Two days after SwimSwam reported that the USA Swimming’s Coaches Advisory Council (CAC) and the American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) wrote separate letters to the USA Swimming board of directors demanding changes to the organization’s leadership, USA Swimming has responded with a letter to the membership.
The letters sent by the Coaches Advisory Council and ASCA are separate but focus on similar issues, including a lack of faith in USA Swimming’s leadership to deal with challenges the sport is facing in multiple areas, including membership rates, USA Swimming staff turnover and vacancies, stakeholder engagement, and the roll-out of SWIMS.
Related:
- Letter From ASCA To USA Swimming Board of Directors
- Letter from USA Swimming’s Coaches Advisory Council
USA Swimming’s response, also available on their website, addresses several of the concerns in specific sections. In acknowledging the CAC and ASCA’s letters, USA Swimming wrote it “hopes to offer insights in response…we continue to work diligently to hear all members’ voices and consider constructive criticism…We do, however, want to correct some inaccuracies so we can move forward with the same set of facts.”
Membership Rates and “The Threat Posed By AAU”
One of the key concerns raised by both the CAC and ASCA was the membership rates. ASCA called for leadership accountability for the decline in membership, and the CAC raised the issue of teams departing USA Swimming for AAU. In its letter, USA Swimming responded to concerns over declining membership rates by releasing a membership chart over time from 2005-2024. The new cycle just began and USA Swimming already releasing the 2024 membership numbers is a sharp contrast to waiting as long as they could to release the numbers of the 2022 decline.
Chart from USA Swimming’s letter to the membership
According to these numbers, the peak of USA Swimming membership was in 2017 at 421.2K registrations. Tim Hinchey was hired as the CEO of USA Swimming that year and began work in September. Registration waned year over year from 2017 until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when there was a sharp decrease in membership. Numbers went back up in 2022 to 396.2K, and are at 379.8K for 2024, a slight increase from 2023, when registration declined 4.6%.
As shown in the chart, USA Swimming has seen an increase in membership in post-Olympic years since 2008. In its letter, it characterizes the increase in membership from 2023 to 2024 as “the first time since 2012, we saw an increase in athlete membership growth in a non-post-Olympic year.”
But, it’s also possible to look at this chart and draw the conclusion that for the past two years, USA Swimming has had its lowest membership rate since 2012 outside of years when there was a global pandemic.
While USA Swimming dedicated a subsection of its letter to “the threat posed by AAU” the letter gives the outward appearance of calm on this topic. “Much like how the success of other countries in international competition only pushes us to be faster, the presence of emerging competitors to USA Swimming should be seen as an opportunity to understand how those offerings appeal to our members,” the letter reads. AAU has not confirmed its official registration numbers to SwimSwam.
USA Swimming has also seen a decline in its net assets in 2022, which are the most recently released tax documents. Net assets fell from $39,250,078 to $21,583,773, a loss of 45% on the year.
Staff Turnover and International Success
In its response to the CAC and ASCA’s concerns about staff turnover, replacements, and vacancies, USA Swimming wrote “At the Q1 Board meeting each year, the CEO must present key or material personnel decisions in an open session. The Board approves this report at that meeting, during which any discussion or questions are welcome. Following the meeting and approval of the report by the Board, the report is available publicly as part of the Board Meeting Minutes on USA Swimming’s website.”
Of note, Chief Operating Officer Shana Ferguson was promoted last month along with two others who appear to be key and material to the organization, not after the annual Q1 board meeting.
The most glaring vacancy is that of Junior National Team Director, which USA Swimming’s letter does not address. It’s a position that has been vacant for most of Hinchey’s tenure at the helm of USA Swimming. The post was empty from the start of the COVID pandemic, when Mitch Dalton joined the Texas women’s program, until March 2022 when Erik Posegay filled the position. Since Posegay joined the Texas staff this off-season, the position remains open.
ASCA’s letter writes “We need an experienced and accomplished coach to lead our National Team, and we need an outstanding, credible coach leader for the Junior National Team as well. The home Olympics require our best, and we feel an athlete-centered and coach-driven approach will allow USA Swimming to perform at its best.”
Since 2017, Lindsay Mintenko has held the role of “National Team Managing Director,” rather than “National Team Director.” The role has shifted from a coaching position to more of an administrative and coordinator position.
In their assertion about the importance of the Junior National Team Director in the run-up to a home Olympics in 2028, ASCA’s letter indirectly brings up Team USA’s performance at the 2024 Olympics. Per USA Swimming’s letter, the 2024 U.S. Olympic team met all the goals laid out: “win the gold medal count, win the overall medal count, and achieve the overall medal goal set by the USOPC in its high-performance plan.”
