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Swimming Technique July - September 2002 Feature ArticleBeneath the Surface
By George Block Tim Welsh, the head men's swimming coach at Notre Dame and former chair of the NCAA Rules Committee, is a close watcher of all trends collegiate. On the 8th of May, he sent an e-mail that said the Titanic has run into the iceberg. The "boys" problem has demonstrably reached the collegiate level. Coach Welsh has tracked the actual qualifying times (those swimmers actually invited to swim) for each year's NCAA Championship over the past 11 years. He isolated the past 11 years, because that is the period of time for which the 235-swimmer "cap" has been in place. (Coach Welsh's detailed chart can be found on Swimming Technique's web site, SwimInfo.com.) According to Coach Welsh, "When you look at 2002, in every individual event except the 100 butterfly, the `actual qualifying time' got slower. When you ask, `When is the last year this time would have qualified?' the setback is rather dramatic. Such a pronounced slowdown across every individual event has never happened before. "At the same time, looking at the relays, four of the five are the fastest relay qualifying times ever, and the fifth one is the second fastest! The very fastest teams in the country (only 12 relays get invited) are still getting faster, but across the country, the field is not as deep." As bad a picture as Coach Welsh paints, it is worse. Over the past 11 years, since the "cap" was put into place, the percentage of foreign swimmers both in the NCAA field and in the NCAA finals has steadily increased. (I am asking Genadijus Sokolovas, a superb population statistician from USA Swimming, to analyze Americans in the field and finals of the men's NCAA Division I Championships over the past 11 years. When those numbers are available, they will be posted on SwimInfo.com.) Disturbing Trends Wre dropping out of football, as well. High schools in Oklahoma have had to drop the sport. I never thought I would care. Now, boys aren't going to college. The socio-economic implications of that change are huge. Without a college education, a young boy can expect, over his lifetime, to earn about $2 million less than his college-educated peer. And how will marriage and family structure_already stressed past the breaking point_hold up when college-educated women can't find any eligible college-educated men to marry? Since we are at the leading edge of this trend, we have both a pragmatic and moral imperative to turn this around. Unfortunately, swimming can't turn it around any more than swimming could get the nation's leadership to acknowledge there was a crisis with our boys. We are too small and too unimportant. And we're not on TV. The USOC, however, is not small. It is not unimportant, and it is on TV. And it does depend on the medals won by swimmers for its sponsor value and support. The USOC could turn this around. They could announce the crisis among boys, and people would listen because they benefited so clearly from the success of American women. When the USOC speaks, Congress listens, sportswriters across America listen and corporate America listens. Clear leadership from the USOC has never been more important. But with a "new" executive director and a scandal-plagued, self-interested volunteer leadership unable to elect a president, the USOC has never been so poorly positioned to lead. Meeting of the Minds In the midst of that environment, a group of USOC staff members invited a select group of individuals to meet in Indianapolis, June 26-27, to discuss the decline of Olympic sports programs in American intercollegiate athletics. This is a critical moment for the USOC, as well as for the (men's) collegiate sports that have been brutally impacted in the past 30 years. If the USOC does not turn this around_quickly_a loss of medals will be felt in Athens, painful in Beijing and devastating in 2012. A loss of medals translates to a loss of sponsors and TV dollars to the USOC, but they have never been a group to look far into the horizon. Ironically, their institutional myopia may be (temporarily) cured by the same volunteer upheaval that has left them leaderless. It will be a good test for the USOC. Has the USOC become an "institution," capable of functioning in spite of the storms swirling around it, or is it still a "cult of personality," merely reflecting each president's personal whims? The USOC's institutional myopia has always been closely tied to the volunteer leadership's penchant for short-term self-interest. Under Norm Blake and Scott Blackmun, however, the USOC became a much more staff-driven, professional