Debrief: Kevin Ring, USA Swimming CEO

The CEO of USA Swimming joins to share what he’s learned in his nine months on the job and what he thinks is possible for the future.

Debrief: Kevin Ring

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hello and welcome to the swim brief. And if you hear that special extra spark of energy in my voice, it's because for the first time in the history of this podcast, we have the CEO of USA Swimming on the podcast. Kevin Ring, welcome. Thanks, Chris. Happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Well, we're going to tell the story about how you came to be on here in a second. Yeah. But it is my pleasure to have you. I have sort of told the story to people who are listening in other contexts. You and I, we we met at the College Swim Coaches Association. You were there attending the annual meeting. You spoke as well. You're up on stage. You did a QA during that event. But I kind of expected that, you know, you would come in, you would do your talk and leave. And essentially we wouldn't be able to see you. But you were there the night before. You were mixing it up with the crowd. You were all over the place. So I took it upon myself to introduce myself to you. And then the next day you said to me that you wanted to come on the podcast. So you made my job very easy because I was trying to work up the perfect way to ask you, but you just cut straight to the chase, Kevin.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Yeah, you know, I as you and I talked about it and you saw me there. I don't view my job. I'm here in Colorado Springs today. I don't view my job as having to stay behind a desk here. I need to, I want to go out. I want to be part of the swim ecosystem. I want to get to meet people and walk around because, you know, truthfully, I think that's important for to be seen. I think it's important to answer questions. I think that this job, and I know we're talking, you know, you're audience a lot of coaches, but I think this job is a human job, meaning that you have to talk to people, you have to show some humanity, you have to show kind of who you are. And as an outsider, you know, from the sport, kind of nine months into it right now, I think it was critical for to do that. And uh so I was glad that we got to meet. I'm glad you stopped me in the hallway. And, you know, you stopped me the night before and we got to have a little follow-up conversation. So I'm excited for this. I'm excited that we got to do this and got to excited to be there.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah. So let's get right into it because I as I have a lot of questions to ask you. And, you know, I think on the first line of it, really, I always want to understand what people are doing. I've had a bunch of people from USA swimming on here. I've had Joel uh Schinnefeld, I've had uh Greg, you know, your national team director. And I love to kind of nerd out behind the scenes. And part of the reason is because, you know, most of us, we're not gonna get the chance to come to Colorado Springs and see you working. And I think one of the things that can make it hard for you and your job, right, is that people don't necessarily understand what it is your job really entails. They have a sense that like he's in charge, right? And if I've got a problem, you know, ultimately the buck stops with him. I think that's the attitude a lot of people take to it. But at the same time, then they don't really understand a lot of the details and a lot of the things that has have gone into it. And and you mentioned this in in what you just said, uh, so I want to follow up on that immediately. You know, you you mentioned you're an outsider to the sport. And I think one of the things that has endeared you to me and some people that I've talked to as well is you've you've got a level of humility about it. What I'm curious is, because you have this background in in other sports, in other executive roles, as you've been here, as you say, nine months on the job, what parts of this job are actually pretty familiar to you? And what parts of it, you know, are are less so in when as you approach swimming?