The U.S. did win the medal table by one gold over Australia and led the total medal count. However, that wasn’t the takeaway many had from Paris, as it is clear that the rest of the world is catching the United States. The American men went without an individual gold medal until the final individual event of the meet when Bobby Finke set a world record in the 1500 freestyle. The men’s side’s other gold came from the 4×100 freestyle relay to open the meet.
Non-Athlete Stakeholders
As for the feeling described by the CAC that USA Swimming does not listen to non-athlete stakeholders, USA Swimming responded by invoking the results from a study done earlier this year that a majority of coaches answered they were at least “somewhat satisfied” with USA Swimming. USA Swimming wrote they will release another survey in the fall.
As seen in the results from the February survey, the SWIMS 3.0 database released in 2022 has been a point of frustration for coaches. This was reemphasized in the CAC’s letter to USA Swimming. In response, USA Swimming responded that updating SWIMS was essential to continue operations as a National Governing Body and remaining in compliance with SafeSport and the USOPC. USA Swimming acknowledged the difficult roll-out and wrote “Updated compliance required an accelerated launch timeline, but the organization has continued to improve features and functionality in response to member feedback, including the addition of bulk registration and renewal via third-party team management software.”
USA Swimming goes on to report in its letter that “Since the implementation of direct Online Member Registration, deliverability and open rates of digital communications have doubled.”
Owell
I believe the board has come their senses finally. Now, if their first phone call isn’t to Mike Unger, God help them.
Was invited to attend the 2024 Olympic Trials, a terrific event! I sought out Tim Hinchey to ask him some
pointed questions regarding USA swimming and its future. I found him to be arrogant, pompous and defensive.
He recited talking points I believe were provided to him by USA Swimming as if he was reading off a teleprompter.
As a retired executive of a Fortune 500 Co. I cannot understand why Hinchey would be retained after losing 45%
of revenue year over year and a decline in membership? Why was the role of National Team Director reimagined as National Team Managing Director? This role should be someone that has been a “Coach” in their past, or… Read more »
He is arrogant. Just not with the board.
I felt embarrassed. The staff needs to be in uniform, well kept, and professional looking. His dress was unprofessional, especially for a CEO. He presented himself looking disheveled. Needs a shave or grow the beard. Just not professional in general. He’s aloof with staff.
While some may think appearances don’t matter, they are a sign of deeper disorganization behind the scenes.
The letter: “we’re concerned”
USA swimming: “you’re wrong”
At the rate this a bankrupt USA swimming is going to be suing the AAU for damages in 10 years 🙄
The problem with a national team director coach vs the managing director role that Lindsay has is that in many ways the national team coach position is like taking a really good coach off deck and putting them into a meddlesome retirement. The national team coach isn’t the national team coach at international meets. They are part of the staff, but we’ve always appointed (usually college) coaches to lead the teams. They’ll run some camps, but again, a lot of national team camps also have college coaches who lead Olympic, world championship, and other international teams running the camps. And when you hire a national team coach to oversee the program, they feel like they have to make changes to… Read more »
The position has never been National Team Coach, it was National Team Director. That person was in charge of keeping the peace between coaches on staff and resolving disputes. Also in charge of keeping sometimes difficult swimmers in line. For example, swimmers finished their program early at the Olympics used to be required to attend later sessions to cheer if they wanted to remain in the Athlete Village. That was not the case in Paris. Chase Kalisz was nowhere to be found at La Défense, but was still in Paris on Team USA’s dime. Frank Busch would have sent him home. Mintenko is incompetent and useless. Both she and Hinchey need to go.
Also, he/she would make sure throughout the quad that the coaches of those athletes in positions to possibly medal continue to look at the big picture (esp in regard to training) as opposed to getting too caught up in their short term items (conf titles, ncaa titles, etc.)
Agree completely with your on point synopsis!
I agree that massive changes need to be made to USA Swimming, including the removal of Tim Hinchey and any board member, legal counsel or executive that enabled the cover-up of sexual abuse and the Barbados offshore insurance fraud that was perpetrated on the membership for decades. It is because of these things that occurred under Chuck Wielgus’ leadership, swimmers, parents, coaches and meet officials are paying for it today. There is zero leadership, services have been cut, athletes and coaches at all levels are being disregarded and compromised and many people are on boards for the sole purpose to feed their ego and enhance their resumes. USA Swimming, under Wiegus, Hinchey and their legal counsel, have manipulated the governance… Read more »
Why didn’t the OIG get involved with that?
I think you’re a few years late. Who with any power at USAS is left from the Wielgus era? Mintenko is likely the highest ranking person who fits that bill and she needs to be fired anyway for her own incompetence.
