Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I'm Krista Santis. Every week, sometimes twice a week, on the swim brief, I bring to you conversations and thoughts that come out of my own coaching. A lot of them from interactions that I have with other coaches. You know, I talk to so many coaches every week. It gives me a lot of inspiration. I'm never short on that. This week, I want to talk about something a little personal that's also tied into the news in the moment. It's about Lars Jorgensen, the former head coach of the University of Kentucky, and somebody who is probably not going to be allowed on any pool deck anywhere, shortly. Although, if you listen to my last podcast, you may share my cynicism and lack of faith in the U.S. Center for Safe Sports, so I guess you know I'm making a big assumption there. That podcast I uploaded was with John Little, a lawyer who has represented a number of sexual abuse victims in suits against teams, coaches, and organizations like USA Swimming over the last 15 years. I think it's worth listening to that podcast before you listen to this one, because where I'm going to end up with this one is definitely going to build off of that podcast with John. And to sort of sum up where we're headed, I always coach people to look at any failure as an opportunity for growth. In this case, I am thinking about my own failure, and that is I failed to see what was obvious to many other people with Lars. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that before I move on, my own personal side of it, and talk about what I've learned since then, how I'm processing that, and thinking about where to go. When I fully rebooted Christasantis coaching in January of 2023, I knew that one thing I wanted to do with this business was to continue to learn and grow as a coach. Even as I sold to others the help and knowledge I could bring to their situation. I actually think and I'm proud of the way that I run this business because I am always looking for opportunities to learn. As much as I think I have an expertise and a knowledge set and a skill set that can be useful to people, one of the other things you get if you work with me is the fact that I uh I am getting out to a lot of places and learning from a lot of different sources, and I'm crowdsourcing knowledge that I can bring back to you as an individual, the team you're on, etc. So I spent a lot of time paying attention to results in swimming. Um I was teased by my college teammates uh for, you know, just spending endless hours looking at swimming results, seeing which teams are up or down competitively, and generally I'm just a fan of the sport. Um I've been diagnosed with ADHD. One of the uh wonderful things about that is that I tend to hyper-focus or get hyper-interested in things, and swimming and swimming results uh is one of those things. And I think, you know, I I have learned to make that stuff work for me, right? That, you know, if I'm gonna be interested in something anyway, how can I sort of harness that that interest to achieve something that I want to achieve or or get to a destination that I want to get to? Um but one of the many reasons and opportunities that I see in sort of viewing all those results is that it allows me to be proactive in the work that I do. Um when you're starting a business, when you're trying to launch something from the ground up, there is a lot of pressure to quote, take whatever you can get, right? Just like, is anybody, are they willing to pay me money? Great. I I, you know, I could really use some money coming into the door. Um and you know, I have sought to take some advice that I often, you know, it's uh help people with the college recruiting process, um, usually as sort of a side benefit of some coaching that I'm doing. Otherwise, high school kids, uh, one of the things I always tell them to do is, you know, actually invert the recruiting process. So instead of just passively waiting for colleges to evaluate you and recruit you, be active on the other side of it and be discerning about, you know, what is it you actually want? What do you, who do you picture yourself working well with? Um, what kind of situations do you want to put yourself in? And so I have purposely, instead of just sort of like casting a wide net and seeing who's willing to pay me, I have purposely sought out opportunities where I genuinely admired the people that I was going to work with and thought I could contribute positively to something that already had a lot going for it, right? Um, and the spring, where we are now, is probably my high recruiting season in that regard. I'm in the thick of it. I'm reaching out to coaches. I just visited a coach in person yesterday. I love seeing people in person. Um those of you who have been to some recent uh talks of mine know that I put a a lot of I put a lot of value in the quality of interaction. And you know, I love to be able to see people in person. I know that that that it's very convenient. Um, I think actually, you know, a lot of stuff works very well one-to-one at a distance, especially if you have a pre-existing relationship, but but even if you don't, you know, I I find you can get a pretty good quality of interaction with somebody one-to-one, but sort of the more that you expand that net, um the more you know you you really crave that in-person connection. So I try to do a lot of talking to people on the phone, seeing them in person, all that kind of stuff. And um if you've been a loyal listener to this podcast, you know that I've I've joked a couple times that Lars Jorgensen is the top Danish American swim coach in the world. It was a bit of a self-deprecating joke, right? I'm a Danish American. Um, but it was also meant to recognize what I was seeing from the University of Kentucky in terms of results, with Lars there as a coach. It was attention grabbing several years ago when the women's team at Kentucky won the SEC championships, upsetting the traditional power balance of the top conference in collegiate swimming. I mean, it's not Kentucky's not supposed to win the SEC championships, right? That's a that's a big deal. So I reached out to Lars last spring based off of what I was seeing there. And at the outset of any conversation like that, I never enter the conversation with the goal of booking work. You know, I I always just want to learn something, first and foremost. Like I said, that's that's my number one goal. I want to be able to give something in that context. Um, you know, I think just teaching