen came out in middle school, where the locker room was a place of fear and homophobia.

In USA’s Network’s Characters Unite series, Kemmerling bravely revisited the locker room, but this time it was at the New York Giants stadium. The visit to the locker room included meeting New York Giants WR Victor Cruz. After touring the locker room, the two sat down to share their personal stories about being bullied and how they moved forward.

"I battled some adversity when I was young about discrimination," said Cruz, who is half African-American and half Puerto Rican. "Where I grew up, the Latins were on one side and the African-Americans and everyone else were on the other side. When fights would break out, I would stand in the middle and just stay out of it. And then I would be called names and ridiculed."

"I ended up having to go through four high schools," said Kemmerling. "And in tenth grade, I made a decision that I didn't want to live anymore. I went home and I cried in my mom's arms all night. And then we worked through it."

I chose to cover this piece because bullying is a big issue in schools today and it is great to see people who were bullied, but turned their experience into something positive to help the youth. No one deserves to be picked on for who they are or what they look like, and it is great raising awareness to stop bullying once and for all. Fortunately, I was never really bullied as a kid, but I still find it my responsibility to stand up for people who are.