Hello and welcome to the swim reef. I am Chris DeSantis. I am joined by the freshly shorn Eric Wiken. Eric, how are you?
SPEAKER_03I want to apologize for everybody who's watching this on YouTube. I needed a break from the beard situation. It's hot. Living in the Gulf. Sometimes you just need to get rid of the facial hair. And it just so happens that I don't have anything on top either. So it looks like I'm a pale egg. And um it won't hurt my feelings if you decide to just listen to the podcast this time versus watch us do what we're about to do.
SPEAKER_02So we've got a short one for everybody today. So we're just gonna do two things. We've um we've had a job submitted to us for um job job, the swim brief job analysis. And uh I also um subjected myself to 15 minutes of a swim-swam breakdown yesterday. And so um I don't intend to do this, you know, every other week. Like I think we did this two weeks ago with Mike Murray and Brayden Keith, but like anytime I somehow stumble across and actually start listening to something that's over there, um, it provokes me. And then I feel we need to respond to it. So um I'm gonna share my screen here in a second, and we'll get we'll get uh right into it. And this is um the swim swam breakdown. Um you can see here uh Braden Keith is gonna be talking when we turn it up. Uh Coleman Hodges on as well, and uh QAnon alt-right um election denier Loretta Race is in the upper left. Um, those are those are true statements, by the way. She blocked me on Twitter uh after the election for telling her to face the fact that Donald Trump lost the presidential election. So that's that's the extent of my interactions with Loretta Race. But they're talking about Terry McKeever here and um her uh, you know, the OC article and uh the fact that she's been put on leave now. And I just want to uh listen to some of what Braden has to say, and then you and I uh will vibe a little bit off Eric. So um here we go. Braden's saying, like he's you know, he's talked to some coaches, and I think it is of no context for this that I do think Braden is very well sourced within the swimming community. I am sure that he talks to many people, that he has many people talking to him and telling him, you know, their opinion on what's going on. So here we go.
SPEAKER_00Collaborative, you know, kind of this new model of coach. And the the the common thoughts I hear are one overwhelming talent. Um, and it's not that you can't get results this way, it's what the impact of the results might be after their college careers are over that's a problem. Um, and two, everybody lies on recruiting trips, you know. Cal, cal for a while, everybody sees the Virginia recruiting now, right? And and how everybody just wants to go to Virginia. Cal was that program for a while, and everybody lies on recruiting trips. And coaches, you know, a couple coaches said something to the effect of well, they hope if they just get one more superstar in there that it'll fix everything and everything will be better, which it never does, of course. It doesn't, it doesn't change things, but basically, nobody nobody is willing to fall on that sword on the recruiting trip when they have a an a potential Olympian standing in front of them, say, you know what, don't go here, go to Stanford, go to Virginia, go to Texas. This is not the place, we hate it, blah blah blah. And so then they get there and then it's too late.
SPEAKER_02And okay, so point one, sorry, what he's describing there is sort of his take based on talking to people on why this happened at Cal. So, Eric, what do you think? Does everybody lie on recruiting trips?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's hard when there's when there's words used like they, because it doesn't help any of us until we're like three or four sentences into it. Who the they is.
SPEAKER_02I know. Well, that's my fault, not not not Braden's fault, right?
SPEAKER_03No, no, because in that in that statement, they are swimmers.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03They are coaches.
SPEAKER_02Oh, now we're going grammar on them. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that's but it's like I I can't stand the generic, well, everybody else says, and this says I don't think everybody lies. I don't I don't think every program lies about how great it is. I think there are certain circumstances where athletes feel an overwhelming amount of pressure to upsell a program if they're not one of the kids who are necessarily enjoying it, because they may think that their their experience is isolated. So why should they tell them about some of the crappiness that they're dealing with relative to the entire program? It just so happens that a lot of this program may feel that way.