organization. Although that led to their dual demise, the same staff and structure remains in place for new USOC CEO, Lloyd Ward. Ward comes in with an imperative_and ability_to lead. Unfortunately, Ward has spent most of his pre- and post-Salt Lake time evangelizing the country away from Olympic scandal and back to the Olympic bandwagon. He hasn't been with his troops. But his troops got him to call this critical meeting. Now they will find out what they are made of. There is early cause for concern. In times of stress, the USOC staff has a nasty habit of lapsing into spasms of political correctness. This time they have to confront the symbol of political correctness, Title IX. Since the passage of Title IX, 170 college wrestling teams have been dropped. Eighty men's tennis teams were eliminated, along with 70 men's gymnastics teams. Forty-five men's track teams have felt the knife, and now swimming has lost more than 40 teams. USOC Spurred to Action Who is spurring the USOC to action? Would you believe Chuck Wielgus, the executive director of USA Swimming? Would Chuck Wielgus, who many have described as "organically predisposed to avoiding confrontation," confront his single biggest sponsor_the USOC? Yes. The meeting, although called by the USOC, was the brainchild of Wielgus, who organized his fellow executive directors in wrestling, gymnastics, tennis and track to petition, then badger, the USOC for assistance in this multi-sport issue. "There may be no single issue facing the USOC that will have greater impact (up or down) on winning medals in 2008 and beyond, than the issue of declining Olympic sports programs at American colleges," said Wielgus. "This is a performance issue rooted in policy that begs for USOC involvement, leadership and action." But Wielgus is concerned. Although encouraged that his colleagues in Colorado Springs are finally becoming engaged with this issue, he is "concerned that this meeting does not have a more clearly defined purpose." He doesn't need another meeting. He wants a result, but he'd settle for a "strategic plan for the USOC to follow in helping to sustain and expand Olympic sports as a part of America's intercollegiate sports system." Wielgus has merely been able to master the obvious, which has somehow escaped the USOC volunteer leadership. The sword that caused the enormous growth and expansion of women's sports is two-edged and is causing an equal (or greater) decline and contraction in opportunity and quality for men. Wielgus wants this meeting to address four points:
Will he get his four points? By the time you read this article, you will know. You will also know what Coach Welsh's graphs will look like over the next 11 years. George Block is past president of the American Swimming Coaches Association (1997-98).
NCAA MEN'S SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
"ACTUAL" QUALIFYING TIMES
Invited in for: 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992
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50 Free 20.02 19.92 19.85 19.92 19.99 20.05 20.15 20.13' 20.17 20.11 20.14
100 Free 44.07 43.85 43.93 43.97 43.98 44.16 44.41 44.05 44.30 44.26 44.28
200 free 1:37.31 1:36.79 1:37.04 1:37.39 1:37.03 1:37.16 1:37.33 1:37.32 1:37.21 1:37.43 1:37.18
500 Free 4:23.19 4:21.85 4:22.63 4:23.26 4:23.12 4:23.74 4:24.26 4:23.76 4:23.42 4:23.61 4:22.56
1650 Free 15:20.39 15:14.75 15:18.23 15:19.94 15:19.23 15:19.56 15:24.94 15:19.21 15:22.63 15:21.91 15:17.05
100 Fly 47.90 47.95 48.01 47.91 47.91 48.24 48.61 48.50 48.56 48.51 48.64
200 Fly 1:46.52 1:45.85 1:46.31 1:46.55 1:46.97 1:47.42 1:48.17 1:47.80 1:47.55 1:47.29 1:47.64
100 Back 48.41 48.26 48.35 48.40 48.47 48.63 48.91 49.00 49.06 48.81 49.32
200 Back 1:45.65 1:45.06 1:45.70 1:45.47 1:45.56 1:45.59 1:46.34 1:46.33 1:46.30 1:46.36 1:46.46
100 Breast 54.85 54.75 54.96 55.04 54.85 55.08 55.62 55.59 55.73 55.56 55.58
200 Breast 1:59.49 1:58.96 1:59.45 1:59.62 1:59.85 1:59.92 2:00.45 2:00.48 1:59.97 2:00.01 2:00.35
200 IM 1:47.71 1:47.68 1:47.68 1:48.46 1:48.50 1:48.61 1:49.25 1:48.95 1:48.81 1:48.50 1:48.97
400 IM 3:50.89 3:49.43 3:50.72 3:51.37 3:51.35 3:51.36 3:53.56 3:53.10 3:52.57 3:53.36 3:53.61
200 FR 1:19.21 1:19.42 1:19.31 1:19.43 1:19.92 1:19.88 1:20.21 1:19.87 1:19.91 1:19.92 1:20.47
400 FR 2:56.39 2:56.05 2:56.79 2:55.90 2:56.59 2:57.22 2:58.45 2:57.69 2:56.61 2:57.22 2:58.68
800 FR 6:30.02 6:30.83 6:31.27 6:32.75 6:32.96 6:33.57 6:33.85 6:32.52 6:32.33 6:31.87 6:34.71
200 MR 1:27.78 1:28.23 1:28.03 1:28.37 1:28.37 1:29.01 1:30.04 1:29.40 1:29.34 1:29.08 1:29.80
400 MR 3:13.93 3:14.45 3:14.85 3:14.88 3:14.53 3:15.10 3:17.37 3:15.86 3:15.40 3:15.48 3:17.21
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