people what positive psychology is, I think it's is really valuable because uh, you know, in a first communication with somebody, I can usually show them how it's already a part of what they're doing and reinforce some of the stuff and give them sort of an infrastructure for some of the things that they're already doing. Um But um I was really curious about Lars and what he was doing down at Kentucky. And the first time we talked on the phone, I think we talked over an hour. And that's pretty unusual for a cold conversation like that. Like I said, I do a lot of these, and I was like, I left that conversation thinking, man, I really hit it off with this guy. This is awesome. Um I found him to be really upbeat, engaging. He seemed to be really interested in what I was doing. He asked a lot of really good questions and the potential for positive psychology to influence his program. Uh over the course of several conversations, I decided that I would propose working together for the 23-24 season. And uh I made him a proposal, he accepted it. And I started, you know, triumphantly telling friends, like, hey, I'm gonna do something at the University of Kentucky because I was genuinely very excited about doing it. And uh anytime you know I get to that stage of something, again, I tend to uh hyperfocus on various things. Like I months in advance, I was already sort of mentally mapping out some of the stuff that I wanted to do. Um now I said he accepted it, you know. Of course, there's always bureaucracy in place. I I'm familiar with that, having worked with college programs. Um, you know, so he said, like, I yeah, it's a big expense, I've got to get it approved. Um, you know, this will be a little process, and I I just did what I normally do, which is just let me know, you know, if there's anything I can do, and then when do you think you're gonna find out, right? And so I called him back at that time, and you know, he wasn't ready. And then I called him again at the next deadline, he wasn't ready. And I think I called him a third time and he wasn't ready, and the date at which you know we were gonna do something kept getting pushed off later and later and stretched into the summer. The rest of the story, well, most of the rest of the story I'm about to tell, you know. Uh, on June 28th, 2023, so you know, ten months ago, major outlets reported that Jorgensen had resigned. And probably this was the first moment where looking back, I should have known that there was something more going on because Kentucky issued a very terse statement that notably left out any of the flowery talk of team's accomplishments. So, you know, even when um, you know, you you've got like a sort of clash of opinions about how to move forward between a power struggle between an AD and a coach, right, they will usually try to dress up one of these announcements a little bit and be like, you know, he's been amazing, we thank him. This is just not, this just wasn't there, right? I called Lars afterwards. Again, I didn't know him well, but I had hit it off with him a little bit, and honestly, at that time I wanted to wish him well. Um and I asked him point blank, like, what happened? You know, what like what was the basis for this? And he told me that, you know, there had been a Title IX investigation, but that it had been over the countable 20 hours of practice that um, you know, a couple of disgruntled swimmers had claimed he was making people practice 20 and a half hours a week. You know, he made it seem like very marginal, um gray area kind of thing that had just gotten out of control, had snowballed out of control, and you know, now he was unfortunately out of the job that had just been unlucky. I mean, this is the point at which I look back in the conversation and I feel hopelessly naive. Um, when the news broke last week of a lawsuit filed against Jorgensen that alleged a pattern of repeated grooming and viol sexual violence against his assistant coaches, I suddenly became aware that many female coaches, quote unquote, knew that Jorgensen was, quote, creepy. And so I'm forced to reckon with the following. How did I, who's staked a good part of his coaching career on publicly advocating for rooting out the culture of sexual violence in coaching, how did I miss this? And I don't mean to suggest that I came close to truly supporting uh Jorgensen. I have no idea what I would have I like to think I would have gotten the vibe had I ever shown my face on the on the Kentucky campus. But at the same time, like I got a lot closer to this than I wanted to, that's for sure. And you know, it's left me in in reflection mode, and I think it's uh worth it for myself and for listeners of this podcast to have some of that reflection as well. Like I said, this previous podcast with John Little that I recorded last week and um posted you know about a week ago. Uh and uh he's an attorney who's who's been involved in a a lot of lawsuits. You take that for for what it's worth. But I think he's also somebody whose heart is in the right place in terms of abuse and sports. Um he's an athlete himself, you know, he he saw firsthand some of the really destructive qualities of abusive coaching and and sexual abuse in sports. And so uh I put a lot of uh stock in in what he's saying. And what I keep coming back to in this situation, and and um I've already caught a little bit of heat for this conversation and the way I framed it in the previous podcast, but I I think that a lot of this abuse really thrives on our uncomfortability in discussing it, right? Um, you know, I think back to my time at Georgia Tech, was sort of the last time that I worked in a uh big organizational workplace, right? We had mandatory sexual harassment training, and it was just one of those things that everybody was sort of groaning over, and I know that we probably have a lot of groaning over, um, and I've I've lodged some criticisms of you know, sort of safe sport education uh that we are mandated to do as part of USA swimming, but I think having more frank conversations about what can possibly happen, it helps to deal with some of the shame and stigma because like like I said, it seemed to be that there were a certain population that while they they didn't know that Jorgensen was doing anything as graphic or frankly uh illegal. I don't I don't think I have to be a lawyer to to make that statement illegal as uh was stated in in the lawsuit that's just been filed against him. You know, I I would have liked to know uh the opinion that he