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Absolutely. Uh and I think we'll I think what's important is we can step all the way back to the first time I got a call about my interest in interviewing for the job, which was, you know, the first call I got, Chris, uh, was you know, with the job for CEO of USA Swimming's open, would you be in interested in interviewing? And my first response was, can we just talk through what they're looking for in a leader to understand why I'm the right candidate? Because I didn't want to waste anybody's time uh in the entire process. And so really when I started looking back at it and started thinking about it, the most relevant relationships, the most relevant experience that I had was when I was at the PGA of America. So for people who don't know, there is a if people don't follow golf, people think the PGA tour, which you see week in, week out in the PGA of America are the same organizations. They are dramatically different organizations despite carrying the PGA name. PG of America is a it's a 501c6, slight different tax uh status than the 501c3 of USA swimming, but it's actually a non-factor. But what it is is that we've got, when I was there, there's 29,000 teaching professionals that were really the ones who were the coaches of the game. They're the ones who with that tangible connection to it. It focused on a quad budget that was tied from rider cup to rider cup. We're tied from Olympics to Olympics, the same type of quad. You've got the aspect of every day we have to wake up to think how we serve the sport. We're well, we need to make it exciting. We need to continue to really grow, we need to really focus on our athletes. What we need to do is really focus on the ecosystem of the sport, which is what the PGA of America did. And it's also what USA Swim is responsible for. So as I started looking at all of these factors, I was like, you know, there's a lot that I can bring to this job from my past that will force us maybe to think a little bit differently, allow me to challenge people and ask the questions of why. And we'll go in there and it'd be insulting. If you and I sat and talked about coaching, Chris, and I tried to pretend I had the answers. One, my credibility's gone. Two, it's insulting to you. And three, our relationship isn't where we are right now. So for me, it was accepting what I know and having the humility to acknowledge what I don't and how we can match those two. Because the beauty of being just sort of day in, day out, in Colorado Springs, we've got a lot of really smart swimming people. In the swimming ecosystem, which has been incredibly welcoming to me, there is an incredible amount of passion of how we should move forward, what we should do, what we shouldn't do, and how we continue to go. What I'd say though is no matter whether it's the PJ of America with golf or whether it's the USA swimming with the swimming community, everybody wants the same thing. What's in the best interest of the sport. So every day I, you know, you've heard me say this before. I don't CEO is the title of the foundation in USA swimming. It's a big job with a big title. Ultimately, I'm a servant of the sport. My job is to make sure that we create the ecosystem that allows clubs to flourish, to make sure that we have the governance in place that allows us to impact decisions, how we get more people in the pool, how we make sure our national team athletes have the best system in place to win as many medals as possible, and that we are around to support our officials, our coaches, our volunteers. Ongoing. And that is that's ongoing. I was beautiful that I was able to also, you know, I'm a parent of four kids. I get what volunteering is. I get what being there. I understand the sitting in a parking lot and guiding cars while my kids are, you know, about to participate in their activity, and then also coaching and knowing that you've got to, you're working with parents and you're working with kids. So it's a long way of saying that I think I came here with a unique set of skills that the search committee saw that was a good fit. And I have, you know, getting out here now, Chris, I have truly enjoyed this job in ways greater than I had imagined. Uh and I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but it's been wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah, I I loved, I was hoping you were going to repeat that story about the 29,000 teaching professionals because most of the listeners of this podcast, as we talked about, they're they're coaches. And to me, that's almost a one-to-one analogy. And I think a lot of what's going on with the sport right now is we have this focus on we have got to, you know, fix some things business-wise in a lot of places with the way the sport's going. We want to bring more sponsorship money, we want to grow everything. And to me, a lot of the solutions for that, we look for something top-down. And I'm not saying that, you know, I'm not absolving the top of any responsibility, but but when I hear you say, you know, 29,000 teaching professionals, I think like, okay, golf has this pro tour that, as you mentioned, it's a separate organization, but it's built on the foundation of these teaching professionals who get people into the sport. Right. And those people buy golf clubs, they buy golf balls, they buy memberships to golf clubs, and there's this huge funnel of money that's going up to the top. And we haven't necessarily created that yet in the sport of swimming. I think it's one of the reasons why we are what we are. I'm not going to ask you to comment on the enhanced games because I don't like, we don't need to do all the top, you know, sort of hot topics, but I think that's an example of people are like hoping that something's, you know, some billionaire is just going to come in and flood money into the sport, right, and save us versus what we're talking about, at least what I think we're talking about here, is how do we save ourselves?

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Yeah. And I and I I think that the saving ourselves, I don't look at it as that draconian in a lot of ways. I view this as the coaches are that tangible connection that it's really hard for us to have specifically at Colorado Springs and headquarters. A lot of it is to how do we create work with coaches to create programs or work with clubs to create programs? How do we think about what it is that we can actually control that we can try to influence decisions? I I really mean some things that I've said in the past, and I want to say to your audience as well, Chris, is that I really think coaching is an incredibly noble profession because you are not just, you think about teachers, coaches are doing a lot of the same things. It's just because it's in a sport doesn't make it any less meaningful. Coaches change kids' lives. And whether they're a USA swimming member or not, the fact is if they're getting into a pool, a coach has taught them to swim, likely change their life because they're not going to drown. If they create a lifelong swimmer out of them, then it's on us to help keep them find programs and find ways where we can work with the clubs, the coaches to keep them in the pool. But we think of it all the time of the entire system has to work together for us to have success. And the growth of the USA swimming member, I don't think always has to be the direct reflection on the strength of the swimming community. We think about membership of how are we creating a membership structure that can succeed, how we can membership structure that people want to be part of USA swimming. But if people are getting into the pool, that creates that pipeline, and you talk about the funnel. If that creates a pipeline for us then to work with clubs, work with the LSCs, work with the community to get them to become USA swimming members, which then is a direct reflection on memberships of USA swimming. The swimming community is in a lot of ways directly connected, but it's also somebody who gets in the pool. Listen, I have to think about our membership all the time. But from a coach standpoint, they're thinking, they're not necessarily thinking about are they a USA swimming member or not? They're thinking about are they coming back to the pool? Are they going to be taking the next set of swim lessons? How do they have them maybe join the competitive team? How do they help them? What are their goals? How do they make them keep moving forward? So that funnel we're talking about, working with coaches and make sure that coaches are influencing lives, we can't necessarily do that. But boy, we can't be successful of creating the next national team athletes without the coaches actually developing them.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yeah. And we're going to come back to that topic because again, I I have a lot to ask you about in regards to coaches. One more question just about your overall role. Yeah. What frustrations have you come up against as you try to do some outreach to the community? I'm thinking more along the lines of, you know, sometimes like even as I've shared a positive impression of my interaction with you around CSDAA, I have people like, I literally I I I'll tell you this story. I shared with somebody, I said, Hey, I met the new CEO of USA Swimming, and I was positive about it. I was, you know, sharing the story. And that person said, Well, he didn't come say hi to me. Right. You know? And it was like I I felt for you in that moment where you're up against some intractable, I don't know, like there's there's people who are mistrusting what's happening. They they feel estranged from, you know, USA something. I've certainly been one of those people over the course of my life. Like, how do you have you run into frustration in that domain and how do you deal with it?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

