Ousted College of Staten Island head swimming coach Oleg Soloviev has filed a $25 million wrongful termination lawsuit, alleging that his “ethnicity, age and sex” were the true cause for his termination, according to silive.com.
Soloviev was the first varsity coach in program history, and began at the school coaching the club team from 1995-1996. That included coaching the school’s first ever NCAA Division III National Champion of any kind, breaststroker Pavel Buyanov. Those titles, however, were later vacated, after it was discovered that Soloviev had violated several NCAA recruiting rules – one of many punishments imposed upon the program.
Among the list of unverified complaints by Soloviev were:
- A 25-year old male coach at the school, is being paid $53,000: almost doubling Soloviev’s $27,500 starting salary in 1995 (when the program was just a club program).
- The school has hired four female assistants whose starting salaries were higher than Soloviev’s.
- Staff and CSI workers taunted him with anti-Russian remarks.
- Raising rental fees from $17,000 to $150,000 for the Blue Arrow Swim Club, which is owned by Soloviev’s wife.
