Part one: The initial steps of USA Swimming moving forward:
It seems that we are now in a time of incredible opportunity. The next few decisions in front of us over the next year or so are going to shape the sport for generations. We now know that it was a poor decision when we replaced Coach-led leadership at the national team level with staff lead leadership at the national team level. The problem was not the people, we had great people in the roles. It was the elimination of the coaches in the hierarchy of key decisions. Many of us had the foresight at the time to see this, but no-one listened in the moment. Instead, the critics were cast completely out of the picture.
Foundational issue: Over the past 20 years Olympic sport leadership has been infiltrated by the marketing directors that played a key role in funding sport previously. This was the first critical error, in this writer’s opinion, made by Olympic sport organizations in America. The purging of true sport executives that employed the marketing professionals, that supported the sports professionals, i.e. coaches, service providers, etc caused the first signs of downfall in our performance as a nation in certain sports. The sport of swimming is a prime example of this phenomenon. We truly dominated the sport in the days of Ray Essick’s leadership. Then, when Chuck Weilgus was hired, we began to experience an inflow of big name marketing income. He brought with him from the sport of golf Cadillac as a sponsor. Immediately our top athletes wanted to drive a Cadillac(they actually just wanted a free car). Cadillac was not the brand of the American swimming family. The USA Swimming membership did not purchase Cadillacs.. Chuck did however bring a wealth of experience in running sport, growing sport, and supporting competitive success at the international level. Chuck overlooked an immense problem in modern sport in America. A problem that a marketing professional would not see as something that is their problem to solve. What was being unearthed as Chuck took over the helm at USA Swimming was a culture of accepting the few coaches in the sport that were bad actors. Bad actors defined under this situation involve those coaches who crossed the line by grooming and building sexual relationships with their athletes. As the situations were discovered, rather than acting fast and solving the problem by eliminating the coaches from the sport, Chuck hid them from plain-view thus helping these coaches to move to a new club situation and become repeat offenders in new regions. This behavior was also happening in the sport of gymnastics, and the sport of track and field among others. There is no link between marketing people and sexual assault, but there is a link in making marketing income more important than anything else in the sport world. You see; if sponsors identified a sport culture that contains bad actors, they will surely drop the sport from their sponsorship. This, unfortunately, was the motivation behind hiding the bad actors from the light of day.
This phenomenon of hiring marketing executives began 20+ years ago. These marketing executives are now being replaced by a new generation of marketing executives that are even further removed from understanding the running of an Olympic sport national governing body. USA Swimming serves as a perfect example of this phenomenon in many areas.
Here is another area we failed as a result of sport leaders not being listen to during an era of marketing around the Michael Phelps years: A little background first: as Michael Phelps was dominating the swimming scene and peeking in the 2008 Beijing Olympics USA Swimming was posed with a literal problem to solve. How are we going to replace Michael Phelps? Many of us in a sport provided an answer to this question that fell on deaf ears. The first and obvious answer to this question was that we are not going to replace Michael Phelps. He was not providing us with a once in a generation athlete. He was providing us with a once in a lifetime athlete to watch. Coming off the Beijing Olympics with five individual and three relay gold medals was not going to be equaled in our lifetime. This was known across the globe. Many of us made it very clear that while Michael was having this incredible success for the United States we needed to be investing not only alternate events for our swimmers to qualify for the Olympic games but also in our 10, 11, 12, and 13-year-old boys in the events that Michael was dominating the world in at the time. As Michael fell out of one of these events, we needed to replace him with 3 to 5 world class athletes in those events. We did not do this. Fast-forward to the 2024 Paris, Olympic Games where the men’s program in swimming did not live up to the American reputation as an Olympic dominant nation. This was not just because of the Michael Phelps example given above. We also did not invest 10 years ago in our backstrokers, in our breaststrokers, in addition to the individual medley and butterfly events as our best were retiring. I can guarantee that Ryan Murphy would not have felt the obligation to continue swimming the backstroke events for the US if he had 3-5 up and coming backstrokers that could beat him. He would be the retired hero he deserves to be rather than the character in the story that likely does not make the podium, but tried in great valor to do so. On the other hand; the coaches took it upon themselves to continue to build distance swimming in America over the last 10 years and this is where we stood out individually on the podium in Paris. Programs in Las Vegas and Indiana pressed distance swimming and built a generation of success in these events in Paris showing success in the 400 IM, 400 free, 800 free, 1500 free and Open Water 10k. Adding to this, our coaches are finding very few options to coach the very best men in the world coming from America; they are seeking to coach athletes from other nations. These nations have capitalized on this phenomenon that is uniquely American at this point and are paying these coaches large sums of money to coach their athletes in our university and club systems. These coaches are also finding their way on the coaching staffs of these foreign nations at the Games. This author has no problem with foreign athletes in the American university system, but we are now losing ground on the Olympic level because of this and we need to decide on our priorities immediately before our stronghold is gone for generations.