SPEAKER_02So um I'm just letting it run because there's an ad coming and I don't want to I don't want people to subject the ad. I turned the sound off and what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_03So I I don't I don't think everybody lies or everybody has athletes that necessarily quote unquote lie. It's just it's it's hard for an athlete to project their experience. But when it comes to what is being alleged out at Cal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you gotta imagine some of those people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that lends itself to definitely holding back certain cards because they they feel a certain level of I don't know dedication to the school itself. They they're thinking about Cal and the team, the team getting better, and they're they're putting their own experiences on the back burner with the idea this is going to improve the team. Um, I don't think it necessarily from the standpoint of we get somebody fast here that will be treated better. Um it just means you're gonna be lower on the totem pole if you're not one of those top five, ten kids. But um I don't know. I just I hate generalizations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, and it kind of makes you wonder how much interaction there are between the men and the women's teams uh in, you know, at Cal, at other institutions where it's men and women separate, um, because we obviously seen this happen in all kinds of programs, right? And separated and combined. Um, but some of the things that were being reported, you know, you would think that someone else outside of the program would have noticed and maybe said something, or maybe they did. And as you said, Braden, the you know, the administration just kind of wrote it off and turned a blind eye.
SPEAKER_00I I had, you know, I have a thought as you say this, Coleman. And um so Cal, women's only program, female head coach, the majority of their assistants.
SPEAKER_02All right, here it is. Everybody, get ready for this. Sorry, this is this is the part I really wanted to cue up.
SPEAKER_00Have been women. The administrator they report to, who is the number two in the Cal athletics department, is a woman. Um, there's there's a lot of talk in collegiate sports. The reason this idea of a senior women's administrator, the reason it exists, is the idea that it's at least some check on the sort of male-dominated world of sports. It's not that the you know, it's suddenly the woman has this, the the senior woman administrator has this grand authority over everybody. It's just trying to break up the old boys' club a little bit, um, in terms of reporting problems or having leverage within the department, etc. In this case, that system seems to have failed, right? Because there were many, many women who could have intervened in, you know, and and some of the assistants may have, you know, some of the swimmers are hinting that some of the assistants may have intervened in some way, but it didn't change the outcome, right? Until until this became public, it didn't stop whatever was happening from happening.
SPEAKER_02Okay, this is an absolute nuclear take. This is the one I wanted to get to. Uh if I follow this correctly, the point of having a senior woman administrator in athletic department is to prevent what happened from happening, and now this is evidence that that system has failed. What do you think, Eric? Help me out here.
SPEAKER_03It's I guess I don't know. It's it's terrible irony at best. I guess is the way I see it. Now, if you're if your argument is to combat crappy, quote unquote crappy men from doing the things that are gender discrimination or by having women come in, I think it's just more than just describing it as he does, it's like I said, it seems more ironic than it does seem like necessarily, I guess, a failure because the longest short of it, it doesn't matter what gender this senior administrator is. Right. It was a fail a human being failed other human beings. And I don't know. I yeah, I really don't know what else to say other than um it's it is ironic that but I don't I feel like people who know me know like I just doesn't feel very seem like a senior women's administrator's sole purpose is to stop or is it to stop the good old boys network from continuing to uh cover things up so much as it is to make sure that there's representation in administration and making decisions and keeping things in mind as far as a woman's experience in athletics.
SPEAKER_02Right. I don't I think I think it's there because historically athletic departments are horrible in terms of gender equity, and we have all sorts of attempts to sort of um correct that institutionally. Um, and this is certainly one of them, but I think it's such it's such a wrong framing to put on this situation, which in my mind is not really about gender and far more about people with the power to be horrible to other people using that power, you know, the protection protecting somebody of alleged of alleged discrimination, alleged abuse who happens to be the godparent of your child.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02And that and that that that happens to to just to me to be far more gender neutral than anything. Like that is something that happens when there's a male coach and a male administrator, a male coach with a female administrator, a female coach with a male administrator. Like there's there, I I I I struggle to do that. Crappy people will do crappy things, like yes, and when they have the power to avoid consequences for doing a crappy thing, they exert that power. And that's sort of what we saw here. Um, and so it's such a weird framing to me. I guess I give him the benefit of the doubt that he, as he said, it just came to me. Maybe, maybe just keep that one on the inside next time. Um, when something just comes to you, uh, and uh just think it over. Let that let that one um ferment for a little while. Um, do you want to listen to any more of this?
