The National Board of Review. This is the process that USA Swimming has used to adjudicate complaints of sexual abuse that they receive. It's a process that most USA Swimming members know next to nothing about.
In this podcast, Sarah Ehekircher and I discuss her NBOR in 2010, what motivated her to start the process, and the nasty surprises she found when the kangaroo court was actually convened:
Today I talk to Dirk Marshal. Dirk was an accomplished swimmer in his day who has taken a different route to starting a unique kind of team. We talk about his club, the Bridge Bats and how he came to form it the way he did.
Later we discuss Sarah Ehekircher and how we've both come to know her and join Sarah's posse. Dirk shares a really good argument on how we can stand up for what's right in swimming. Enjoy.
This week a special hiring season podcast with friend of the brief Nico Messer. Nico has been on a lot of the episodes since the pod started back up again, and it's great to have him back once more.
We talk about the season from both the perspective of someone doing the hiring and someone looking for a job. We tell you everything we've learned from getting jobs, and not getting them. Enjoy.
Today I snuck in a conversation with Chuck Batchelor, while he was at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Chuck is currently the head coach and owner of Bluefish Swim Club in the New England LSC.
I ask Chuck about how he got started, and how he went from a swim coaching plying his trade to owner of the most successful team in New England.
Finally, we get into a very polite discussion about training methods and reputations for training methods. Enjoy:
Today's guest is Matt Finnigan. Matt is a different kind of swim coach who founded a different kind of swim team on the West Side of Salt Lake City. I was really excited to hear his story and how he was able to build a more inclusive squad despite some of the barriers that have kept swimming from being a diverse sport.
The Club he founded, Race Swami, aims to make a difference, and they've done just that, expanding from humble beginnings to serve 80 athletes
You can read more about Race Swami here
Bonus pod! Today I try to extend the excitement of NCAAs by talking with a coach at the hottest team in college swimming, Indiana University. Mark Hill joined the Hoosiers before the start of this college year. He had previously won a men's NCAA title as part of Michigan's squad in 2013.
We talk about the crazy, amazing spectacle that NCAAs is, what he learned in his year away from college swimming, and I formally ask him if there's still space for me on the IU bandwagon. Enjoy.
Today I talk to elite Masters swimmer and former National Champion Susan Williams. Williams has a world record in her age group, and we talk about her life growing up swimming in the DC area. Williams was the first National Champion that disgraced coach Rick Curl ever coached.
We talk about her recollections of the time, including finding out that Curl was sexually abusing her teammate, Kellie Davies Currin, and Susan does some brutally honest self-examination of how she dealt with the knowledge and the subsequent aftermath. We also do our best to bust up the "great coach" narrative that often works against victims of sexual abuse:
Today another guest that I've wanted to have for a long time. Irvin Muchnick has been doing outstanding work covering corruption and abuse in American swimming. He's soent a lot of the past few years breaking stories and doing legwork that often finds its way later to bigger publications, uncredited.
Irv and I talk for a long time, almost 80 minutes, and we cover the big picture as well as the the story that he has spent the last few years with intense focus on: former Irish Olympic coach George Gibney, who is still living in the US and evading justice for the terrible crimes he stands accused of in his home country. Enjoy
To catch up on Irv's work, go here.
Among the revelations of this podcast: there is reason to believe that Susan Woessner lied when she resigned from USA Swimming about her interactions with Sean Hutchison. Also, a group of swimmers led by Olympic gold medalist Karen Moe Humphreys will be speaking out against abusive coach Paul Bergen.
The guest is one that I've wanted to have for a long time and is so relevant to everything going on in the swimming world right now. Nancy Hogshead Makar is a former Olympic Champion swimmer. She went on to a law career, where he has dedicated significant time to advocacy work, first for the Women's Sports Foundation, and now as CEO of Champion Women.
Her most recent accomplishment includes lobbying to push the "Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport" act through congress.
The act was recently signed into law, and Champion Women has a nice cheat sheet for those looking to catch up on what it means.
For more information on Nancy and her work visit Champion Women. You can also read this excellent piece where she tells a lot of her life story here.
Here's the back story on this one: A couple of weeks ago, I did a pod with Erik Kramer. Paul Yetter liked that pod, so I asked him to come back for a similar conversation. I wanted to talk to Paul about some of the stuff he's struggled with over the years, and more importantly how he found a way to move forward.
We ended up getting all kinds of fired up about three quarters of the way through about Race Pace training, before bringing it back to really get a fuller picture of what he's learned through 20 years in the coaching world. Enjoy.