After making history as an openly gay driver, Devon Rouse chases even bigger NASCAR dreams
Devon Rouse swallowed a handful of pills and hoped he wouldn't wake up.
A middle-schooler at the time, Rouse says he was tortured by leading dual lives. In public, he was one version, from the outside seemingly happy and carefree. Deep down, he knew he was gay and wanted to be himself. But he never told his friends and family back then.
Hiding his truth never got easier, and the more time went on, the heavier the burden became. Eventually, it overwhelmed him so much that Rouse wanted to end it all. The next morning, though, he woke up.
Weeks later, Rouse once more tried to die, he says, swallowing more pills. The next morning, again, he awoke.
"I had no clearness in my head," Rouse says. "Only darkness."
After his suicide attempts, Rouse began to believe that God had something important in store for him. At the time, Rouse wasn't only a young man coming to grips with his sexual orientation; he also was a whiz behind the wheel of a race car, so talented that his dreams of racing on the NASCAR circuit were starting to appear possible.
Over the next three years of driving sprint cars, Rouse, now 23, had 13 top-10 finishes and five top-five finishes in 15 feature races.
"We've known Devon since he was 16, and the progress he has made in such a short time is amazing," said Jessi Mynatt, co-owner and promoter of 34 Raceway in Burlington, Iowa — the track where Devon honed his craft. "Devon is very skilled and very aggressive behind the wheel."
Rouse knew it was now or never if he was going to turn his racing dreams into reality. As he found success in one area of his life, he knew he needed to find peace in another.
He needed to let the world meet the real Devon Rouse. And when he did, he would make history.
A small-city boy with big racing dreams
Rouse grew up in Burlington, Iowa, the son of Mike and Diane Rouse, and attended school in West Burlington.
"He always had a smile on his face. He was always so easygoing and happy all the time," said Tammy Schmidt, Rouse's fifth-grade teacher. "He was always joking around, trying to make people laugh and smile."
His father, a logistics supervisor by day and a race car fanatic the rest of the time, was enthralled by drag racing. Naturally, his son was, too.
As a preschooler, he began racing go-karts competitively.
"I had my first race when I was 4," Rouse said. "I remember my dad taking me to races with him at Eddyville and Cordova (Illinois). All his brothers got their kids into go-kart racing, so that's where it all started for me."
Rouse was a natural. He won six track championships at Shimek Speedway in southeastern Iowa before that track closed when he was 13.
Rouse worked his way up through the ranks at 34 Raceway, a ⅜-mile oval dirt track outside of Burlington, and was a star in modified lites. Soon, he made his way to 305-cubic-inch-engine sprint cars.
"The older I got, the more I started thinking racing could be my career," Rouse says now. "I felt like God had given me a special talent for it."
Heidi Brown was two years ahead of Rouse in school. Their lives were similar — they enjoyed the same interests in racing, school and sports, have like personalities and shared many of the same friends — and the pair became best friends.
“There was a lot of sadness there for a while in Devon’s eyes because he could not be himself," Brown said. "He and I spent a million years together, and we’ve done all sorts of everything. I felt more fortunate because I could be me, and I could do anything I wanted. I was comfortable with who I was. … There was a part of him that wasn’t free. It was almost like there was a part of him that was living in something that wasn’t true."
Brown was one of Rouse's greatest fans. She shared his dream that he would become a great NASCAR driver one day, just like his boyhood idol, Jeff Gordon. They traveled all over for Rouse's races.
In a way, his happiness from success on the track became her happiness.
“It is the most rewarding feeling in the whole world," Brown said. "I feel like a proud sibling in a way.”
And his sadness was also something she recognized all too well.
The Instagram post that changed everything
As a young teenager, Rouse told only his very close friends that he was gay. Around other friends, Rouse pretended to be interested in girls.
Brown was among the few who knew his truth. She watched as Devon, fearing he would be ostracized, struggled to tell others.
"There were a lot of things I had to watch where he couldn’t be himself because he was afraid of the backlash," she said.
To get away from his dual life in his hometown, Rouse and Brown traveled to races in other towns and states. That's when Rouse's racing career began to take hold in earnest.
