What's next for USA Swimming and sport in the United States overall?
Lacking effective leadership and its developmental model in jeopardy, USA Swimming just entered crisis mode
Rarely does this letter address anything in real time, but events of the past several months, culminating this week with the reported leadership shake up at USA Swimming, offer a perfect opportunity to examine how sport is structured in the United States and to speculate about what might come next.
I'm using USA Swimming as an example here but savvy readers will know that what's happening in swimming applies to U.S. sport overall. Most of the problems we have in sport, especially at the youth level, are well known but not taken seriously. I'm thinking of general things like increasing costs, ballooning time investment, dropout, staffing, facilities, you get the idea. These issues are important when they apply to us personally or to our clubs directly, otherwise we treat them as abstractions.
But now, mostly because of the House settlement, the very nature of how swimming and other Olympic sports work in the United States will change. College sport is a critical component of sport development and disruptions are on the way. Effects will be felt first at the collegiate level but will eventually affect all levels of sport.
There is a lot of speculation about what these disruptions will be—loss of scholarships, elimination of teams—no one knows how the dust will eventually settle. We can be sure of one thing though, the developmental landscape will be different. And it's not a battle between competing alternatives because right now there are none.
How did we get here?
There are three catalysts behind these changes:
The House settlement will change collegiate sport, a key piece of our sport development structure.
The final report from the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics signals what could be major upheaval (hopefully for the better) in the entirety of the U.S. sport model.
Leadership changes at USA Swimming offer the opportunity to identify areas where the membership wants concrete changes/action from the NGB itself.
Alone, each of these could launch a shift in how sport operates, but that they are all happening together means it's going to be an exciting but challenging time for the next few years.
The House settlement will bring significant disruption to the sport model in the United States
Most people couldn't describe how the sport development model works even if their life depended on it. The 'model' is not in the details, it's the big picture and most don't ever see it unless they go looking for it. The reason we don't see it is because it's just there. It doesn't change. It just is. Sort of like the universe. In swimming it would include summer league, club, high school, maybe YMCA, college; we don’t even think about these contexts because they’ve always just been there. The House settlement has changed that. The college context will be different.
Because of House, many colleges will reduce or eliminate scholarships for Olympic sport teams, set roster caps for the number of athletes allowed on those teams, eliminate teams entirely, or combinations of all three. The result? The developmental pathway that has existed since the beginning of time will be different. It's already different for high school athletes who face an uncertain college sport future.
Rather than trying to save the old college framework though, we should think of ways to operate outside of it, or even without it. Colleges have no skin in the game when it comes to sponsoring Olympic sports, but for many years swimming has operated as if they did, as if the opportunity to swim in college would always be there.
But House has created a new, unfunded expense estimated to be as high as $22 million at some schools. This money will have to come from somewhere and Olympic sports may take the brunt of the damage. College athletic directors don't want to be the Snidely Whiplash's of the sports world but their jobs depend on sound economic management and if programs need to be reduced or removed then they will be.
But swimming's collegiate woes are not solely the result of villainous ADs. The attrition of college teams due to periodic Title IX cuts throughout the years hinted at the foolishness of relying on college sport as a developmental step. But like the frog in the hotpot the U.S. swimming world was reluctant to do anything that would upset the status quo, not to mention that there was no obvious solution to what was clearly a gathering storm.
House has changed that. The threat to Olympic sports at the college level is real and immediate.
For example, the consensus seems to be that the width of the current D1 pathway will be narrowed i.e. fewer athletes in Olympic sports will be able to participate.
NCAA Divisions 2 and 3 will be less affected by House (if they are at all), so the entire college development component could shift to D2 or D3. This would come with major financial changes—fewer scholarships, smaller budgets—but at least the pathway would still be intact. Or, as one AD has already suggested, club sports could be expanded, referring to the loosely organized and far less funded recreational programs schools offer.
Pro groups or what are now post-grad groups could be expanded with less emphasis on 'pro' and 'grad' to absorb talented post-high school youngsters who might no longer have access to the D1 squads but who want to continue training while studying. And USA Swimming clubs would also have to take up some of the slack.
These changes can't be labeled as plans, whatever happens over the next year or so will be the result of organic evolution based on local circumstances, but eventually workable scenarios will emerge. The scope of these changes will, of course, depend on the scale of the reductions of D1 opportunities.
The report from the Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics and Paralympics signals turbulence ahead
The report from this committee has been public for a few months. Hearings have been held and the wait is on for further meetings and possible legislation. The changes suggested in this report are theoretical when compared to those almost certain to result from House. However, they concern the Amateur Sports Act and the mission of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, so if enacted they could have wider implications for the entire U.S. sport model and not just one piece of it.
I wrote a 3-part series on this report earlier this year. Here are the links to the individual articles:
Economic disparities are causing 'artificial elimination' from youth sport programs
Here's a link to the entire 277-page report
The USA Swimming leadership shake up offers the opportunity to identify areas critical to the long-term health of the sport
This morning (30 August 2024) it was announced that potential leadership changes are underway at USA Swimming. CEO Tim Hinchey and National Team Managing Director Lindsay Mintenko are out based on a smorgasbord of festering complaints, but triggered mostly by the USA's lackluster performance in Paris.
Although USA Swimming does have some unique issues, it suffers from the same problems other NGBs face: Increasing participation cost, time commitment, post-pandemic disinterest, and family disruption. I have written about all of these issues before in this newsletter.
In the comment sections of several forums, ideas about what's wrong with USA Swimming are easy to find, but ideas about what to do about those things are either vague or missing completely.
For example, how would the NGB deal with the increasing cost of participation? It's easy to complain about the USA Swimming membership fee, which is probably going up again this year, but that's just a small part of the overall cost associated with the sport. Even if it were eliminated the sport would still cost too much for many families. And if it were eliminated or significantly reduced, what’s next? From where does the NGB recover the lost revenue?
It's the same story for many sport NGBs: Costs are rising, and while membership fees are high in some sports and low in others, the sports remain too expensive overall.
The problems facing NGBs today affect a significant swath of the youth sport demographic. Given the amount of time that we've been aware of them it's unlikely they have real solutions. What we can create are trade offs. Olympic sports need people willing to try different ideas and then understand and evaluate the consequences of those ideas. Simply listing problems is easy, as I've noticed in the forums I read. What's really needed is some second order, "what then" thinking about ideas that might make things better rather than just complaining about how things are.