SPEAKER_03If you got more to talk about, sure.
SPEAKER_02Let's let's see where it goes here for a few more seconds.
SPEAKER_00It almost that's sort of disheartening because you then how what's what's the next solution to this problem from an institutional level? If if having women protecting women from abuse isn't acting them from abuse, what else do we have to do it?
SPEAKER_02And it's just like it's just disappointing because that feels like yeah, again, wrong framing, but I do have a suggestion for you. Perhaps, as we talked about, um, break up the power structure. Recognize that if you have a long time successful coach, that that person has the potential to do this, and you need checks, you need to be able to check and challenge people, right? Everybody needs that in their lives. Okay. You need it, Eric. I need it. Um, you know, the people that uh I coach need it, the people that I work for need it. Everybody needs that, you know, just somebody to like sort of catch you and say, like, hey, um, what are you doing, man? Like, you're totally out of line.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I guess it's just like you said, there's somebody like where where the failures started. Because you know, as you got as you and Joel allude to talk to, it's like you have these exit interviews, you have seniors saying talking about their experience on their way out. Right. I mean you mean to tell me like so. What you're saying is like from the very onset of the alleged behaviors or the early 2000s apparently, right, uh until now, either all of these young women didn't tell the truth on their exit interviews if they made it to their senior year, or they did, and there were not multiple sets of eyes on these.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03So was this senior administrator always seeing these and just brushing them under the rug, or is it multiple people saying, you know, these are just kids who don't understand what it takes to be elite? So and since they maybe weren't fast enough or they didn't garner NCAA championships, then it was just they became it just became well, that's just because they weren't famous. They they justified their mind allowing a perpetrator to do the things because look at these look at these trophies and look at these gold medalists.
SPEAKER_02So I don't know, it's just you ready to read the job posting? Let's move on. Yeah, yeah, let's move on. Let's move on and look at a job posting. Okay, so um we get in here, somebody sent this to me. Um, and this is like a little bit different than uh some of the ones we've been looking at. This is this is some like, you know, we've been checking out like a uh 1996 used uh Ford Escort. Like and and now we're now we're like this is like the Bugatti of uh of swimming jobs uh in comparison that we're looking at here. So um these are uh swimming Canada high performance head coaching jobs, one of them um located in uh British Columbia, Vancouver, um, another one in Toronto, um, and you report directly to the high performance director for swimming Canada. Um so uh I'm just gonna sort of flip through some of this stuff uh because we get to a part we can respond to it. There's some background on Canada, aren't we great? We're one of the most successful Olympic sports in Canada. We've got two high performance, sorry, performance um head coach positions. You um essentially you have coaching responsibilities full-time at these high performance centers, daily training environment, training camps. Um, and you're also there to develop visit visitation programs, which I assume are you know like opportunities for people outside of the high performance centers to come and you know have like a training experience at the high performance center without necessarily being um located there. Um so a very, very pure coaching job. How's that sound to you?
SPEAKER_03That's I feel like I'm did I miss the line where it said other duties as assigned? Right, where's that part? Because I feel like if that if that's not on here, then I haven't gone through everything. But um, if that's oh, here it is. Line 24. Other duties as mutually agreed upon by the senior coach and the high performance director.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Sorry, scroll all the way down. There we go.
SPEAKER_03So so what that tells me is when that late when that shifty-meter laying rope breaks, you're restringing it.
SPEAKER_02No, I don't think that's true, Eric.
SPEAKER_03It's not not true, it's not not true.
