The investigation into the Keller High School swim program for alleged rule violations has come to a conclusion, with the school facing a public reprimand and implementing numerous changes for the 2026 season.
Keller, the reigning UIL 6A girls and boys’ state swimming & diving champions, went under investigation last month after athletes allegedly trained with the Lakeside Aquatic Club “during school hours and at a school facility.” That would violate Section 1202 of the UIL constitution, which mandates that high school coaches be “full-time employees of the school board of the school which the team represents.”
On Monday, the Dallas News reported that the investigation has closed with the 4-6A district executive committee issuing a reprimand and unanimously accepting Keller’s proposed action plan that includes oversight of practices, additional training on UIL rules and hiring a new coach.
Keller will keep its 2025 UIL 6A swim & dive state titles, which were at risk in the investigation. The Keller Independent School District (ISD) considers the case to be closed, the Dallas News reports.
At the beginning of May, Keller’s head swim coach, Jamie Shults, resigned.
According to The Dallas News, Jason Lovell, who previously served as the head coach of Keller Central High School, is taking over as Keller’s new head coach, while former Keller Central assistant Mike Row has been promoted to lead that team next season.
Moving forward, Keller’s new plan includes additional training with KISD Natatorium management on UIL rules regarding coaching expectations and monitoring during school hours, according to The Dallas News, while there will also be increased oversight of morning and afternoon workouts by the KISD athletics department and the school’s athletic coordinators.
The Dallas News added that in the 2025-26 school year, there will be updates to the Keller ISD club rental agreement that states club coaches are not allowed on deck, in locker rooms, or in the pool area with Keller students during school hours without prior approval.
Star swimmer Maximus Williamson played a key role in leading the Keller boys to their third straight UIL 6A title last season, while the girls’ team also claimed the title, making Keller become just the third school in state history to sweep the girls’ and boys’ titles in the same year.
Williamson, who was a senior last season, is headed to the University of Virginia this fall.
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The UIL is a joke. Their “public reprimand” is worthless. The UIL has just given ALL Texas HS swim teams permission to cheat the system and it will be ok. You can recruit swimmers and it will be ok. You can actually investigate your own scandal. You can choose a pawn to be the “scapegoat” for your program. The rules are really just “guidelines”. Coaches in Texas ought to be using the Keller playbook as their plans for the future…this should be fun to watch.
I checked the Keller state rosters for both genders and I didn’t see a single swimmer that wasn’t in the school district a year or more ago. I’m not sure if you’re upset about something from many years ago, but your comment is clearly off base.
And your knowledge of this UIL investigation and the investigation process in general could use a lot of help. Perhaps get better informed before throwing stones.
So the gist of the story is this. If you are a serious swimmer, and desire a division 1 scholarship, stay as far away as you can from high school swimming. Parents will try and tear you down, and the expectation is that you will have to balance competing priorities, none of which are your main priorities.
What a terrible system. The only thing worse are the parents involved.
If you don’t like the system, petition UIL to change the rules. The only thing worse than the system is parents and coaches that cheat.
What parent who has a kid in this mess for a couple of years, tops, is going to deal with petitioning the UIL? See previous comment above…stay away from high school swimming. It’s a novelty act. The coaching is subpar, the schedule detracts from real club meets, and the high school meets themselves are a joke. If the schools do not want to work with the best athletes in their school…then so be it. No one else on earth cares about high school swimming…go ahead crap on whatever talent you have and make it even more irrelevant. Great strategy.
I couldn’t agree more. This is a mess and although petitioning is a decent idea, my kids don’t have time to hope something changes. We live in a region where swimming with the HS team is NOT OPTIONAL. My eldest child made it 4 years doing club and HS and it was a grind. Luckily, he landed at a D1 school for college. We learned a lot through the process this year of competing demands between club and HS and the uncertainty in the NCAA with roster limits. With that being said, we sat down with our other 3 swimmers (2 in HS, 1 in middles school) and talked about long term goals and the pros and cons of swimming… Read more »
Part of the punishment is additional training on the rules? The rules are pretty specific and definitely known to the coaches, probably the parents and. I bet the kids know the rules too. This is like sweeping the cheating under the rug to make the powers that be feel better.
A couple of observations after following this for a bit.
Seems a little odd that the setup in Texas is one where the necessary path for participating in both club and high school at the highest levels requires a swimmer to balance suboptimal training choices. Also strange that the “unfair” advantage these kids supposedly got was that the teams were, in fact, optimizing their training (and somehow breaking a rule).
Also, seems a bit scary that so many on this site want to nail these kids to the wall for doing nothing but listening to the adults in charge. Are we to expect a 14-15 year old to get out of the pool and verify an adults employment status?
Have you seen someone try to “nail the kids to the wall”? I haven’t. I’ve seen a lot of the adults responsible for knowingly breaking rules try to use that as a scapegoat for taking responsibility for what they did.
The rules aren’t made just for swimming. The rules are made for all sports, and to protect the viability of high school athletics. If the clubs want high school athletics to just evaporate in the sake of “optimizing their training,” then they’re going to have to start fundraising a lot of money to build the pools.