So I can't be everywhere as much as I want to be. We talk with our communications marketing team, we have conversations as recently as this morning of what can and what should I be able to do. I can be on the road every single day and still not get everywhere I need to be. And when I stop and I shake a hand and I miss somebody else's, it's never an intentional slight. But I understand in that moment how it can feel that way. So I wouldn't necessarily view it as a frustration. What I view this as is the reality of what the job is, the reality of what I view as earned trust. I need to, my interaction with you is one interaction with others, but I need to keep earning trust of the community, of the coaches, that they understand who I am. And by the way, just liking me doesn't mean that, you know, it doesn't mean that I'm I'm the effectiveness they need. I've also had to prove that I'm going to be effective in the role as well. And I think those two have to happen side by side because I want to, the speed of change is hard in an organization as large as we are, with a governance structure that's in place that has a checks and balances that we have to go through. You know, we're not a for-profit company that I was talking to one of our sponsors and I was just talking about the job and about your decision making, and he said to me, and this is a somebody who's you know is CEO of a large company, he said, in many ways, being CEO of USA Swimming is harder than mine because once I get the board to convince, I then go forward and I have the entire organization following what my lead is. I can't do that. I can't wave a wand to make a change. So it's a matter of understanding the governance, working within it, earning the trust when whenever we come down with a decision that's not going to be popular, because part of leadership is not always being the most popular, but it's understanding that the North Star, the guidance that we're putting forward is what we believe is the best solution for swimming. So it's a long way of saying that what I wish I could do is have that time with as many people as possible. So all I do is I get on the road. I know you and I talk, we'll see each other in Indy. That's one set of groups, but it's not just going to the professional meets. Right. Yeah, it's going to the it's make sure that I'm going to that CSCAA event. It's going to going to other events of meeting with clubs. It is going to local community pools once in a while, which I will I periodically pop into to say hello if I'm in a city and I'll reach out to a club and go in there and do a walkthrough. All I can do is keep being as much as I be in the places I can be in person and then work with our team here to get my voice, my message, and what we're doing as an organization and as an entire staff out so they see what we're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah. I think you got a big task. And I I, you know, I hear you, uh, I was thinking about this as well as I talked about your humility. You you have a certain vulnerability that you're showing. And I could just as easily see, you know, if people are dissatisfied with the job that you're doing later down the line, they're kind of like weaponizing that against you. Oh, this guy, he doesn't know swimming, you know, he doesn't know what's going on, right? So it can go both ways in all these instances. And what I would say to anybody that's listening to this, and if if they have a chance to see you out of things, do what I did. Just walk up and introduce yourself. You had no idea who I was when I introduced myself to you, and I just sort of like stuck my hand out and said, Hey, I'm Chris. And it was it was very much unlike any interactions I'd had with somebody in your role in the past. So, you know, whatever whatever people may think is going on, I think it's fair to give a give a fresh sort of perspective and give a fresh view to where things are now and judge for yourself, right? I'm not gonna tell anybody how to feel about it.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

No, I can't it it's a you know, you it is in this job, there's a thick skin that we all have to have. There's a confidence you have to carry. But this it's a bigger picture. Again, you with the coaches, you have to have a thick skin as a coach, too. You have to have a level of confidence because parents are going to and and coaches are often working with the most valuable, you know, using a business term, asset in somebody's life. They're kid. And you know what? They're gonna have strong opinions, and that doesn't mean that you know, Chris, if you're coaching somebody and you're doing what you believe is an absolute best interest, that doesn't mean the parents going to agree. And I kind of the parallel is this people won't always agree, but have some confidence that the best interest, I'm looking to get the best out of the best for USA swimming by using all the tools at my advantage. And yes, people come over, shake hands, and I'll do my best not to have to rush to the next thing, which does happen. But uh I believe in humanity. At the end, we are all just humans to have to shake hands, say hello. When we leave wherever we are, we have our own challenges that go on in our lives that we all have to manage. So, you know, you don't want to judge somebody in their necessarily in their best times or their worst times, just where they are at that point.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yeah. All right, let me ask you this question because we've been we've been sort of tiptoeing around this and and now let's get to it. You know, everybody's got their laundry list, probably everybody listening to this, and it's I mean, I work with coaches as well, and as I tell them I'm preparing for this, you know, people have come to me and they go, make sure you ask them this question, and make sure you ask like everybody has their list, right? And I guess I want to ask this kind of more general question and get your perspective on it. For the average coach, the average member of USA swimming, what are the areas where you guys can influence what's going on in their day-to-day? And the the the second part of this question is are there any ideas to kind of expand the ecosystem? You you referenced this a little bit in the beginning, you're talking about people who are swimming who are not necessarily members of USA swimming. Is there any kind of, you know, feel free to break news on my podcast, but is there any ideas to expand membership in that way by bringing different parts of the swimming ecosystem under USA swimming?

