The U.S. Olympic Committee released “scorecards” this week tracking the inclusion of women and racial minorities, and the numbers suggest USA Swimming, like the USOC and most of its individual sport federations, is lagging behind established benchmarks.
The “benchmarks” are set by the USOC based on a combination of data from the U.S. Census, the NCAA and the specific sport federation, in this case, USA Swimming.
The USOC scorecard for the year 2015 says USA Swimming only achieved about 51% of benchmarks for people of color, about 78% for women and about 25% for people with disabilities.
On the flip side, the organization more than matched its benchmark for military veterans – as listed on the scorecard, all 37 of USA Swimming’s Board of Directors in 2015 were military veterans.
You can view the full scorecard for USA Swimming here.
The scorecard tracks each federation at a multitude of levels, including:
- Board of Directors
- Executive Committee
- Standing Committees
- Professional Staff
- Membership
- National Team athletes
- National Team coaches
- Developmental National Team athletes
- Developmental National Team coaches
- Developmental National Team staff
- Part-time employees/interns
Most notably, USA Swimming showed no people of color on its Board of Directors or Executive Committee and only low percentages of women in both leadership groups.
USA Swimming’s Executive Director Chuck Wielgus said the organization is committed to improving its diversity moving forward:
“One of things I love about the sport of swimming and our organization is how welcoming and inclusive we are. We live by that principle and operate every day with a mindset of how we can be even more diverse among our athletes, coaches, volunteers and staff so we can have a range of views to best serve our membership,” said USA Swimming Executive Director Chuck Wielgus. “We’ve come a long way and we’re committed to doing even more to make the experience even better for our current members and those who are looking to join team swimming.”
According to the Associated Press, USA Swimming wasn’t the only USOC federation to lag behind benchmarks. USA Gymnastics was similarly behind in minority hiring, though it was ahead of benchmarks for women. You can find reports from all sports going back to 2013 here.
Simple answer is that coaching is a “Good Old Boys” Club. USA Swimming has stopped its women in coaching series. Those were excellent articles and I learned a lot of things from them. They didn’t talk about the female coaches struggle in the swimming world but instead highlighted their accomplishments and had a set topic such as breaking down a stroke.
Anyone who was at ASCA will tell you that the vast majority of attendees were male. The speakers were predominately white males. USA Swimming is trying with its diversity meets and clinics. They are not doing enough.
A simple solution would be to require all teams to interview a diversity candidate for each head coaching position when it opens.… Read more »
So you’re for affirmative action. Your comments, however, start from the premise that achieving higher rates of females as coaches and minority participation should be some sort of legislated goal of USA Swimming. I still can’t get my mind around sanctioning (nay, requiring) discrimination on the basis of gender to achieve some outcome whose impact is unproven and dubious. Why focus on getting to some magical number of female coaches? What is the benefit to the swimmers? Still waiting on someone to justify such discriminatory mandates.
When placing my daughter in a program, that would be a factor for me. Its not the only factor, and, of course my daughter has male teachers and her martial arts instructor is a male. Still, I don’t think that it should be the norm for my daughters to be taught and mentored by male authority figures. If they are going to think of themselves of strong women with strength authority, they need to be around strong women of strength and authority. I don’t think that the burden of proof lies with justifying why there should be more female coaches. It seems the other way around to me. Why wouldn’t female athletes have female coaches. I was about to say… Read more »
Well, then wouldn’t your daughter be at a loss when she goes to work for a – gasp – man? This idea only whites can coach whites, only women should coach women, whites should have their own dorms and others their own dorms certainly supports the idea that we’re all equal and should just learn how to get along. I thought the argument was “Women are just as good as men and those other nationalities are just as good as W.A.S.P.’s.” Now you seem to be arguing for separate but equal? All this time spent focusing on the immutable characteristics of individuals can only lead to acrimony. I guess I’m just from the school of thought that says: May the… Read more »
Well These 2 sports were very successful in Rio . Seems not doing these hirings has been a key factor in success.
Well said GINA. USA Swimming is doing well. If minorities and women want more coaches then they should start their own teams. The owner of the team determines the coach.
Here are the personal profiles of gymnasts & coaches for the US womens gymnastic team
Head Marta Karolyi Romanian white
Simone Biles – black athlete with white female coach since childhood .
Alexandra Raisman – Jewish athlete with Romanian male coach since childhood .
Laurie Fernandez – hispanic athlete with white female coach since childhood
Gabby Douglas – black athlete coach swapper but current female coach .