SPEAKER_02It's not not true. I um no, I mean, I think these are like, yes, I I guess I I did make it seem very simple. And then, you know, you get into the primary responsibility. It's like number one is coaching, number two is coaching, very coach-centric. They yeah, report that's basically coaching, yeah, be available to go on camps, coaching, performance goals, coaching, um, represent Canada, you know, coaching. I uh I was thinking earlier this week as I was pouring quick concrete into buckets, because um we're training outdoors now, and um there's no flags at the outdoor pool where we're where we're uh Wahoos is doing some training, so we're trying to come up with a solution. I need to like start like a swim coach. This is swim coaching meme, because as you mentioned stringing the lane line, I'm thinking like most people probably don't know that when you get into swim coaching, you might find yourself in the midday heat pouring quick concrete into plastic buckets and then so you can do backstroke, fastening PVC pipe into them so you can do backstroke, but that's swim coaching, man. That's that's the job, you know. You got to be ready to be a uh amateur um handyman whenever's whenever is possible.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I love this, I love this job description. I mean, if if you were if anybody were to say I'm just a deck coach, this would definitely be right up your alley because there's so much where it's everything is focused on, like it says, it's the high performance uh and all jokes aside, all their duties as assigned, you know, you probably have to go to a a meet and greet, or there's some investors that are coming in. You got to go to dinner and you know, wear some nice grown-up clothes or something. Um I mean it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think you know, you I do think this job, this job description does a really good job as we just keep looking down the list, like, and I'm I'm sharing the screen here, you know, conduct gap analysis, take responsibility on all reporting, ensure all athletes, etc. It's doing a good job enumerating specifically what your coaching responsibilities are without, you know, without being like super specific to to to to to too far of an extent, but not so vague as to, you know, yes, do the catch-all of like, yeah, you're gonna do some stuff. Um, and I, you know, I think unfortunately, everybody's dream job in swimming, I think most, not everybody. Look, I you already said you hate generalization. So here I here I go making a generalization. A lot of people I talk to go, I just want to coach, man. You know, oh yeah. And um, even in this job, unfortunately, I think you still have to be in the office doing some politics. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Oh, for sure. You can't you can't not be in the office. Any coach that says, I'm only a deck coach or I don't do admin, that's not you might as well just volunteer that. Like you might as well just be an assistant at some club that needs another body on deck so they can have their ratios of of staff to kids because you have to be able to communicate with the people that you need to in order to maintain the funding. Like this is Swim Canada, so the money's not necessarily free. They can if the results aren't there, the money disappears, and which means you don't have a job.
SPEAKER_02Uh well, you you have to do the balancing act, I think, in the in a job like this of Both you know ensuring that that that the swimmers get good results. I mean, you are going to be judged very specifically on results, but you also have to be a good enough politician to quote first, like make sure that the the high performance director, you know, the person that you report to likes you. I mean, that's just sort of like that's unfortunately that's how it is. You know, that person has to like you because them liking you means that um they're going to, you know, put a positive lens on everything that you do. And they're more likely to see that you're doing well, regardless of how well you're doing. Right. And then, you know, also, but also be able to communicate upwards and sort of manage upwards that, hey, here's what I'm doing and it's working, right? So like you can't just replace me because I'm I'm doing something unique here that is not necessarily easy to just sort of shuttle in a new person to um to this job. I think it's interesting too. I mean, just context for this too. I I think one of these is Ben Titley's job, um, which um, you know, he left uh a number of months ago. So I wonder how exactly um long they're gonna go, sort of understaffed at one of these high performance centers in Canada, you know, in a very tight Olympic cycle. We're already just about two years from the next Olympics.
