Over the weekend, dogged reporter Brian Ross released damning clips of USA Swimming Head Honcho Tim Hinchey fumbling his way through a recent deposition.
Like me, you’re probably getting deja vu from Chuck Wielgus’ disastrous representation of American swimming from a decade ago. To give Hinchey credit, he at least appears to be slightly ashamed that he hasn’t even read the code of conduct for the organization he heads. Wielgus would have been incredulous at the suggestion that he was in any way supposed to know what was going on.
For anyone holding out a shred of hope that USA Swimming was going to get the ship turned around under Hinchey, this should be a nail in the coffin. That’s a very frustrating conclusion, which begs the question. Why don’t things change? Here are a few answers:
USA Swimming Employees Lack Accountability
USA Swimming, like any organization, has some very good employees and some not good employees. However, aside from the much belated firing of Susan Woessner and Pat Hogan last year, there has been little to no accountability within USA Swimming’s ranks.
Normally in such an organization, accountability would start at the top with Hinchey. But Hinchey only acted reactively on Woessner and Hogan. He has retained key other bad actors within USA Swimming, guided by the naive sentiment that anything that happened before his time is water under the bridge.
Unfortunately, that’s not how leadership works. Of particular concern to me is the former department that Pat Hogan ran, now run by my friend Joel Shinofield. I was extremely hopeful that Shinofield would be able to reform this group, but there has been no shakeup.
This group in particular seemingly acts as it pleases, showing up unannounced to USA Swimming clubs and harassing people like me. I shared such concerns with Shinofield privately, although I haven’t updated him on the most recent developments.
Failing any leadership from Hinchey or his executive team, the responsibility would fall on the USA Swimming board. Unfortunately, despite much touted reforms there is no tangible proof of change on that front.
The USA Swimming Board is a Politburo
In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the ruling committee was the Politburo. This was a handpicked committee of loyal party figures who guided the massive country.
USA Swimming has it’s own version. It’s called the board. As a rank and file USA Swimming member, I can tell you that it is exceedingly hard to have any kind of contact, much less influence over the volunteer leadership.
In order to even become a member of the board, you would need to be nominated at the USA Swimming convention, an event where only a few hundred of the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming members get to attend.
Attendance to this event is voted on at local swimming committees (LSCs), where the only votes go to leaders of clubs.
In practice this means that only by years of proven loyalty to the brand do you make it to USA Swimming, effectively guaranteeing that any meaningful oversight will never happen.
By the way, if anyone would like to nominate me next year for a USA Swimming board position I’ll be shocked but pleased and for sure give it a shot.
We “Need” Them
USA Swimming has a stranglehold on American Swimming, despite its lack of tangible involvement in most of the day to day lives of anyone paying dues.
Want to have a big swim meet? Write a check! Want to enter the biggest organized swimming competitions? Ka-ching!
Honestly though, we could do all of these things on a local level, easier and cheaper without USA Swimming. Look no further than the number of “Junior National” style competitions that cropped up in the past couple decades. Are they perfect? Absolutely not, but they are well attended and provide good opportunities to athletes despite having to pay an extortive fee to USA Swimming.
I spoke to someone yesterday who is not tuned in day to day to USA Swimming malfeasance. They had seen the above video and asked “Tim Hinchey has to resign right?”. I responded that at this point I’m a bit too cynical to expect such a reasonable and honest response. We’ll see.