I believe the true root of this problem stems from the lack of understanding in the C suite of our Olympic national governing bodies in America, of how to truly support the implementation of the American long-term development model. Instead, these NGB leaders are chasing and securing sponsorships that will happen right now, short-term financial success that will happen right now. We are being sponsored by what is trending. We are chasing what is trending. If they bring in big enough dollars to the sport, their over inflated salaries do not stick out so far on the bottom line and hidden in the foundations books. The problem of chasing trends is that once they become a trend they are on the down turn. SO, in effect, we are behind the trend rather than creating the trend. This is not how the culture of the long-term development model works. Many coaches are now adopting this shortcut method of coaching as well; chasing methods that are trending right now. Self aggrandizing cyber and rental coaches are appearing on our phones, on our pool decks, at our coaching clinics, and this is infiltrating the American long-term development model and hurting us at the Olympic Games. Ironically, the long-term American development model is being used very successfully in many of the Commonwealth nations, who are currently catching and acquiring the medals in the events that we have dominated in the past. Many of the European nations are sending their best to our top coaches in America and taking away much of our top coach’s time, expertise, and eventually Team USA medals.
None of this is opinion. This is observation. Now back to the opportunity we have at hand. USA Swimming is posed with the dilemma of how to go forward. It is unfortunately now regular practice to bring in marketing professionals to run our NGB‘s, so has America lost a generation of true sport leaders? It is my opinion that the answer to this question is yes. We are not going to solve this problem with the same type of people who created this problem. I urge the USA Swimming Board of Directors, in their search for a new full-time permanent CEO, to seek someone with deep experience in successfully running Olympic sport at the highest level. We must also not give in to the current trend of elevating who is currently already in the building. This will take some very hard decision-making skills. In the short term, these decisions may not be popular. We do not need popular at this point. We do not need to chase trends at this point. We cannot go forward with marketing professionals in the lead. We cannot go forward with people from the past that helped create these problems. We can not afford to hire someone that just says yes to leadership. We can not afford to give this to someone with that elusive “five ring resume” (Athlete with no real world international coaching experience). We must fill the enormous holes left in the wake of these problems we have created for ourselves. Another desperate need we have right now is for board members to exit the management room and re-enter the policy making room.
Somehow along the way staff management at USA Swimming has been taken over by members of the Board of Directors rather than the CEO. This is a recipe for disaster in a sport like swimming. The micromanaging of the swimming decisions by the board of directors must stop immediately. This trend also began, coincidentally, around 2008 to 2010, then intensified during the tenure of our latest recently dismissed CEO when members of Usa Swimming‘s upper management were starting to make swimming decisions rather than business management decisions. In the period of time from 2008 until 2012 it was becoming very clear that USA Swimming upper management wanted to purge Coach involvement in national team decisions and leadership. In time they not only accomplished this, they removed all upper level coaches from USA Swimming staff and left it in the hands of those who used to very successfully support the coaching decisions. The coaches don’t need to run the sport of swimming. But the coaches must run and lead the swimming related decisions of USA Swimming. It seems that we have all of the right people; just in all of the wrong roles. This is what we have been headed for all along and any criticism thus far has resulted in the critic being cast out. This is what many of us warned would happen. This is where we are now. How do we move forward? It seems to me we need outside help at this point. The USOPC could exercise their right at this point to decertify USA Swimming, dissolve their board of directors, place a new CEO, name a new Board of Directors, and give the membership and coach leadership a fresh start as the LA 28 Olympics are just a few years away and we have an incredible mountain in front of us to navigate. Or at very least they could warn that this IS an option. The problem there, unfortunately, is that the USOPC wants to continue to elevate USA Swimming as an example to the rest of the NGB’s because of their regular medal haul at the Games. This is yet another layer in the problem. You see, when an NGB is dysfunctional internally, but winning medals, they are not messed with by the USOPC. The governance folks and the compliance folks are ready to act at any time to enact policy, but the upper management knows the public only sees the medal production, so why upset the apple cart? Let them make their own staffing and management decisions, even if those decisions are indeed having a long term negative effect on medal count. USA Swimming is required to have a number of true independent directors on their board of directors. Usa Swimming has not complied with this USOPC mandate thus far and it has been in effect for multiple board elections. This gives the usopc the license to act, though they have chosen not to thus far. This is not a judgement of the individuals presently serving as it is my belief that there are very good people that fill the USA Swimming board of directors. My point is that the sport is in direct violation of the USOPC mandate to have two true independent directors on our board of directors. It is the independent leaders that help keep the business in compliance with such mandates. Such mandates do not fulfill short term gains, which are the trend of Olympic sport today. But such mandates encourage long-term thinking, long-term investment, long-term sponsorship, and long-term athlete development.
USA Swimming is about to have its first Olympic Swimmer as Board Chair. Will we see status quo be reinforced, or will we see a long term vision enacted and roles redefined and reinforced? Will we see a whole new level of dysfunction in the elevation of retired athletes lacking real world experience be placed into some of these leadership roles? The decisions made over the next three months will determine the direction of not only the success of the organization, these decisions will have a ripple effect that lasts generations. We are hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in less than four years. Maybe more importantly, our biggest rival (Australia) is hosting the Games in 2032 and they want to beat us in every place they possibly can. The decisions we make now will determine that outcome for generations.
The best part of this is we have the ability to rise from all of this!! The interim CEO needs to be made permanent on an immediate basis. She has the business acumen to lead USA Swimming out of its present situation. In order to do this though, she MUST be given the tools and autonomy to be successful!! She knows and understands the rocky terrain ahead. #AlwaysForward
Every Four Years™ 