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Yeah, so I don't think there's anything breaking news. So what I'll do is I'll just share it as a broadly as to things that we do think about about how to support the ecosystem. And it can be everything from we have conversations all the time about what we can do to create more access to water into pools. What can we do in local communities to make sure we're doing that? How can we work with there's a lot of development that happens in youth sports and multi-sport complexes? How do we get the a pool built into some of those places? And then how do we create that opportunity where we can create the content, where we can get coaches to a place, we can get members? Because one of the things that you know I think about all the time is if we, you know, this isn't necessarily if you build it, they will come. You know, this isn't a field of dreams moment. Well, what it is is that if we know there is demand, or if there's a latent demand in a community for swimmers, how can we work with somebody who might be developing or a coach who's in that community to help them either start a club, get access to a pool, or how do we work with a commercial real estate company who is out trying to build all of these or building pools or building uh a bulk sports facility and say, hey, you know what? We know in that community there are swimmers there. And as you're trying to put your PL together and you're pro forma to get financing, we're very comfortable that that company, that community will support water and support pool. If we do that in enough places, it then is the growth of clubs, it's growth of members, it's growth of coaching opportunities, it's more jobs, and the infrastructure continues to get better. So we think about that all of the time as to what we can do within our control. And the other one, which you know, it's I think I truly believe as we start talking about the what Can make more people going into it. I like our concept of block party. This going in and having a short form swim competition that is more consumable for families who are oftentimes, if they're a multi-kid family or even if not, they're trying to figure out my kid loves to swim. How can I get them to to the pool, get in and out, swim, love what's happening, and not have a three-day weekend where they might not be able to get their other kids to other events. Now, that's not to take away from the value of a traditional swim meet. That should never go away. And that's something I always want to be careful about when I say that block party is not a replacement. Block party is an option, an alternative to create a faster meet for people to come in and swim. And I think also with that, that meet hopefully when you talk about access to pool time, you don't need a pool for an entire day through block party. You block it out for a couple of couple hours, and then you can get there and maybe you run a multiple events, multiple meets, more people in and out. So what we think about is how do we create in the ecosystem, the infrastructure that can support more jobs, more coaches, more clubs? How can we work with the clubs to create an environment where we can get uh the block party option as some place where they can choose to opt in to really host that? And how do we work with the LSEs and the local governance to say, okay, how do we work together to move everything forward as opposed to having friction in place for no reason other than sometimes it just might be a communication conversation?

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Yeah, I want to follow up on something you brought up there. You talk about, you know, looking at communities. I mean, I'm even thinking of where I live, right? This is actually a pretty, I would say, a pretty high participation area for USA swimming. I live in South Jersey, down by Philadelphia. But I'd also say like facility-wise, this area is very interesting in the essence that we are very facility poor. We're very limited by the facilities that we have around. And yet, you know, now as we record this, we're post-Memorial Day. There are five pools within a 10-minute drive of my house that are only we can only be in, right, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. But all of a sudden, there's there's a ton of water around me for a limited period of time. Is there any thought about like bridging into summer league or sort of building a more formal pathway from summer league that has always fed into USA swimming informally, but USA swimming has never really been involved in that piece of it?