“It got to the point where it was hard to come back home because Devon was so happy when we would go places. He was just so free, and it was great," Brown said. "Here in Burlington, the racing community is small-town and I knew it was going to be hard for him to flourish being gay. That’s not something anyone has ever done at 34 Raceway, at least openly, before."
It wasn't just that way at his hometown track. It was a rarity in all of NASCAR, a racing sanctioning body founded in 1948. The only known openly gay driver in NASCAR was Stephen Rhodes, who appeared in two NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races in 2003.
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In the summer of 2020, Rouse knew it was his time.
"A few people already knew at that point," Rouse said. "Most people were just waiting for me to say it."
Devon's Instagram post appeared on June 28, 2020. It included a portrait, showing that easy smile his boyhood teachers remember so well.
"I am gay. Yes.. you just read that correctly," one of the first lines read. "This is me, and it’s time for me to stop living a double life."
His message on social media detailed his struggle with personal acceptance, the double lives he's lived out of fear, and its impact on his mental health. He ended with this line:
"This is me, I’m just your same Dev, just a little better now!"
With those words published, Rouse felt free.
"It's made me so much happier," Rouse says now. "... I can just be myself now."
While many of his friends knew he was gay when he posted the message on Instagram two years ago, the news initially upset some of his family. His parents and younger sister, whom he told before the social media post, remain private about discussing Devon's sexual orientation but are supportive of his racing career.
Brown was both relieved and worried for her best friend. How would the racing world take the news?
Officially, NASCAR has been "very pro-inclusive," said Jim Buzinski, who co-founded OutSports, a sports news website that reports on LGBTQ+ issues and personalities in amateur and professional sports.
"NASCAR has done everything to make him feel welcome," he said, while acknowledging, "You never know how individual drivers feel."
Brown recalls the period as "a tough time" for Rouse.
"I knew there was going to be a lot of backlash," she said. "That’s where I take things personally, and I’m protective of him."
But she was also confident he would receive "so much support."
"That’s what was important for me was focusing on all the people who were supportive of him," she said.
Rouse said he remains "totally comfortable" with his decision, but reaction has been mixed.
"That doesn't define who I am," he said. "My skills, my morals and my values define me. I really don't let what other people think bother me anymore. The people who really know me, who understand me and know what I have been through and are still there, those are the people I can count on."
That June 2020 post would soon lead him to become a historic figure in sports. In January 2021, he became the first openly gay driver to race in ARCA, a stock car series, and a few months later, the second to compete in a NASCAR race. Recently, another driver — Zach Herrin — also came out as gay.
A month after the ARCA debut, Rouse talked with OutSports for a feature story. The headline read, "This gay race car driver is out and proud, and chasing his motorsports dream."
The reporter who penned Rouse's story, Karleigh Webb, had followed Rouse for a while.
"He has the talent. He came up through dirt racing in the Midwest," said Webb, a Nebraska native whose father also raced on dirt tracks. "NASCAR loves guys who have a little dirt under their nails. Devon is a throwback to the Friday and Saturday night bullrings in the Midwest."
Then in June, ahead of NASCAR's Camping World Truck Series race at Knoxville Raceway, Rouse brought his story to a nationwide audience. He talked with FOX's Shannon Spake in a televised interview about his experiences in coming out.
A few days later in Knoxville, Rouse showed off his driving skills when he started 39th and moved up to finish 18th.
Chance meetings — and a beer scion with a career opportunity
Rouse, who has never shied away from introducing himself to strangers, pushed himself out of his comfort zone along the way to jump-start his dream. He realized he would have to take chances to break through to the elite level.
In October 2019, he and friends had planned a vacation in Florida, but he almost didn't go because he'd never been on an airplane before and was nervous about flying.
He ended up going, and they went into a bar in Clearwater, where Rouse spotted NASCAR driver Robby Lyons. Rouse's first instinct was to go over and strike up a conversation with him.
"My friends were telling me, 'You can't do that. You're just some local nobody sprint car driver from Iowa. You don't just walk up to a NASCAR driver and start talking racing,'" Rouse said.
