After bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic with promising growth in 2022, USA Swimming’s total membership took another step back last year, according to the organization’s latest Membership Demographics Reports.
USA Swimming recently released data for the past two years after a lengthy delay in the 2022 Membership Demographics Report. The good news? The national governing body added more than 62,000 members in 2022 — an increase of 18.9%, the highest on record — to get back close to pre-pandemic levels.
The bad news? USA Swimming lost 18,000 members in 2023. Proportionally, the -4.61% decline was the third-worst ever, with the other two coming at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (-11.8%) and 2021 (-8.8%). The organization has said it lost 660 clubs due to the pandemic, and most swimmers on a club that closes down don’t renew their membership elsewhere.
USA Swimming’s Total Membership Since 2013 (% Change)
- 2023: 375,827 (-4.61%)
- 2022: 393,970 (+18.9%)
- 2021: 331,228 (-8.8%)
- 2020: 363,093 (-11.8%)
- 2019: 411,672 (+0.1%)
- 2018: 411,324 (-1.9%)
- 2017: 419,427 (+5.2%)
- 2016: 398,585 (-0.4%)
- 2015: 400,165 (-1.1%)
- 2014: 404,423 (-0.1%)
- 2013: 404,940 (+11.5%)
USA Swimming has a goal of a 5% membership increase for 2025 “based on historical membership data from post-Olympic years and current projected capacity,” according to the Board of Directors meeting in January. The organization says it will be experimenting with “a more family-friendly meet format” in order to achieve that goal.
Membership retention rate was 68.9% last year, the lowest on record dating back to 2019 (the Membership Demographics Reports only go five years back online). Last year, some clubs told SwimSwam they started signing up their pre-competitive swimmers with AAU instead to save time and money. In September, the Board of Directors projected that membership revenue in 2023 would be $926,000 (or 3.8%) less than estimated, contributing to an anticipated operational deficit.
USA Swimming’s Membership Retention Rate Since 2019
- 2023: 68.9%
- 2022: 89.7%
- 2021: 80%
- 2020: 78.7%
- 2019: 75.1%
In January, USA Swimming said that its membership numbers were trending up through the first four months of the 2023-24 season. At the time, managing director of sport development Joel Shinofield estimated the current pace puts the organization on track to exceed 2023 totals by about 10,000 athlete members and 1,000 coaches.
In regards to USA Swimming’s demographics, the organization once again got less racially diverse in 2023. The responses revealed that 62.4% of members last year were white, up from 55.9% in 2022 and 44.4% in 2019 (though more than a third of athletes did not respond to the ethnicity question in 2019). Also of note, there is now no separate category for “Hispanic/Latino” as there was in 2019.
Other demographic data included the gender makeup of USA Swimming membership being 53.6% female and 46.4% male. The average age of a member increased slightly from 12 years old to 12.5 last year.
I haven’t rejoined since I haven’t seen many elite meets that I can qualify for.
As for everyone else, it seems like the prices have gone up on everything, memberships, insurance, meets, and not much extra value has been given.
USA swimming needs to rehype swimming like we did when Phelps was in the Olympics and provide the resources for there to be enough clubs to be flexible to the demands of the ordinary persons schedule.
April Fools! Right?…? Oh.
But,
I legimately think a group of sleep-deprived orangutans could run an organization better than Tim Hinchey & Co. Maybe when some fallguy inevitably gets the boot for the organizations incompetence, they should look to the zoo for new employees.
I watched that video where board candidates were answering questions over Zoom. It blew my mind when the candidate with the most chaotic and off-topic answers was re-elected over candidates who actually answered the questions.
Link? Want to see it
The ‘Arms’ race swim culture continues to push all around athletes to other sports. Traditionally swimming has been a sport that below average athletes can come and build a huge aerobic base and have success. The challenge has always been keeping the soccer player, baseball player, all around athlete in the sport long enough to get a taste of success. The archaic ideas behind swim training make the barrier of entry so hard for your regular athlete to come in and have success at their first swim practice. And frankly the ideas behind traditional swim training make a practice pretty dang boring. Swimming use to be the most organized year round sport, now soccer, baseball, basketball, etc have caught up… Read more »
Glad your an ex swim coach.
What sort of “risks” would you want to see “young energetic coaches” take?
Low yardage high intensity(anaerobic threshold) focus on dryland, athleticism and technique, technique, technique. This isn’t a creative idea, Race Club has pushed this idea for a long time but club swimming for the most part continues to ground and pound young athletes. If you don’t think athletes forgo swimming because of the barrier of entry and yardage focused archaic philosophies then you are part of the reason swimming is shrinking. This is coming from a former ASCA level 5 coach/National Team staff, All America college swimmer, with two extremely talented children that have chose other sports because swim practice isn’t fun. I love our sport, but you can’t deny there is more year round (other sport) competition than ever before.… Read more »
This perspective, while refreshing to hear and completely accurate, is completely uncontroversial. Everything in this statement is obvious. The downvotes outnumbering the upvotes just lend more credibility to the truth of this post.
USA Swimming likes to charge a lot for what they provide. Somewhere along the lines they decided to begin a Coach Training program. This poor attempt to train Coaches pulled their focus away from supporting swimming at a reasonable price. There is already an Association that can train a Coach . Then they decided to start collecting money directly from the parents, again not beneficial to the swimmers & members. The family friendly meet program would be great but large clubs already violate the rules in place with no repercussions.
It looks like USA Swimming is getting the results mismanaged brings to associations.
Speaking of Swimming, I can’t wait for the University of Texas to announce Mickey & Minnie as the new coaches for the men’s swimming team. Call it a Disney Production.
Sir this is a wendys
Heard some rumors that Nesty might be going over there but don’t take my word for it
Where’s April Mop article?
My most anticipated Swimswam article.
Ouchie
I think it’s time for a USA Swimming revamp