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Yeah, you mentioned Joel earlier. Joel and I talk about this often where you have summer leagues and you've got some pretty robust big summer leagues of people who, as you point out, somebody might swim during the summer and realize, gosh, I've loved swimming. This can be my primary sport, and I want to compete in this. And then Labor Day rolls around and they're trying to figure out where they go next and what can happen. So I think it's a couple things to that question. We think about community, we think about how do you work with even with an HOD, how do you work with a community with the parks and rec departments to have a better connection there? Then how do we make it easy for families uh to go onto our site to do a club finder to say, okay, I fell in love with this, but they know where to look to find that club where they can continue their swim career or their swim program moving forward, because that's how our pipeline grows. You know, I you remember the you know, growing up, I'm I'm older than you, Chris, but I remember growing up and you're playing, you know, whistle ball in your yard. And but you could do that year round and you could keep playing, or if somebody's playing basketball, you can play basketball in your driveway with a hoop on the side of the garage, and you can do that year round, and then you know, you might go inside a gym and play, but you can play pickup basketball in an open gym. That's why I talk about access and community and how we find ways to transition that swimmer from a summer league, 10, you've got 10 pools, how those people, how we get them, how we have them think about, okay, you know what, my kid loves this. It's a pretty healthy sport to continue on. There's some great people to learn from. And you know what? I want to keep going. I want to make sure we find, for lack of a better term, that convergence concept of summer league to club team so they can keep on swimming, or they've got access to that pool so that love can that love can continue beyond the summer months.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Yeah. And switching bases, I said I wanted to come back to the coaching aspect of this. Because I mean, really, this is to me, this is this is everything. And not only because I am a coach, uh and that's the community that I serve more than any other, but also the reason why I do that is I I just think coaches, and and you pointed it out uh quite succinctly, they they are they're a force multiplier in the sport. And I tried to ask you a question about this. I I didn't phrase it very well when we did the QA at CSAA. So I'm gonna take crack two at this, okay, and hopefully we're gonna get it right this time. From my perception, I think and I'm not like I'm literally I'm putting this out here here with no accusations. Okay. I just think coaches overall have been a group that have been underinvested in. I find it even in the work that I do. I want to go out and help coaches, and it's very hard to convince athletic directors, parent boards, etc., to actually invest back in their coaches. And I think I would I really want to change that culture because from my perspective, again, these coaches are so important to the future of our sport, to the present of our of our sport. And yet, honestly, like a lot of the people that I know that are the best of the best, some days they're hanging on by a thread, whether it be sort of the economic reality of being a coach, you reference, you know, coaches and teachers. Like I'm thinking like teachers in my town, at least they have a union and healthcare, and like they they actually have a little bit better infrastructure around them than your average coach. Now, again, I'm not expecting you to wave a magic wand and solve all the problems of coaches, but to what extent does USA swimming look at this and go, there are things we can do to invest back in coaches and what are you thinking about in that respect?

SPEAKER_02 28:57

So there are there are the simpler ones, and it's one working with the other working with Asuka, working with CSCAA to understand what role we're best serving for our education program to help help them, whether it's furthering their careers, is there a path that is not just about coaching? Is there a path that there's education about the business of swimming? That it's something of, you know, how do you how do you start a club? How do you operate it? How do you manage a PL? How do you because if somebody just because somebody, somebody could be an unbelievable swimmer and a coach and an English major if they went to college, and they may not have to think about what a PL look like or how to start a business, but they want to start one. How can we help educate that? So I think education is one big one that we can do. I think it's what I talked about access to water. How can we create more job opportunities? We don't have clubs, we don't own clubs, but clubs are part of the infrastructure, and clubs are often the ones who are hiring coaches. So how do we create more access to jobs by creating more access to pools, which hopefully hires more clubs? How do we get in with the school systems, which unfortunately too many of them have either closed their pools for budgetary reasons or the parks wreck in the communities that close that, which immediately takes jobs away? So what we look to and what I think about and what I talk to our team about, and that's really important for me to highlight here, Chris. I'm saying me, I'm I'm referencing our entire team here who thinks about this on a regular basis. It's a whether it's coaching or the swimming, I am just like I said, I'm the messenger, I'm the servant of what we're going to be doing. But we also think about what we can do with to help create the advocate on behalf of a community if we understand. Sometimes we heard from a coach that said, they're trying to close a pool in this community. Can you help us advocate and show? And we've got a team services group that often will step back and say, okay, you know what, by keeping the pool open and operating a little bit more efficiently, here's how that action can be a moneymaker for you. And that creates that opportunity for that coach to keep on coaching and maybe be able to build a career there. Now, I say that not naively. You just touched on a really important aspect of this. Unless you're part of a big club or you, you know, healthcare is a very difficult area for us and for everybody right now. Because if you're not tied to a larger ecosystem, it's harder. Healthcare can be incredibly expensive, which then drives decisions. So we don't have a solution there. It's something that we dove into a lot. We talked to our partners to think about our corporate partners and our sponsors to say, hey, do you have any idea how this can happen? We try to learn from other uh coaching organizations using the PGA. What did they have in place that we might be able to follow or replicate? While they're similar organizations, they are different. So there is no magic wand. But what there is is trying to make sure, you know, in simplifying it of education to make sure that they have not just the tools. We know they know how to coach, and it can be like continued learning, we all get better, but really some maybe some business skills that if they want to open it up, advocate for the communities to make sure that they keep on keep pools open to keep jobs and to keep kids coming into the pool. I guess we'll add a fourth one there is to try to keep on growing the bucket of swimmers to keep on making sure there are more and more swimmers coming into the sport. So you actually have the students that you're coaching to make sure that, you know, that doesn't start dwindling. And then the last one is how do we really work and create more access to new communities and more water in places where there is demand?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah, I mean, I think it's I don't deny so many of the challenges that are present in the situation. It's it's really interesting to me. I mean, I know you got four kids, your kids are playing sports. I have a sense that you I think your oldest is uh is did you say a junior in high school?

