USA Swimming

If you go back to your time as national junior team coach, that was 2008 to 2013, um, it was a really...

I mean, if people look back, it was a really, really strong era for USA Swimming.

We were bringing a lot of swimmers that would go on to do amazing things for United States through the system.

In your experience, what qualities, skills make the transition from a strong junior swimmer into the senior level?

Same time, when push comes to shove, you're going to end up ultimately making that decision, and you don't want someone else's opinion of you to shape the outcome to a point that it didn't work.

It's, it's not easy to do, and I'm, I'm just making it sound like in a perfect world, but you're, you're right.

[chuckles] Let me, let me take this question in a different direction, because one of the things that I hear you talking about, and you've touched on this several times, when you were national junior team coach, you very much saw the role as I'm actually not anyone's- Any athlete's coach, right? My job is to create this environment at the USA Swimming National Junior team level where I will be an aid to these athletes, to these coaches, to these families that have invested so much in their kids' swimming.

One of the things that I, I hope I'm crediting you correctly with, is that you made a move to expose junior swimmers to international competition, bringing them to world cups.

Very good.

So that was how I, I learned about, um, Gary's comment, which was again misquoted, taken out of context from a big, um, Sports Illustrated article that, um, you know, that he'd written for, for, you know, for US Swimming and for Sports Illustrated.

So, um, you know, it, it's so cool that we get to talk about that, that there is, there is another layer to this story.

Yeah.

You always come away having learned more than you walked through the doors with at ASCA, which I really appreciate.

Um, kind of a big deal, the CEO of USA Swimming, Kevin Ring, was also in attendance.

He gave a speech there.

He kinda gave an update on where he sees USA Swimming right now and leading into LA 2028, um, which it was, which I think was a great move on his part.

He also fielded questions from coaches, and he was pretty honest in the fact that he didn't have all the answers to their questions.

Um, but he's working to figure it out, and I think for someone who is a year into a pretty monumental job like that, a lot of people want him to have answers, but I think the fact that he is Showing his face, he's attending events, he's showing that he cares, and he's showing that he wants to hear what, what people want to ask him and hear the, the complaints that other people have, um, about USA Swimming, about the whole establishment.

To me, that's a good sign.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think, um, even like USA Swimming, to compete at a recreational level, you have to sign this, uh, attestation that your gender is either, like, male or it's you fit with-- It's not even like male or female.

It's like male or you do not meet the id- Like, it, it, it doesn't even say female.

And so at a recreational level for USA Swimming, and I don't think it's hard to, um, see where that goes with other NGBs, and then again, down to youth sport of these attestations.

But then having to prove through whatever means, um, a sports club can afford or can do, which, as you said, it harms all kids, um, gender non-conforming kids who par- whose parents, like you said, parents are so invested in this financially.

If they can find a way to have their kid win, you just say something about, "Well, this wasn't fair.