'I grew up playing this soccer as a girl': Soccer coach comes out to team as transgender with inspirational speech

A video of a youth soccer coach holding a team meeting in which he comes out as transgender to his players has gone viral.

Karl Lightner, 36, is the founder and director of Portland Community Football Club in Portland, Oregon, which aims to provide an inclusive and equal opportunity for underprivileged youths.

In the 8-minute clip, Lightner starts off a team meeting by telling players of a coaching trip he took to Washington D.C. recently.

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"One of the things that I realized while I was there is that we ask a lot of you guys to show up and be yourselves and be who you are and get to be better players," Lightner says in the video that has garnered more than 50,000 views since its upload to Youtube Saturday evening.

"I haven't totally shared with you something about myself that is kind of important that some of you may or may not know," he continues.

At that point, Lightner comes out as transgender to the students.

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"I grew up playing soccer as a girl," Lightner goes on to explain in the video. "And that's not something I share with players or people in the sports world very often because it's not an easy thing. We have a lot of rules in sports about how boys play and how girls play. And that's not really fair."

Towards the end of the huddle, Lightner asks his players if anyone had any questions, to which he was one player simply asked, "How old are you?"

Involved with youth sports since he was a teenager, Lightner told Buzzfeed News that he had to step down from coaching when he was 26 to begin his transition to becoming male. Lightner said that he felt he had a responsibility to come out in order to practice what he preached at work.

"I may have this white skin and I may look like I just cruised through life with a lot of privilege — which I have had — but I have one thing that a lot of people don't know about me," he said.

Watch the video below of Lightner's speech, titled "Authenticity":