A Tale of Two Meets: The OKC Pro-Am’s Big Break Up is a Win For Swimming

For the last 22 years, there has been a swim meet that has pitted professional swimmers against amateur swimmers in the Oklahoma City area. For the pros, cash prizes that are huge, relatively-speaking, have been available, and amateurs have come from across the country for the opportunity to swim against high-level competition in the center of the country. This has been a meet well-known by swim fans.

In 2014, though, things got messy.

John Brown, one of the two co-founders of the meet, left the Chesapeake Swim Club (now named the American Energy Swim Club) to form his own team, the King Marlins Swim Club, nearby. As the founder of this meet, and truly the one who knows more about the meet and how it’s been run for 22 years than anyone else on earth, Brown wanted to continue hosting it with his new club, KMSC.

The confusion comes from the fact that on December 18th-21st, his old club, the American Energy Swim Club, and his new club, KMSC, are both hosting pro-ams, and are both offering big cash prizes, and are both doing so on December 18th-21st, 2014. KMSC’s is hosted at the Oklahoma City Community College Olympic Festival Pool, while AESC’s meet is moving to a new pool as well: the brand-new Mitch Park YMCA/Edmond Public Schools Aquatic Center.

This has created a lot of confusion. Swimmers and teams aren’t quite sure which meet they’re signing up for, or if there are even two meets, and we’re here to say with certainty: there are two distinctly different meets. The format is basically the same. The prize pools seem very similar. They continue the same tradition, each in their own way. But they are two different meets.

This has not been something that has been breezed over in the state of Oklahoma. There is a lot of emotion tied to this event, as there should be. A lot of people have dedicated a lot of time to this meet and its development, and it’s a fantastic event. For what it’s worth, most of the nasty words we’ve heard have come from parents, athletes, and families of athletes, rather than the coaches themselves.

The situation we’re left with, though, is one similar to the old Cleveland Browns dilemma. In 1996, the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens. By 1999, there was a new team in Cleveland, also called the Cleveland Browns. It’s sort of the same, except opposite.

Both groups have a claim to the meet, depending on your perspective and viewpoint. Brown founded the meet, it was his meet to begin with, it was his idea, and when he moved to the KMSC, he wants to continue the meet that he spent so much time working on. Many swimmers, especially in Oklahoma, view his name as synonymous with the meet.

On the other hand, for over two decades, the resources of what is now the AESC have been used to run the meet and to build its popularity. That meet retains the sponsorship of the old meet from American Energy: the large energy company that has sponsored the event for years. Following the paper trail, the meet would have to belong to them.

Both clubs have danced around calling it the “23rd annual” anything, opting instead to point out simply that the meet has 22 years of tradition behind it. There are intellectual property lawyers who can decide somewhere if there’s a trademark infringement challenge by either side for having a “confusingly similar” meet, but there’s too many unanswered details for us to make that decision.

At the end of the day, we view this as a win, all-around. Both meets are creating more financial opportunities for professional swimmers in a country where there’s not enough of them. Both meets are getting more people engaged in an exciting swim meet format. Both meets, we’d presume, will continue the traditions of community service associated with past versions. There are a lot of good things happening in swimming in Oklahoma, and while that doesn’t yet include a varsity program at either of the state’s two flagship universities, it does include December’s second-best weekend of domestic professional swimming.

We’ll be covering both versions of the meet. We’ll refer to one as the American Energy Pro-Am, and we’ll refer to the other as the KMSC Pro-Am to help our readers keep them straight. Both meets already have fantastic lineups announced. The AESC meet will include Nick Thoman, Breeja Larson, Brendan McHugh, Dax Hill, Josh Schneider, Karlee Bispo, BJ Johnson, Mike Alexandrov, Darian Townsend, Michael McBroom, Christine Jennings, jody Miller, Michael Andrew, Jared Anderson, Ashley Twichell, and, Mark Weber, among others, according to organizers. The KMSC meet has commitments from well-known clubs like the Mission Viejo Nadadores, the Kansas City Blazers, the Fort Worth Area Swim Team, the Houston Swim Club, and the Lakeside Aquatic Club in North Texas.

To read more about the AESC meet, click here. To read more about the KMSC meet, click here.