SPEAKER_02 33:04

My oldest just graduated college. So my youngest is a sophomore in high school. Yeah, three in college, my oldest is just graduated, sorry, yeah, two in college now, one just graduated, and I go to sophomore in high school. And what sports did they play? It they they've been diverse, so it's funny. My it's interesting. My oldest daughter was a ice hockey field hockey player uh into playing four years of college field hockey right down by you at Brynmarr. Okay. And my son was a baseball, uh, baseball, ice hockey. Um, they all dabbled in some swimming and water polo at different times. Um my daughter, who is 18 right now, is the one who, and she's the one I often think about when we think about sports because it is the value of sports, the power of sport, because she did it, she liked to compete, but she also loved the friends and the environment around her. And that's why I think about coaches. So she was a she was a rower, she was a swimmer, she was a field hockey player, she was a uh soccer player, she's a softball player, she just loves being around people and loved that. And my youngest sophomore is a field hockey player.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Yeah, I was thinking, especially I knew there was some hockey in there, and that's sort of that where I was headed. I thought maybe you had a lacrosse player, because those two sports, like hockey, I think there's so much crossover in that you have a sport where facilities are really an issue, yeah, right? A lot of teams are practicing at really weird times because they're all trying to share these, you know, spaces. I think rinks are let's let's be honest, I think quite a bit more sparse than pools, even, right? And and really, depending on what area of the United States you're in. And then like you have some of these newer sports that sometimes we get jealous of in swimming, like lacrosse, we start to go like they seem to have started from the ground up a lot of these clubs with a different business model. And like, you know, they're they're practicing half as much, but they're charging twice as much to be on the team and they don't have the costs on the back end that we do. And I guess all of that is t to say, I mean, from your perspective, having been around all these different sports, both through your kids, but also through your professional life, is that stuff intractable from your perspective in swimming, or or could there be a future where your average swimming club has a significantly improved business model from what it is today?

SPEAKER_02 35:38

I think the business models can change. This triple sports, you know, anybody who follows youth sports and even what's happening now with government and policy thinking about youth sports has changed pretty dramatically in the last five to seven years with private equity money coming into it. And that's a big factor of what's happening with lacrosse, where they own a lot of clubs. It happens with ice hockey, where they own the clubs, they own the ranks, they own multiple multiple arenas throughout a region. And that that's a problem. At this point, we don't have that challenge that we're thinking about. But I do think there's a business model that can really start to look at how it can be how our business is going to operate differently. And listen, I is private equity to come to swimming at this point? Maybe it's inevitable, maybe it's not. And that does not. I'm scared down. I mean, it's I we've not heard anything about it, but you just look at it. But I do think that, you know, just reading articles this morning, you've got people within government and you've got senators who are looking at this has to change because it's cutting off access. We fortunately don't do not have that issue right now. We've got the expenses. I think there's a business model that can be learned. It's what we talked about. The business of the business of swimming is complicated, but I think there are some best practices that people can get from us and move forward. And the other one we talk about too, and it's a it's swimming, but everybody treats it a little bit differently is do we do more with open water swimming? Do we start to create a little bit more of embracing that community even more? I've gone to a couple open waters, we've got open water national team athletes. I'm watching it. It's great. So do we do more with that that creates different types of coaching opportunities? And it's not necessarily pools. It is a different type of place to go. I don't have to tell you, maybe there's something with that as well from a coaching and embracing and a growth perspective. But when you start thinking about it, I just don't think we can take anything off of the table. The beauty of still being nine months in and not being from the swim communities, I'm still in a window that I can ask a lot of really silly questions at times. But I think that gives a place where we can look at all of these things. I don't want to go where there is a crossover with ice hockey and swimming some ways, where you can think about if you're putting in pools, you're putting in arenas, you share the HVAC, you share a lot of the air handlers, warm water. There's a lot of similarities there as I've uh become more grossly involved in thinking about how pools are built. But I also want to make sure that we stay what is the essence to me of sports. Yes, competition is important. Yes, you learn so much from sport and so much from swimming, whether it's tenacity, grit, teamwork, there's so much you can carry forward. I want to make sure we never lose sight of what youth sports should be. And so I love our place in the uh community. And to me, there's just so much opportunity as I as I look at ourselves from other sports. Now, when you talk about the growth, the difference one is I talk to other NGBs a lot. We had, you know, wrestling has had massive growth. They also are starting, you know, girls' wrestling, which never existed before. We've always been, you know, boys and girls have always been the pool swimming. And so that's not a place where it's growth. So to me, we just have to look at different ways to get people to go into the pool the first time and then stay in the pool for a really long time.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I have one more follow-up before we get into the personal section. And this is just something that I'm I'm just popped into my mind as I'm listening to you talk. Like we're we're 40 minutes into this, and you started this conversation talking about the process to getting you interested in the job in the first place. And it just strikes me that we're 40 minutes in. We haven't talked about the Olympics medals, yeah, you know, like international results. And one of the perceptions that I think is is is fair in a certain way of USA swimming is uh they're concerned with that, right? And it comes from something I've talked about a lot in the context of this podcast. I mean, the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act and the foundation of USA swimming, from the beginning, it was like we were in a panic that the Soviets were gonna overtake us in Olympic sports, and we thought we got to build these organizations to better support structures, but the goal was very explicit. We want to win more medals at the Olympics. So I guess I have to ask you on the other end, because you're talking about the grassroots, you're talking about the value of sports that goes beyond competition. How much of that initial pitch that you got on the other end was about that? And how much was it about, you know, you gotta deliver medals for America at the Olympics?