was, quote, creepy uh from a lot of female coaches. I would have I would have liked to know that uh before I was considering getting into getting into a a business relationship with a guy. Um just so at least I could evaluate for myself. I know I don't I don't think that that it necessarily has to be, you know, a full uh black and white judgment of another person, but it's it's really valuable information that I would rather know than not know. And I think a lot of the uncomfortability in discussing this um leads to leads to that. I mean I you know I I had a workplace, um, one of my my previous workplaces, um, University of Pennsylvania, uh where the head coach would, I think, make a lot of racist comments, sexist comments. And I I remember that I met somebody there, even though I sort of knew that the environment was there, I uh I still sought to get a job there. And so actually I I completely understand when I read this lawsuit, you know, you look at the the treatment of some of these assistant coaches and you wonder like why did they want to work at university in Kentucky? Why did they um why did they you know keep like like some of them left and came back um despite his maltreatment of them? Um I think we just underestimate how um messed up the culture is sometimes that you can still look at what is objectively a really bad situation and think, well, it's the best option I have. Um and the reason I tell this story is because you know I met somebody at that time when I was trying to come back to work there, and you know, it dawned on me later that I had to explain to that person that like just because I wanted to come back there didn't mean that I was condoning or sort of on board with the with the with the the the racist and sexist comments that were uh and sort of culture that was thrown out in that environment. And um because I think for a lot of women, right, like you I you you can you can sit there in my position and you can go like, oh why didn't they tell me? Well, I don't know, can they trust you? Can they trust what can they can they trust you to use that information uh in a helpful way? Or uh are they thinking like it's only gonna be trouble for me, right? If I if I try to give somebody, try to give a guy a heads up about what's going on with Lars, is it just gonna cause trouble for me? Is it just gonna make it harder for me in my career? Is it just going to make it harder? And that's the kind of stuff that keeps us stuck in this loop, right? As long as there's this uncomfortability, as long as the people who uh are actually advocating for cultural change or can see what's wrong, are afraid to talk, and the people who are um who are doing real harm are not, then we're really gonna struggle uh to move forward in this situation. And so to the extent that we can have some uncomfortable conversations around this, to and and draw attention to stuff like this, even though it's a black eye on our sport. You know, um, and it's not necessarily something we want to draw attention to. I mean, I I look at stuff like this, really, and I I tried to say this in a previous podcast. I think, you know, people make the argument that and I think it comes from their uncomfortability because this stuff is graphic and disturbing, and they make they they make the argument that they don't want to talk about it, um, or they don't even make the argument, they just don't talk about it, right? I don't know many of my colleagues or friends who really, you know, are willing to bring this up. As I said, I'm usually the the turd in the punch pole who's willing to discuss this stuff. And you know, they're unwilling to bring this up because, in my opinion, they may see even drawing attention. I think it's just uncomfortability at the outset, but the but that they also s would tell you that drawing attention to it, you know, it's not good for us. It's not good for us for parents to know that there are coaches like this out there. It's not good for us in terms of getting gender equity uh off the ground someday in my lifetime, you know, in the coaching ranks to publicize this stuff. But I think quite the opposite. I think that, you know, not drawing attention and not going through the pain of it right now, as it's happening, um, and uniting around like this is unacceptable and we're gonna make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. And we'll never get to a perfect place, but we could make it a lot closer to perfect than we are right now. And not uniting around that, I think over time it's an existential threat to the sport. I really do. I think that it it it threatens to you know make people further and further marginalized swimming until they really just don't trust that the sport is a safe place. Um that that that you know our customer base parents of young kids just don't really trust that it's a safe place to put their kids. And so, yes, in the short term, it's painful to draw attention to this stuff. It's um it's uncomfortable to discuss, but I think it's very necessary. Uh that's my thoughts, that's my personal story, and um thank you as always to for for listening to the podcast. If you want to reach out to me, swimbriefpodcast at gmail.com, Christy Coach.com, Christy underscore coach on Instagram. You can reach out to me any of those, any of those channels. And uh finally check out Pro Swim Workouts. They've been a great supporter of this podcast. Um you can get a membership there. You can engage with the free version of the website and and just get your feet wet, uh pun intended, and you know, just see. They've got a lot of workouts out there, lots of ways to search and comb through uh workouts, a lot of inspiration. If you're somebody who's just a part-time coach, who's maybe you're coaching a high school team, you're coaching a summerly team, whatever, you're looking for that little bit of inspiration, I think it's a great option uh for those people. Or if you're like me and you get you know workout writer's block every now and then. Not these days, because I'm not designing workouts on a day-to-day basis, but if in my most recent coaching opportunities, pro swim workouts, you can get a discount CD swim coach when you sign up and you get a discount and you support this podcast more. They've been amazing, they support the swim brief, and I really appreciate that support because it allows me to keep doing stuff like this and stay independent and talk about stuff that I think is important to discuss. So thanks everybody listening, and I'll see you again soon.