Following the resignation of former Kelowna AquaJets head coach Peter Wilkins, the Canadian swim club announced that Lois Daigneault will take over as the new head coach. Wilkins left the position after the 2015 season “to pursue other endeavors,” according to kelownanow.com.
Daigneault swam at the University of Miami (FL) on a full swimming scholarship, winning 13 All-American accolades, and is a two-time member of the Canadian National Team. She graduated from Miami with a degree in sports medicine and went on to coach the Chateauguay Aquatic Club in Montreal, where she would eventually get one of her swimmers onto the Canadian National team. After returning to coach in Florida again, Daigneault was the head coach of Macedonia’s swim team at the 1996 Athens Summer Olympics.
Daigneault will bring nearly 30 years of professional coaching experience to the Kelowna AquaJets, a club that is located in Kelowna, British Columbia, roughly 300 miles northeast of Seattle. Some of the bigger names to come out of the club are Sally Gilbert, member of Canada’s bronze medal 4×200 free relay at the 1987 Pan Am Games, Kevin Draxinger, who won bronze in the 200 back at the 1990 Commonwealth Games and then silver in the same event at the meet in 1994, and Kierra Smith, who won gold in the 200 breast at the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games and finaled in the event at the 2015 World Championships in Kazan.
Lois has a passion for equipping athletes in the sport. No one who comes into contact with her would deny that. That passion makes it even harder to see that her words failed to match her actions and that seriously poor judgement has landed her in this position repeatedly. For a small LSC like New Mexico, the number of factions in small towns and coach/team turnover is mind-boggling. The real ones that suffer are the kids who are looking to the coaches to fulfill their commitment to train them without drama. Santa Fe has been through a lot already.
She may be a great coach but the fact is she has been suspended for the next 7 years. I understand that by no means is this as bad as some of the other crimes that coaches have committed, but fact is it is still a crime that was committed while head coach of her former club. I would love to have a statement from the board at Kelown
I trained with Lois for 6 years. She taught me how to swim and was 100% inspiring. Canada is lucky to have her.
Just did a Google search for court records. She was sued in 2009 by a debt collection company and she sued USA Swimming last year, I think unsuccessfully. Hopefully Kelowna was in the know on this and it is nothing that is catching them by surprise. Really important that clubs do their research, you can’t just go by applicant supplied references alone.
Just because someone has been hired for a job doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be permitted to coach in Canada. All coaches must apply for membership with the CSCTA and complete a separate screening process outside of Police Record Checks and Vulnerable Sector Searches. I suspect that if this individual is suspended by USA Swimming they may have a hard time being approved for membership with the CSCTA and therefore ineligible to coach in Canada.
This second suspension is for ten years and her appeal was denied so her suspension started in July. The trouble with suspension is there is really no way to keep a coach off deck as we found out with her first suspension. Who is going to drag a suspended coach off deck and if “it isn’t public knowledge” this makes it even more difficult. The only incentive a facility might have to make sure a suspended coach is off deck, is it would put the club insurance at risk, There are many different ways to put athletes and clubs at risk.
If they called the board in Santa Fe – they all got in trouble too – for stealing and covering up for Lois. Better call USA swimming Canada – you got one smelly fish!
Suspensions can be for different reasons, some as parents we should worry about and others that we can look the other way and assume she learned her lesson. Do you know if she did something that put a athlete in danger in any way?
Not unless you consider serving alcohol to underage athletes at a winery harmful. That was the first suspension.