Madison Koclan – white athlete with male & female coaches at USSR techique gym . ( woga) .
Marta has retired now & is replaced by Valeri Liukin former USSR gold medallist Russian ethnic from Alma Ata Kazakhstan .
There – what more can they do?
Replace Kocian with an American Indian or maybe an Eskimo or Transgender
You don’t know how close you are
The re was also a battle for the bars specialist spot between Koclan & Ashton Lockyear – a member of the NC Lumbee tribe .. But they had chosen Douglas (black) over Makayla Skinner ( white ) who beat her at trials because of well – you know .
I would definitely give them an F grade on the disability category. On the local level, the people running the meets have no clue how to deal with a disabled athlete and that goes for the coaches, the officials and meet admin. On the national level our paralympic team is not anywhere close to where it should be in terms of performance at the international meets. Just a few good key athletes but absolutely no depth behind them.
They dont even have a plan to improve or do anything in this area as far as I can see.
Sorry hiring
Coach Mary – I’m not trying to pick a fight, but I’m wondering if, in your advocacy for the hiring of more female coaches, you could give me an idea as to what skill sets are missing from male coaches that makes “women” (as a broad category) a preferred (or even necessary) group from which to draw candidates? Stated another way, you do not distinguish one female candidate from another based on knowledge, experience, abilities, etc. – preferring that gender be given a decisive weight over those factors when it comes to hiring decisions. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating for NOT hiring women – just trying to understand what traits someone’s gender carries with it when it… Read more »
The primary point is that the hiring numbers are a reflection of bias, conscious or not. It is unlikely that if hiring were strictly on “merit,” the numbers would be where they are. Benchmarks like this are a nudge to the organization to ensure that they are truly hiring on merit and not based on preconceived attributes that don’t really equate to “better.” There is a secondary (IMO) point that some athletes or employees may respond better, communicate better, whatever, with coaches/colleagues of a different race/gender/background. There’s value to a profession having a diversity of thought, experience and background which includes but of course is not exclusive to race or gender.
So, you buy into Hillary’s “implicit bias” notion? I’m pretty sure that I should be offended on behalf of all those who make hiring decisions at your accusation that they harbor some sort of nefarious bias. My trouble with all of this is that it presumes discrimination, without the requirement of any proof. And, to have a goal to use discriminatory considerations to hire to quotas on the chance that someone of group X relates better to a coach from group X seems unwarranted. I’ve not seen any evidence that having 1 coach from gender A and 1 coach from gender column B produces any greater diversity than having coaches from gender column B (feel free to substitute “race”, etc.,… Read more »
That is the most misogynistic statement I have seen in a while.
What part did you find objectionable?
I was just discussing this with my assistant yesterday. As a female coach with many years of experience we are not hiting enough women coaches!
So, USA Swimming data was used to set the USA Swimming hiring quotas?
This desire to achieve some manufactured magic number of every flavor of the rainbow eludes me. Is it because the quota-setters think that only people of rainbow color X can lead/coach swimmers of the rainbow color X group? I’m sure we can all agree that this would be a false premise. So, could someone explain, assuming we’d achieved someone’s magical numbers and attained 100% of the “correct mix” – how would swimming become a better experience? I.e. what salutary purpose would achieving “100% diversity” serve?
If minorities had a greater participation rate It would decrease deaths from drownings? That’s not a bad thing.
That is a true statement – for participation as swimmers. However, I’m unaware of any institutional or informal barriers to wider minority participation. But, the article is addressing hiring quotas for coaches, administrators, board members, etc. – not swimmers.
Having re-read the list of “levels,” I stand corrected relative to the categories of athletes and members. That having been said, more of the categories pertain to leadership positions.
“Is it because the quota-setters think that only people of rainbow color X can lead/coach swimmers of the rainbow color X group?” No, I would think it has more to do with trying to eliminate bias in hiring and trying to achieve a better balance in the USA Swimming coaching and staff.
But your comment begs the questions: What evidence is there that any different mix of genders, etc., would produce a “better balance”? And, what evidence is there that, assuming arguendo, that some sort of “better balance” can be established, that the “better balance” produces higher quality coaches? Or is the goal of higher quality coaches secondary to merely achieving a rainbow effect (positive impact on the sport being rendered irrelevant)? I’ll avoid all questions related to your assumption of the current mix supplying some evidence of invidious discrimination (i.e. bias).
“One of things I love about the sport of swimming and our organization is how welcoming and inclusive we are.”
Be nice if the numbers bore that out.
Ughhhhhh