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Actually, I was meant to do this one with Sarah E. Kircher, who I've had on a number of times here often to discuss quote-unquote safe uh sport policies and matters within the greater governing bodies for sport, also specifically within swimming, also even just sort of getting into the details of her own interactions with those systems. Unfortunately, Sarah could not be here today, but she has had quite a bit of input on what I'm about to say, as well as some other sources. And uh I thought that you know there's been a lot of discussion uh in the past week since USA Swimming Safe Sport Division came out with the MAAPP, the Minor Athlete Abuse Prevention Program, uh or sorry, policies. And uh I've actually put the word out to uh John Bradley, a board member at USA Swimming, to come and discuss these because I know that also he is uh somebody that is really passionate about this issue. And I think um part of what's going on right now is that the rollout of this information has resulted in quite a bit of chaos. Um and I'm gonna get into that in a little bit, uh, some of the context for what's going on here. But I wanted to, straight off the top, uh just take sort of a uh a look at the policies themselves, because I think that, you know, before uh I get into some of that context, and and yes, I'm gonna have some criticisms in that context, it's important to look at the policies themselves because I have to give uh some credit where credit's due, that a lot of what's in here uh is stuff that I've been advocating for, that other people have been advocating for for quite some time. So there's some positive developments uh in this whole process. There's some good intentions, there uh are some pieces of this that I think uh have a lot of potential to do good within the sport. So um there's basically five planks of the map, um, which uh I on a side note, uh I'm a little uh annoyed that it has almost the same initials as my um my master's degree. Um so now that now uh people may see my signature with uh MAPP and assume that um I'm somehow uh claiming to be an official on this. I am not an official on the minor athlete abuse prevention policies of USA swimming. Um so the first plank is all about one-on-one interactions, and this stuff is really basic common sense uh rules and stuff that uh in my own business I've actually already put into practice um in advance of maps. So I'm really happy to see it roll out uh all the way around. And basically, um the biggest piece of this as I see it is that um what you know one-on-one interactions can be interruptible and observable. So, what does this mean in practice? It means, you know, people can't necessarily hear uh what you're talking about, but uh they can see you in a room with somebody having a chat. Um they the door is open. You can be walked in on. Um, that's a sort of a good example of interruptible. When I do um one-to-one training with uh athletes, uh, you know, I do positive psychology work with them, resilience training. Um I insist on doing this in an interruptible and observable space. So if I'm coming into even if I'm coming into somebody's home, um you know, the parents have hired me uh to do this, uh, I'm not gonna be in a closed door in their house. Um and that's I think a very good uh common sense policy when I've gone out to teach private swimming lessons, you know, it can't be just me and an athlete in a pool. Um I think that uh anybody who is um working with working with people one-to-one, and there may be some reasons why you would end up, you know, uh one-to-one. Uh these are sort of common sense things to have in place. Uh so I'm really happy to see uh this one-to-one piece uh be made an official rule. Um the second plank is all about social media and um there's a couple sort of as I see headline pieces of this. Um the discussion uh sorry the the the piece around uh not being friends with minors on Facebook. Um this was something actually that up until uh a few years ago I didn't really understand uh why and how this could be a problem. But um I've made a conscious effort uh in the last few years to not uh be friends or be followed on social media. And I'm gonna have to, um, since I have you know a Facebook page for Chris DeSantis coaching and a and a Twitter feed, um, I'm gonna have to do uh an audit of that just to make sure that I don't have any uh minors following me on those uh on those platforms. You know, I think that uh uh the advent of social media has blurred a lot of um sort of appropri uh appropriate boundaries between adults and the people that they are responsible for. And uh making it clearer what some of those hard lines are uh overall, I actually also see as a positive. I know that this, and we'll get to this later, that this is um a lot of coaches view this as problematic because they're using some of these platforms um to communicate. Um anyone who has worked in the NCAA um has probably been frustrated by some of the legislation that exists there. And uh, you know, you can often people who who don't really sort of uh who aren't really involved uh with the NCA, you can, you know, quote them some piece of legislation, they'll say, like, why does that exist? And uh to say, just imagine the sort of most unethical person and how they might use this. Um and in this case, you know, um for somebody that wants to abuse a child, um getting access to them on social media and um, for instance, having them follow you on Twitter and then being able to uh direct message them or uh communicate with them in that way, you wouldn't want that person, just in the same way you wouldn't want somebody doing a one-on-one interaction that you couldn't observe and interrupt. You wouldn't want them doing the same thing on social media. So I as I see it, the social uh media stuff and communication stuff is all about that. Um there's an aspect of this where parents and guardians must be copied on electronic communications. Um again, that's a policy I've already been putting into place myself.