In America, uniquely to anywhere else on earth, we’ve collectively decided that integrating academics and athletics are core to the fabric of our culture.… Read more »
Responsibility was taken. Jamie and Linda Shults were both forced out of employment by the District. UIL coaching awards likely should have been stripped, though.
This was not for the 14-15 year olds and even they know the difference between a club coach and a high school teacher. Those kids swam in the jv team that didn’t practice with varsitys. The arrangement was specifically designed for THE jr. World champion, NAG record holder, high school phenom, and 2024 Olympic hopeful who left their first high school for athletic reasons because his first coach told him no we won’t let you skip high school practices. And the club coaches 100% knew what they were doing when they set up the practices so that their athletes could do swim class without doing swim class and club practice all in the same two hours and be home for… Read more »
100%. This sums it all up perfectly. Such a joke to simply slap them on the wrist and move on. Other state level swimmers did not have such a set up. They had to swim at their high schools at 530am, attend class all day, then swim club until 630pm.
This is weird. The rule about a coach being a full time employee of the district… most of the HS swim teams In SoCal have club coaches as their Head high school swim coach.
Different states have different rules, and the rules are written for the benefit of all sports. California also doesn’t let their HS swimmers represent their clubs during HS season, which Texas teams would find kind of odd.
They do- they just “Unattach” at Meets.
By the way, I’m not in any way saying this is how the system should work. I fully believe that high school and club swimming can and should find a way to coexist. Most of the club swimmers participating really do want to be a part of the high school team. And I get a lot if the issues from both sides. I’ve been around a while and have seen a lot over the years. And that perspective is the reason I don’t feel a need to strip titles from Keller in this case.
This is the right decision. And 99% of other schools in the same situation would not have had their titles vacated as too many schools did what they did. I’m not saying things don’t need to be fixed. I’m just saying Keller wasn’t the only one doing this, and it goes back decades.
I’m sorry, but there are other schools whose club coach is physically coaching them during school hours?!
Swimming is often the first or the last class of the day. Some high schools the club kids check in with the coach for attendance and then head out to club practice. It’s not all done at a high school pool. Some cities have multiple clubs coaching high school kids from multiple high schools. Have seen swimmers get in trouble with their high school coaches because they were hanging with their club teammates from a different high school. I mention that because they really didn’t spend time with their high school team. I’ve even seen a high school coach run an unofficial club team, not registered with anyone, for his high school swimmers and charged them for the extra workouts.… Read more »
So we penalize some rules but not others? Do we do retroactive investigations? Do we vacate past championships for similar offenses? Or do we just penalize Keller this time because it’s convenient and they’re unpopular among a certain segment of the state? I’m all for enforcing rules. I’m not for enforcing them only on the people we don’t like.
The thing is, I’m confident that the UIL would investigate and punish all schools doing this…so why isn’t someone reporting them all? I don’t think we can just say “well, nobody reported the other schools so nobody gets penalized” either.
FWIW – my high school team won a state title in the oughts and didn’t do this. Everyone was at HS practice before school every day, and went to club practice after school every day.
I’d like to see show-cause orders of some kind for the coaches involved. Require mandatory UIL training for the club coaches before they can use high school facilities again, mandatory training for the HS coaches before they can coach HS again, put them all on… Read more »
I think the reason this specific case got reported is because of the climate there, which doesn’t always seem positive. But I think there is enough schools blurring the lines somehow that reporting each other isn’t productive.
I know enough high school coaches to know there are good, knowledgeable people coaching high school. But there are plenty who don’t have a fundamental understanding of the sport and just got offered a job to coach and earn a little extra money. I know of one who seriously had no idea what he was doing and he won a state title. He also got fired after winning that title, that’s how clueless he was. The current system benefits a lot of… Read more »
Funny how no one is mentioning exactly this. All the other teams in Texas do this. As they quietly munch popcorn and watch Keller swimming take the fall for something all the teams do. Integrity would have been the other teams coming to their defense. Honesty is golden.
It’s not all the other teams, but the lines are blurred, if not outright crossed, in enough places that I find it hard to want to punish this specifically with vacating a title. That being said. I wouldn’t defend any of the practices. They need to fix this.
This is totally false. Entire regions adhere to the rules because they are led by coaches with integrity; coaches who are willing to stand up to entitled swim parents who think they don’t have to abide by the rules. Parents of kids who have to go to HS practice at 530am, attend classes all day then swim at club until 630pm are outraged by this, but the kids really do enjoy representing their schools so they accept it and do it. If the “majority” of teams as set up the just swim club, then all should be investigated and provide an action plan to UIL.
Honesty is golden. Flush out the rule breakers and make everyone play by the same rules, that is how you fix the system.
What Keller was doing really isn’t that big of a deal, they weren’t missing credit hours to swim it’s just a dumb high school rule. Any school could do exactly this and get away with it and it happens all the time.
They were missing credit hours to swim. Swimming is a class, they get credit hours for it, and they receive a grade or pass/fail. You can ‘fail’ swimming.
Braden is spot on with this point. It doesn’t entail the entire high school practice but the time of the athletic period for which they are receiving a grade.