Jesse Kortuem Comes Out And Credits “Heated Rivalry” For Giving Him The Push
A former hockey player named Jesse Kortuem has shared a public coming-out post, saying the TV series Heated Rivalry helped him finally speak up about a part of his life he kept locked down for years.
Kortuem’s statement opens with a detail any hockey kid knows by heart: the moment after the Zamboni has resurfaced the rink, when the ice is smooth and the place feels almost quiet. For him, that sound also carried something else. He wrote that the rink was where he felt he had to hide.
He said he’s usually private online, but something “sparked” in him recently, and he gave a clear nod to Heated Rivalry as part of that shift.
Why he walked away, even while playing well.
Kortuem grew up in Minnesota as the youngest of four boys, in a world where sport and competition were everything. He describes feeling a split between who he was and who he thought a hockey player was allowed to be.
“I loved the game, but I lived with a persistent fear. I wondered how I could be gay and still play such a tough and masculine sport.”
He wrote that, at 17, he stepped away from his high school team. Years later, he returned to the ice while living in New York and Atlanta, but still couldn’t bring himself to be fully out with his adult teams. “On the outside, I was still a top-tier player. On the inside, I was still that kid in Minnesota hiding,” he said.
The moment things shifted in 2017.
Kortuem says the pressure of keeping that secret reached a breaking point in 2017. He decided to give a gay hockey tournament “one last shot” by signing up for the Sin City Classic in Las Vegas, where he met other gay hockey players and found a sense of belonging he hadn’t felt before.
From there, he describes building real friendships through hockey across multiple cities, including Vancouver and Toronto, and slowly moving away from what he calls the “closeted athlete persona.”
Where the post lands now, and why it matters.
This past weekend, Kortuem says he was hosted by The Cutting Edges Hockey Club at a Winter Classic in Sun Peaks, British Columbia, and that the experience helped him realise he’d finally found peace.
So what does it look like when a sports romance series reaches someone who once felt he had to choose between the game and being honest about himself? In Kortuem’s case, it looked like finally posting the words, then watching old teammates respond with support.
How Heated Rivalry fits into the bigger picture.
Heated Rivalry is a hockey romance adaptation based on a novel by Rachel Reid, and it’s been getting mainstream attention since its release.
Kortuem told Out he’s seen how strongly the series has landed with other men in hockey too:
“I know many closeted and gay men in the hockey world are being hit hard by Heated Rivalry’s success,” he said.
Kortuem never played in the National Hockey League (NHL), but he did play as a defenceman and centre across multiple leagues, and he’s clear that hockey stayed important to him even when silence felt safer.