SPEAKER_00Um uh because, you know, I uh first off, I've I I got nothing there's no communication that I'm making with minors that I don't want parents to see.
SPEAKER_01So that's not a problem. Um and um you know, it's good, actually, I think, I think overall positive for adults to see the way that you are communicating with their children. Um I also uh um have always had an open policy to uh parents observing my practices and even hearing what I'm saying to their kids because um I actually think it really helps uh for them to get that context. And I've I've often done it in situations where I have a parent who is um maybe they're hearing something from their kid about what is going on at practice and they've become concerned. And I say, come on over to practice and see the way I'm interacting with your child, and then tell me uh if you still have concerns. So I overall I've seen that as a positive, and I think um it's actually gonna be helpful in a lot of ways to sharpening up some of the um electronic communication that we're uh making with uh with young people. Uh travel. So uh a lot of the travel stuff is just again um really around this one-to-one uh stuff, um, not being uh, for instance, alone in a car with a miner that's not your kid. Um you know, if you are making a room check, which you know, any kind of responsible adult would do um while traveling with a group of minors, you know, having two adults on that so that you're not uh entering a hotel room of a minor by yourself. Um you know, no sharing uh hotel rooms with uh not your kid. Um in the case of Mark Schubert, you know, no uh having somebody else's kid come live with you uh so that you can coach them and go on to greater glory. I think this is um again pretty obvious, um, sets a good boundary for um the ways that uh adults are uh and responsible people involved in the sport are behaving around travel.
SPEAKER_00Locker room stuff. Uh no recording devices.
SPEAKER_01You know, that's one of those rules where you go, do we have to have a rule for that? I mean, it it seems sort of pretty much already illegal, but um, you know, we had an incident uh with the head swimming and diving uh coach of Towson University. Uh, I guess there may not have been minor athletes in there. And we're gonna get into a discussion about this whole part, this whole minor part of this later, but um had been recording, uh, of course, Lori John Tritz, who uh has been wanted by the FBI for quite some time. Um, a lot of his crimes were around recording uh lockerums. So um I don't think anybody should be uh upset that this is a rule. It's a pretty obvious slam dunk rule. And there's a lot of this, again, about avoiding being in the changing area at the same time uh athletes are changing. Um, you know, uh these past two years when I've been coaching, I've actually been at a YMCA, and one of the positives there is that there's actually separate locker rooms for uh the uh 18 and under uh kids and everybody else. So um even when I do have to poke into the locker room for a second, even just to drop off a few things on my way to practice, um it's it's not an issue. I can understand how um not everybody has those kind of facilities. Um, but again, it's a fairly sort of common sense thing that establishes a nice boundary um between the sort of responsible parties and uh the athletes that are engaging in a sport activity. And then finally, uh another section that uh I'm glad to see in there, while being a little sad that it has to be in there, but there is a whole section about massages and rubdowns. And yes, you should not be you uh you know, you don't really need to touch somebody to coach them, period. Um that's what I've found. Uh I have but you know, beyond beyond that, uh this rule is enshrining the fact that um uh as a coach or a sort of responsible adult, um you don't need to be giving a massage at a swim meet. And we've seen uh some coaches who have uh been banned. This was sort of a practice that they did. It was a method for grooming athletes. You know, they could sort of gauge uh uh how they would push boundaries with the bodies of athletes by giving them massages. So it's good to set a hard boundary, no massages, no rub-downs, um, so