"Well, I did, and before we left, we exchanged phone numbers and stayed in touch."
That meeting led to Rouse getting his foot in the NASCAR door. The next weekend, Lyons invited Rouse to a race in Kansas, which ended up getting rained out. So Lyons flew Rouse to Charlotte the following week, and that's how Rouse got started with NASCAR truck racing.
"And to think I almost backed out of that trip," Rouse said.
Another pivotal moment came when Rouse attended a golf outing and met the scion of a famous American beer family who happened to be into race cars.
In June 2021, Rouse was in Colorado to participate in a charity golf tournament with Colton Underwood, an openly gay actor and former professional football player best known for appearing on ABC's "The Bachelor" in 2019. Rouse got to know Underwood after they both came out, and they became friends.
At a bar in Denver, Rouse introduced himself to Scott Coors, whose family began the Coors Brewing Co., and struck up a conversation.
"We got to talking, and he asked me if I wanted to drive his Porsche in a road race," Rouse said.
Coors, the great-grandson of Adolph Coors, has had a lifelong passion for road racing. Coors and his driving partner, Michael Babcock, finished second in the famous 2019 One Lap of America race, where participants race on seven different tracks over eight days.
Coors, who is gay, recalls the moment this way: "We actually met up at #VYBE, a gay bar in Denver. We were there for 'Celebration,' a huge event for the gay community. Devon and I got to talking, and we spent the weekend together. He's very personable. … We hit it off well."
Coors needed a driving partner for this year's One Lap race, so he offered Rouse a ride. The two went to High Plains Raceway, Coors' home track, in Arapahoe County, Colorado, and drove test runs.
Coors was amazed at Rouse's expertise behind the wheel of his 2015 Porsche 911 Turbo S race car. Coors asked Rouse to join him for the race, which runs April 30-May 7. The two will meet up in Indiana for the start of the event.
"He's fast," Coors said, "and he's very good."
With a major sponsor, a summer of big races beckons
Rouse spent much of the last year and a half flying back and forth from Burlington to North Carolina, a home base for many drivers. With Brown ready to make the move to Charlotte, Rouse felt it was time to chase his dream even further.
Rouse and Brown had a going away party last month at the Paddlewheel Lounge in Burlington, where several hundred friends, family, racing fans and supporters gathered to wish them luck and say goodbye.
Brown had promised to never leave his side, and she's kept that vow. The two have settled into their rented home in Huntersville, North Carolina, to begin the next chapter of their journey together.
"I knew Devon was never going to go without me," Brown said. "We’ve gone through our silly teen years and our crazy early 20s. Then we started careers, and we’ve grown together.”
Rouse will try to qualify for the ARCA Menards Series race Feb. 19 at Daytona International Speedway, the mecca of NASCAR racing.
He also recently landed a major sponsor for the 2022 season, signing a deal with Gigg, Inc., a software company based in Provo, Utah.
"It's almost surreal," Rouse says of his life now. "I have to pinch myself every day to make sure it is really happening."
In the coming weeks, Rouse and Gigg will announce his full lineup of races for 2022. Rouse already has committed to the NASCAR truck race June 18 at Knoxville Raceway and the ARCA Menards Series Shore Lunch 150 on June 11 at Iowa Speedway in Newton.
"That's exactly what Devon needs," Webb said of the sponsorship. "He needs someone who sees his talent and his potential in the sport. He needs a sponsor who really believes in him and will give him seat time.
"I'll be honest: Devon is a very handsome guy. If I had $15 million laying around, I would put him in a car right now. He is going to be a superstar."
He's made one leap of faith and made it safely to the other side. Now in North Carolina, he's taken another leap as he begins to chase down his boyhood dream of being a top NASCAR driver, just like Jeff Gordon.
These days, Rouse is not letting anything slow him down.
"Life is too short to be scared of anything," Rouse said. "I push myself to where I am a little nervous. You've got to push yourself past your comfort level if you are going to succeed in anything in life."
Matt Levins is sports reporter for the Paste BN Network in Iowa who has covered auto racing for 31 years.