SPEAKER_02 40:24

So it wasn't as much about we can't the we can't shy away from winning medals is a critical part. It is LA 28 in the Olympics is the greatest marketing tool that the sport has because it's on TV to so many people who find their new hero or their new storyline, and it's racing. Racing is exciting. And so there is so much there that happens. During the interview process, we talked about we talked about the medals, we talked about that pressure. But what I will say is that the biggest benefit that we have is we've got the greatest coaches in the world in the United States. And we, with that, we have some wonderful athletes who've chosen swimming. And when you match great, great coaches with great athletes and with a great infrastructure, we have the greatest chance to keep on winning. So it's why we invested in, you know, when Greg came on, he brought uh Yurishugiyama and Kim Williams on board. So we've got three coaches. Greg is a coach of the national team. While he's the administrator of it, he is a coach. We've brought in all of the additional resources into it by supporting with mental health coaches and data and analytics people and nutritionists and more medical care. And we focus on making sure that we create the greatest infrastructure to win medals. It's no not shy. Everybody loves watching us win. So do I feel the pressure of that? Almost every single day. But if we don't create the pipeline of future national team athletes and future swimmers, that that goes away. I want to make sure the pipeline is very broad so that we get the best coaches that keep on growing the greatest athletes to win the most medals. And if we've got that, that's that circle of success that it'll all work together. So it's a long way of saying, yes. We think about it, we talk about it, it's a driving factor. And NGB, the most visible one, the USOPC talks all the time about medals. Our job at USA Swimming is yes, create the infrastructure with as many medals as possible, but also to grow the sport.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Yeah. I think the way that I've phrased it on here very frequently is because of that mission, the hubristic mistake you can make in your position is to, as I love the way you put it. Your your job is to create infrastructure to support that stuff that's coming up and to invest in what will cause talent to sort of come up to that level. And as what I was gonna say is the hubristic mistake is to start to think USA swimming creates the results, right? And I've I've I've seen that before with organizations, and that's where, too, the trust can break down with the coaches and the athletes and all that part, because you know, we take great pride in that, that part of it, that that's where we invest our our our time and effort.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:29

That's just one thing to to think about too, and is how we view it. So early on when I got here, we sort of restructured our executive team. And we have the very traditional folks within sort of my direct reports and my cabinet, for lack of a better phrasing, of our CFO, our COO, and our general counsel because of the influence they can have. But the two other positions that are on my executive team are Greg Meehan, as a national team director, and Joel Schinefeld, who is sport development, because those two are. Equally important. They just play very different roles. So that's the five people. So when I view it, I want to make sure everybody understands both of those people are part of the decision making that goes on at the highest level of USA swimming.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Let me pivot to some personal questions. Even though, I mean, you've been very forthcoming about yourself personally. So let me just ask you this.

SPEAKER_03 44:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Through everything that you've been talking about, the job, the work, the travel you've mentioned, you know, you've got family, and I know that you're commuting back and forth to a certain extent. Your family's back in Wilton, Connecticut. Is that correct? Yes. What is the hardest part of this job emotionally?