that we've effectively blocked this type of grooming behavior. And I should say that's sort of a greater theme of all of this is setting boundaries at a level that are um well away from where an athlete could be abused so that uh so that you can sort of interrupt uh a grooming process before it starts. Um I think this is sort of another fairly obvious uh one for that. Alright. All that said, let's get into a little bit of the context for all this. And the first point on this is something I know Sarah would be screaming uh at this point in the podcast. And that is why is this only for minor athletes? There seems to be overall a kind of, I would say, obsession uh with USA swimming safe sport um to have rules be specifically geared towards minor athletes. And I think that they're missing the implication there that is um I think their intention is that is the fact that they have primarily uh minors as athlete members. I mean, there's an overwhelming majority. Um and and so uh that's sort of the constituency that they are focused on. But if you look at the above rules, uh it's hard to imagine how these wouldn't be appropriate boundaries for adult athletes. I mean uh I think if you're a college coach coaching a 22-year-old, um a lot of this stuff around uh one-to-one interactions still applies. Um I think that you still want, while perhaps you don't need somebody's parents copied on communications, um you know, you're gonna want to have um a you're gonna want to have a record of electronic communications that somebody can review, um, that you're going through official channels and that somebody, you know, could look at and say, alright, um, nothing inappropriate happened here. Um so you know, I I while I think that the intention to protect minor athletes is good, uh there needs to be a hard look also at how these policies can be adapted to protect anybody that's participating in the sport, not just minor athletes. And I should say um uh Sarah was pretty firm on this, and I saw Danny Bostik, um, who has been quite a powerful advocate for this on Twitter, essentially saying the same thing, which is that none of these policies would have prevented their abuse at the hands of their swim coach. And I think we have to take them at their word on that. Um and I'll sort of I that that's a segue into a point that uh I don't I don't think that um these policies were actually formed uh or informed by the victims of sexual abuse. Um and that's probably one of my biggest criticisms of how we are tackling this entire problem. Uh it continues to be a uh a group of stakeholders who are essentially uh detached from that group making decisions about how to move forward. And the people with the best understanding of this problem are the people who've been hurt by it the most. And they need to be a part of crafting the solution, and until they are leading the crafting of a solution, everything's gonna be a very tiny incremental baby step.
SPEAKER_00Um okay. I'll probably repeat that point.
SPEAKER_01Another another thing here is uh uh a friend of mine uh sent me uh well I I think I can name names. Uh Trevor Gray, frequent guest on the podcast, sent me a transcript of a talk given at the ASCA World Clinic in 2017. They had a massage therapist at that conference um coming to quote unquote teach coaches how to do rub downs. This was in 2017. So uh I have been consistent in my criticism of Asuka. Uh I still think there's plenty of to criticize with ASCA. They've really failed in terms of leadership on this issue. Um and uh they've not only failed in leadership, but they're sort of swimming against to use it to use a uh an analogy, they're they're they're swimming against the tide on this. Um at a time when sort of most people with common sense knew that it was a terrible idea for swim coaches to be giving massages uh pool side, they actually brought somebody in to teach uh coaches how to do this. And uh the potential there is rather than drawing this hard line, that coaches could go back to their clubs and say, Well, I've you know learned about this thing and now it's okay for me to be touching uh athletes in this way at the side of the pool.
SPEAKER_00Um here's another wrinkle. Talk about enforcement.
