A girls’ high school coach in West Fargo, North Dakota, was dismissed from his position last week after posting a video online of a swimmer wearing a weighted belt in the water and appearing to struggle.
Ronald Hehn, who swam at Indiana University and graduated in 2008, posted a video in a closed swim coaching-oriented Facebook group of a male swimmer with plates totaling 55 pounds hanging from a belt, struggling to stay above the surface. According to Valley News Live, he also has had swimmers go 12 feet underwater wearing weighted belts and swim back up.
The video sparked a substantial debate in the comments and was deleted, but now has been reposted by another user. You can view the video below, which begins with a coach saying “55 pounds. 25 freestyle. Ready, go,” and shows a lifeguard following the swimmer.
Thursday, West Fargo High School announced that Hehn had been dismissed from his position citing “inappropriate coaching practices,” and that boys’ team coach Barb Fisher would serve as the interim head of the girls’ program.
“Mr. Hehn will not have any additional contact with student-athletes in any current or future role as a coach or educator in the West Fargo School District,” said the school in its official statement. “West Fargo Public Schools is committed to providing all students a positive academic, co-curricular, and extra-curricular experience.”
Hehn, who previously served as the head coach at Concordia College and was in his first year with the high school program, defended the technique in a statement to Valley News: “The facts are that this training style was presented at the 2014 North Dakota Coaches Clinic by Sam Freas, head coach at Oklahoma Baptist University,” he said. Hehn added that he would be “seeking legal support.”
Freas is an acclaimed collegiate swim coach who has written multiple popular books on sprinting. He does suggest that weight belt training can be highly beneficial but recommends using only a fraction of the weight the videoed swimmer did. Freas posted the following statement on Facebook:
I received a call today about a high school coach from the Dakotas being dismissed for inappropriately using weights/weight belts in the pool. I was also told that this training method may have been attributed to me. While I am an advocate for using weight belts to improve speed, I would never advocate using as much weight as I’m told this person used. Our average male sprinters (6’3”, 185-210#) wear a maximum of 15# weight belts and swim distances of 12-1/2 yards in shallow water and walk back after each one.
As a comment on Freas’ statement, Hehn responded: “I was fired from a girls coaching position. This is a male athlete. Figure out that logic,” suggesting that the swimmer perhaps wasn’t his athlete, or wasn’t one he was coaching at West Fargo.
However, West Valley News spoke with West Fargo parents who said some of their swimmers “struggled to make it back to the surface and that lifeguards had to pull some girls out of the water because of the amount of weight attached to them.”
SwimSwam reached out to Hehn but has not received comment as of publishing. We’ll continue to update this story should more details come to light.
Genius
Umm, no.. 55lbs. No. Any coach in their right mind would not attach weights around the waist of anyone swimming laps. 10 15, maybe 20 for wster polo.. but swim. There’s absolutely no purpose to that. There is no drill that has ever been established for that there is nothing that would benefit the swimmer with that type of workout.
Hold on…I’ve seen this kind of sadistic thing before… I’ll bet the same coach also makes the kids swim mindlessly back and forth over and over for 2-3 hours at a time and 8-10 times per week (including weekends and early mornings!!!!). Or gives them intervals that they cant make for a set. OR maybe they even make them swim fly for 100 or 200 meters at a time without giving them a break. It’s very sick what these coaches do…. clearly there is some kind of psychological issue at play here…
As a former swimmer for Sam Freas. I can say weight belt training does work and is a fun change from the normal grind. However at OBU our top males did swim with more than 15lb weight belts.
Maybe the worst part of the video is the coach expecting the lifeguard to be able to respond to a weighted-down swimmer in distress. I never got training for it. Even if the coach were to provide training for it, it’s one thing to simulate a swimmer in distress bobbing up and down, but it’s something else entirely to simulate a swimmer in distress who is weighted down on the bottom of the pool – without putting the swimmer in a life-threatening situation.
The best response by the lifeguard would have been to tell the coach that the drill can’t proceed as performed.
That exercise would perhaps make sense in a special forces selection program.
SEALS swim with 50# of rucksacks and equipment, but part of that weight is a SCUBA tank, and they swim “combat stroke” (side stroke to avoid lordosis stress on the lumbar back) with big fins. All of the equipment is much more buoyant than 55# of solid iron weight plates.
This. Also, the person in question would certainly have more muscle on him than this kid. 50 lbs is a lot to swim with for anyone, but it’s gonna be a lot easier for the guy who’s 170 lbs than the one who’s 100.
Clearly not the smartest method chosen by this coach. For those of you on the FB page that saw the original post (I did), a bigger problem was his attitude and arrogance once he was challenged and criticized. Attempted to defend it by instigating commenters, offering to give them lessons and making light of the whole situation. I’m not sure what legal stance he could possibly take at this point, whether he coached the boy or not. He filmed it, he put it on FB, he defended it.
PS – is this guy Keri Hehn’s brother?
Yes
Thought it might be. That’s someone who went through “Innovative Training” with Coach Salo.
Should I cancel my ticket to the 2018 North Dakota Swimming coaches clinic
No don’t. It is one of the best conferences for your money. It is always well run and the presentators are amazing. To see some of the coaches I have seen at this conference would have cost me thousands at other events. Instead its $80 to $100 each year!