SPEAKER_03I like point 20. I think this talks to more about that you can't just be a deck coach.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um there's they're setting things up in here where it's like you can't just you can't just work with these thoroughbreds. You have to be willing to share because there's a lot more sharing going on in other places, maybe necessarily in a much more organized fashion than maybe here in the US. And maybe I'm just making generalizations, but right um it just it seems to me like this is you are all in on Team Canada. There's there's no way to go about it. Like the personal attributes it speaks to it. Like you can't just be right always shooting from the hip. There are times when you have to, but they talk about evidence-based training programs, so yeah, you gotta have something there. I like the the ethic and the the culture stuff is it just speaks to Canada has a history of being a very friendly country as it is. So you're just gonna you're not gonna be able to come in and not uh do that, right? Um can't just exert your will on a an an NGB in a swimming community just because you can make fast swimmers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, I think it's a very limited set of people too who are actually qualified because of how specific they are with some of the qualifications, like six years of coaching international level swimmers. So we're talking about I and my assumption by that is you know, you're looking at minimum, like sort of continental championship level, so like European championship, pan-Pacific Championship, Asian games, like it's kind of a three two-year blocks if you think about the alternating international level of meets between worlds and and whatever. Yeah, you have you need to have been that good across two Olympic cycles. Um, and even as I get down here, like it's a uh because it's a bilingual country, speak French and English, right?
SPEAKER_03Because that would be an asset.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, I mean, because you know, you have to assume that um I I remember this interestingly, um, you know, I worked with some some Spanish folks um when I was in Denmark because that was a time period when anybody with um good skills, you know, uh was sort of flowing out of Spain. The economy was in such a tough spot at that moment. Um, and one of these guys had been a national training center coach in Barcelona. And this was particularly controversial because if you know anything about sort of international geopolitics, um, Barcelona is part of Catalonia, which is um constantly threatening to leave Spain. Um, they do have a distinct language uh that's predominantly spoken there, Catalonian. And um this guy went down to the National Training Center in Barcelona and insisted on conducting all business in Castilian Spanish, right? And that was a problem. So um it's just just to me, as like a history nerd, geography nerd, you know, it is interesting to me some of this um geopolitical stuff. And this isn't, you know, it's not like either of these high performance centers are in Quebec or something. They're they're in essentially uh predominantly English speaking provinces, but um, I guess I don't know, I don't know enough about Canada to know if they even have a performance center in Quebec, maybe not. So you're gonna get people from Quebec um perhaps going to uh next sort of one province over to Ontario, and um yeah, it's uh it's gonna be good if you can speak some French. Um yeah, all right. Well, I think uh this this says actually old, and now I look at it, it's from March 31st.
SPEAKER_03Um, but the the deadline is approaching.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Uh I'll be very interested to see. Um, you know, these are two really high profile jobs with stringent requirements to see who they uh end up with.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I mean obviously this position is going to be well compensated, but it's one of the things that I noticed as I got through this whole thing. Right, it doesn't say it doesn't say, and um you see that a lot on swim swam as well. Um if you're a head coach and you're trying to hire assistants, I I know sometimes it's maybe embarrassing to put that that salary thing up there, but if you don't, you're stringing apps, you're stringing applicants along. It's it's really grossly unfair to um not post salaries. Sorry. Because there are some people who are gonna be able to make that work, and there are others who certainly not. And it's don't waste your own time talking to applicants who aren't going to move for the minimum wage that you could pay them versus those who are in a situation that can't. So uh yeah, that's just one public service announcement to anybody who's looking to post for jobs here coming into the short course season. Um be nice to yourself, be nice to them.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, I I think it's a good advice, Eric, because uh more and more people I'm talking to. Um everybody's having a heck of a time hiring out there uh in the swimming world. I hear it more and more and more. Um, I've been doing some recruiting myself here at Wahoo's um because we we need more staff. And um remember calling one place and they said, Yeah, we've had like what we think is a good head age group coach position just sitting there for six months with no applicants. Somebody I talked to told me that. And um I'm hearing stuff like that more and more. And I think um if um if people want to not be understaffed, you know, you gotta change a bit of how you're posting jobs or thinking about how you're gonna get people in the door to apply for your jobs. Um I know you got to go. So I'm gonna let you go. Uh, there's a quick one this week. Thanks for everybody for listening. And uh we'll be back again next week. Hopefully, uh Joel will be back from uh his winery tour and we can uh we can resume with him. All right. Thanks, Eric. Thanks, Chris. Bye.