SPEAKER_01Uh when this first came out, one of my biggest concerns was how are things going to be enforced? And there's been since been some clarification on what the enforcement is going to look like, uh, but it gives me a lot of reason for concern. Um the enforcement, a lot of these rules is going to be up to clubs to do internally. And so I can envision a scenario where a uh longtime coach just doesn't want to get on board with the MAAPP and flouts a lot of these regulations. Um and uh it's not clear what would be done in response to that. It it uh the the communication from USA swimming has been the next level to elevate it is to an LSE. I spoke with somebody who um was in a uh a safe sport role within their LSE. They were completely unprepared um to have this role. So before um before it would have been good, I think, to have some clear communication to people who might be receiving these kinds of complaints um ahead of time and have them be sort of fully prepared for this rollout. Um it's unclear what, if at all, um those people within the LSC can do to enforce these rules, aside from you know, some strongly worded letters or something. Um and then essentially you have the complaints coming up to uh the USA swimming safe sport offices if they can't be resolved within the club and um within the LSE. And I don't think that um that or part of the organization has given uh people a lot of reason to have faith that they're going to enforce these rules. They're already struggling to enforce behavior that is far more egregious than what's in the MAAPP. Um so why should we then trust that they're going to be able to enforce some of this? And I'll be very curious to see how they end up enforcing this. One of the things um that needs to be established is right now we've in terms of enforcement, we've basically had uh uh a very black line that says either um either we can establish that you did something terrible and you are banned for life or suspended for some period of time, um, or you're good. And uh I think that I'm gonna be very interested to see what kind of gray area um and what kind of consequences USA swimming creates for some of these violations. Because um a lot of the stuff that's in here, I think most people would agree is not uh stuff that even sort of some repeated violations of might constitute you know you being banned. Um but what are some of the intermediate sort of consequences that USA swimming can create?
SPEAKER_00Okay, here's another question. You've got um this policy is overwhelmingly focused on educating coaches. Okay. Um one of the things I've pointed out before, and I will point it out here again, is that that that's not uh your best modality for preventing abuse.
SPEAKER_01People that really need to be educated um on a lot of what a lot of these boundaries are, and it's something we've tried to do on this podcast, and I think we've been successful in that. Specifically, we did a couple of podcasts on grooming. I've gotten tons of great feedback on that. Um I spoke to Nico Messer here a few weeks ago, and he was talking about some initiatives they're doing in Sweden to out reach out specifically to swimmers and parents on the topic of grooming and some of these boundaries. Um because those are the people that need to be empowered to say, okay, this um this coach or this sort of responsible uh person on the team, this person with some power is overstepping those boundaries. And I'm gonna call it out. Um and that is a effective way for them to halt the process of grooming before you get to some real uh serious abuse. And so um, you know, I I I was thinking about this this morning. Uh who knows how much money USA swimming spends flying their sports development consultants? And that's actually something I plan to bring up with Joel Schnefeld when I have him back on the podcast, around to talk about any number of uh topics that um I would argue uh are inappropriate for them to discuss. But what about having a uh program where people that were experts on uh sexual abuse and grooming went out to clubs and educated parents and swimmers about this? I think that would be incredibly valuable and would do a lot uh to prevent this. And I think it would be very telling to um whether coaches would agree to this or not. You know, I think a big aspect of this is what is USA Swimming um recognizing and uh valuing within their organization?
SPEAKER_00And you look at something like um the uh Club Excellence Program, why isn't uh this a factor in that?
SPEAKER_01Why is it all about performance? Um I'm looking specifically at Magnolia Aquatic Club that's had one band coach and another one that we've discussed on here, um, Scott McFarland, who retired um after Sarah uh once again accused him of sexually abusing her um throughout her time, both as a minor as an and as an adult uh swimming for him. And so um on the one hand you have USA swimming saying this is a gold medal club, this is a gold standard for a club, and on the other hand, if you look at it from a safe sports perspective, you have a club with some serious institutional failing that hasn't been held accountable for um for their hiring practices. I don't think that it is uh just a coincidence or bad luck that they've ended up in this situation. And so um, you know, I think that uh that sort of going a little far afield from where I started here with coaches, um, but you know, I think that parents need to be able to throw a red flag on behavior, and a lot of them, um unfortunately, they've been groomed within the teams that they're on to allow a lot of this boundary pushing. Um and USA swimming as an authority could be much more forceful in telling them what they can expect as appropriate boundaries from