There are a couple of people in particular who have had power within the organization for years but have never worked in Colorado Springs. They have had outsized influence and would need to be included with any “house cleaning”.
Incompetence is probably too harsh of a word here. She’s simply not qualified to do the job we are expecting. She’s probably a wonderful individual with many redeeming qualities, but just not the person for this particular position. But of course, they changed what the position is supposed to be. Mistake on the parts of the higher ups.
The definition of incompetence is the inability to do something successfully. Has nothing to do with her personally. She was originally hired by Schubert as his assistant and has been steadily promoted because no one competent wants to work for Hinchey.
Good Assessment, it appears that Mintenko is the perfect example of the “Peter Principle”!
And after seeing her salary, she is GROSSLY OVERPAID $$$$$$!
I agree in principle of course. But with the change in title when she was hired, so should have come a change in our expectations of performance(we should have objected IMMEDIATELY to the change in terms but we obviously did not loudly enough). She may have done the “new” job to a high level (operations, hotel rooms, food, etc) but we were not not (and are not) rating her on the current title, but the previous title, and the one we all want, not the current one. For all we know when she was hired she was told, “hey, you’re not expected to do what Frank and his predecessors did.” Again, the blame lies WAY above her “pay grade.”
Interesting choice of words given SS has reported her salary as being over $300,000/year.
USA Swimming is waiting as long as possible to post their financial reports, but in 2022, she made $293,927 base and $52,951 in “estimated amount of other compensation from the organization and related organizations.”
That made her the 4th-highest paid person at USA Swimming (by reportable compensation), and within the same range as Eric Skufca, Joel Shinofield, and Shana Ferguson. Tim Hinchey and Katie McRoberts were the only ones who made significantly more.
I want to understand why Coachs are blaming USA swimming for retention? THis is on the coaches and their program. How can you Blame the governing body for the experience you are giving young swimmers joining the sport? You need to look in the mirror first before you point fingers. They have points on communication and turnover. But I don’t understand that one…
There’s a missing piece of information here, which is how much of the downturn in athlete registrations is actually going to AAU.
Clubs are partially responsible if their athletes aren’t having good experiences for sure. But historically, the publicity generated by the National Team (which USA Swimming likes to hold up as the one thing it offers that AAU doesn’t) has had a big impact on registrations as well.
Teams aren’t necessarily losing swimmers. Teams are migrating to AAU, where it’s easier to register, easier to sanction meets, and costs are much lower for families.
Teams full of kids who rarely or never actually compete in meets are migrating to AAU. AAU is a place for rec swimmers and as it exists now it is basically a sinkhole/trap for potential real swimmers. Any team with a goal of producing elite swimmers can’t move to AAU and is stuck with USAS. This is why it is important Hinchey and Mintenko both be fired.
It is not a trap because you can move freely between organizations. Teams can easily have an AAU component and a USAS component and move swimmers between as needed. So it is actually a great tool for teams and allows them to bring swimmers along with a low cost, interesting program and move them to USAS when they want (more boring) but higher level meets.
Is anyone shocked at this point? So disappointing.
For sure. Moreover, who were the geniuses that thought this letter was going to resolve the massive discontent among their constituency? Did they think the response was going to be “Oh okay, thanks for setting us straight.Turns out everyone was wrong about everything. You’re good.”
Talk about bailing out the incoming water with hand buckets on the Titanic.
Yes, without a signature, who all was involved (and/or left out) in the drafting of and decision to send this out? Did the board all agree? Was it a vote of majority? Were they involved at all? Who’s in charge of who/what there? Seems like they have forgotten.
Good questions.
When was the letter written, a professional date added? What’s the strategy?
A KPI of “Win the most medals?” Really?
Can you breakdown how? What’s your plan?
You might want to add something about helping athletes. Maybe write the goal such as. Help x amount of athletes achieve individual golds, relay etc etc.
“Winning the most medals” sounds elementary. Where are you focused on the athletes? Who do you think is “winning the medals”?
Very disappointing. My three year old takes more responsibility when she does something wrong. And she doesn’t charge us a million dollars.
“We here you, but you’re wrong, and we’re not going to do anything differently”.
This sort of tone-deaf non-response is emblematic of USA Swimming under Tim Hinchey. There needs to be a swift and thorough cleaning of house between now and the end of the calendar year.
This is simply unacceptable and we need to start talking about it’s getting to the point where member clubs should band together to file a class-action lawsuit against these clowns.
This was their response when people were angry about how much money they lost. In response, they signed a partnership with a media outlet and had a board member go on and say “you all just don’t understand how money works.” So this seems to be the playbook.
Agree. It feels like the letter is cut off too.
It just weirdly ends in that long paragraph that’s smooshed together.
I wish the board would take more responsibility.
100% correct