their coaches. Um okay, I'm gonna get a little bit uh uh more empathetic with coaches here for a second, because there's a there's an angle of this where um you know the people who are going to feel the brunt of this policy um and enacting these rules are coaches, and the majority, the vast majority of are in my experience, very stressed, um underpaid, overworked, um possibly depressed, feeling hopeless, and this is gonna put increasing stress on them. And so to introduce a policy like this, you know, none of this exists in isolation um without some sort of uh way to offset the well-being um of coaches, I think is a mistake. And uh coaches coaches' well-being is extremely uh important. Um I think that um one of the things we've discussed on this podcast also is that um unfortunately substance abuse is often concurrent with abuse of athletes by coaches. Um and substance abuse is is concurrent with a lot of these issues of um stress and well-being. Um and so to the extent that we can address some of that uh well-being issue among coaches, I think that is another sort of um angle where we can preempt athletes from getting hurt by their coaches um if we have more effort. Um and I think that involves, on the other hand, you know, we're setting a lot of boundaries on coaches here. How about some boundaries for the way that parents run swim clubs can treat their employees? Where's the policy on that? Because I think that could go a long way towards setting some more positive, um, better working conditions. Could um could USA swimming again, could instead of having resources into sport performance uh consultants, could we put resources into uh the well-being of coaches? You know, could we be um uh having people uh who are who are trained and capable of um going out and uh setting up coaches to have better working decisions, better life? Um could that make an impact here? Um okay, two more pieces of context. Um and again, uh it's actually one of these is gonna bring me to another person I'd like to talk to, and uh um maybe they're gonna find out listening to this podcast. So uh I apologize in advance, uh, but I'll I'll uh uh right after recording this, maybe even I'll I'll reach out uh and invite them on. Um one of these is you know, there's a lot of ambiguity around 18-year-old, you know, like when an athlete on your team turns 18 and then you still have minor uh other athletes with them, you know, what how does that change? Um do they have to adhere to all these policies? Um and it appears that they uh do, that there wasn't that much consideration given to this. Again, they they they felt that they had to draw a um hard line. This is causing uh a considerable um amount of stress and discussion. Uh, this is also an issue for college teams um that are also USA swimming clubs where they may have people that are starting college, you know, that are still 17 years old. Um I know my wife was still 17 when she started college, and so um that could create a situation where you have, you know, one or two or three uh minor athletes on the team, and then the whole rest of the team are adults. Um that's a tricky, tricky piece. And then listen, this is this is just one podcast, and this is the part where I want to bring somebody in. Um I'm gonna invite actually Steve Schaefer, who uh is constantly on the internet uh putting out common sense uh opinions on things. I I actually teased him recently and I said, um, how do you find time to always be on the internet um setting stuff straight? And that's not to say I agree with Steve on 100% of things. I don't. But I really respect the way that he conducts himself because um he I think he always brings a high degree of intellectual honesty to what he's talking about. So, and I know that he has a lot of issues with this, both the the part I just discussed in regards to adult athletes and minor athletes, USA Swimming Club, but also just the whole recruiting mess this has created. Um and you know, just just to bring in some other perspectives on this, um, I had already heard from some college coaches who were very uncomfortable with the fact that with the new changes from the NCAA, they're actually getting pushed from both ends. That um they're they're being uh in order to compete, they're being asked to recruit younger and younger athletes. And I had coaches tell me flat out they were super uncomfortable with the idea of 16-year-olds making official visits to their campus. Um, and I get it. Uh I would be uncomfortable with that too. Um you know, they are in the position of picking up athletes from the airport and transporting them to campus. What kind of situations does this create for them? What does it create for them in terms of the recruiting phone call, which is almost always happening with a a minor athlete? And um, could you have a situation where a effectively a college coach decides to forego USA swimming membership and therefore doesn't have to abide by the MAA PP and can recruit on a whole different playing field because of that. Um so I'd really love to discuss all of that with Steve, and I'll be reaching out to him in the future. Anyway, there's a ton uh to discuss here. As I said off the top, there's there's a lot of positives in these boundaries being set. There's a lot of context still left to work through and a lot of questions left to be answered. Um thank you for listening. Uh I am uh I had a post earlier this week about finding your uh secure place, uh, all about uh athletes and a little bit about being a father. Um so go check that out for more great swimming conversations. Go to Chrisdcoach.com. That's C-H-R-I-S-D asindasantiscoach.com and uh check back later in the week uh for more blogs, more podcasts, and uh see you soon.