SPEAKER_02 44:41

I think what you just outlined, it's that part. It's a making the decision, which was a family decision to take the job. The hardest part is I knew the job was in Colorado Springs. I have an apartment in Colorado Springs. This is the place where I spend the majority of time if I'm not on the road. But this making the decision to have, while my daughter was a sophomore in high school, three kids in college and the one that's in a, you know, outside of it, they've very much got their own lives. They're home for the summer. I'll see them, but it's different. To leave to leave basically the family in Connecticut to move to Colorado Springs for the job emotionally is truly the hardest part. Now, I'll say also that, and if I said it to you or said the past, so forgive me, but I had a you know early on having a conversation and really being like, you know, I'm missing so much at home and being upset by it. My youngest daughter, who's the one who has the you know, the biggest impact of it, she called me one day and after hearing uh a different interview I did, and she said, Dad, I know it's hard for you, but hearing and seeing the happiness in you is completely okay. We'll be fine. So we do a lot of FaceTime, we do a lot of conversations, I get back when I can. If I've got work to do in the Northeast, I you know, I rest my head in Connecticut and see my family then. So emotionally, that's been the hardest part. But I gotta tell you, having the support of my wife and all of my daughters, but having that call from my youngest daughter saying that to me was was okay. We made the decision as a family and they still support me endlessly.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Amazing. Yeah, I think uh I I told somebody actually about that, just about the the promise that you'd made uh and and not moving your family. And uh it you know, they were really touched by that. I'm I'm like tearing up listening to that story about your daughter as well, just as a dad. Like I I connect into it emotionally.

SPEAKER_03 46:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:32

Let me ask you a different slice of question. What what criticisms of USA swimming? And this I promise this is not a strategic question for me to launch future adapts. I'll trust you. We're building we'll we're building trust. I'll trust you. I'm building trust. I realize as I start to read it, I'm like, uh-oh, Chris. What criticisms do you take the hardest? What like what hurts the most when people sort of hurl their uh constructive feedback, let's call it, back at at you?

SPEAKER_02 47:00

I would say what we all take is when people see when somebody says that we don't care about the grassroots and the athlete, and we've lost focus on that because we think about it all the time. We think about the member, we think about the club, we think about the coaches. When we get that feedback that people thinking that we don't care, it hurts because it's it couldn't be further from the truth. But what that is, is that's the opportunity. So, you know, I'll reframe your comment, you know, starting with a criticism. It might be fair criticism, not that we don't care. What the criticism can be is we probably haven't done enough to explain to them or show them how much we care. And maybe the impact isn't in the places where we can, where it's most necessary. Again, we're not going to make everybody happy, but we can do a better job to make sure everybody understands just how much we care about the entire community, entire ecosystem, growing it. And as you you talked about, and hopefully, you know, the people who hear this and talk about it is we went 45 minutes, as you pointed out, not talking about winning medals, it was talking about the grassroots, talking about the community. That's how much I think about it, and that's how much we think about inside the building.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

And let me finish with this, because even just listening, you know, to all this throughout, and you talk about you have a lot of demands in Colorado Springs. You're traveling, you're making an effort to get out there, you're, you know, trying to make a little bit of time to come home. One of the ways I always like to view coaches or even people in a professional setting is almost in a way like athletes. Like to me, you are an athlete in what you're doing because your performance matters and you're trying to perform at a really high level over a consistently over a long period of time. So let me ask you this how do you recover, reload? How do you try to grow and get better while sort of facing all that demand tugging on you?

unknown 49:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

I'll tell you, that's probably one of my biggest failures so far. I'm not the poster child for work-life balance. We're going to work on that, Kevin. Go on, man. I know. I'd say it's actually been something that has been a more constant thinking about in the last few months because it the adrenaline, the emotion, the passion, the desire. I wake up thinking about what we can be doing and sending emails and I go to bed sending a few emails. But what I've got to do is I've got to find that time for me to make sure I don't lose that aspect of me. And whether that is exercise or reading a book or pulling things off the Kindle while I'm on a plane, or maybe deciding to watch a movie rather than pounding the keyboard while I'm on these flights, finding that moment to reflect because what I realized is probably just before I first met you, is that stepping back and looking at things from the macro is a healthy and it'll make me better at my job if I don't get so stuck in the weeds the day-to-day. Refreshing my mind, refreshing my memory, and having my body be healthier is what I've got to do. So while I don't have anything perfect now, it's a constant uh effort that has recently uh taken a higher priority because I know I'll be much better in my job if I do those things for uh for myself as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Yeah, I think, you know, Greg actually taught me something really important in this respect one of the times that I had him on here because I was talking about my own life and my own career, and I had a moment where I took a step back from coaching. In fact, over the last decade, um, I've only coached full time for for a couple years over that period of time. And part of it was, you know, I was I was feeling the pressure. I wanted to be the best husband, yeah, the best, best father, the best at my job all at the same time. And uh I think Greg taught me two things in that. Uh and I don't even know, sometimes I I forget which part of these conversations are recorded or not. I'm not even sure that this was on the recorded podcast. So this is bonus content for everybody else. He said to me, Chris, you know, like it's okay to want to be great at all those things, but expecting yourself to be perfect at all of them is is going to get in your way. And that stuck with me for a very long time. The other thing that he talked about more than anything, he he was he said, you know, people say, Oh, I want to I want to find balance. I want to find balance. What you're doing is not balanced. Right, Kevin. You're you're you're you're an elite performer, right? You're in the same way as I look at, you know, somebody who anybody else that's at the top of what they do. It's it's by kind of by nature, it's not, it's imbalanced. It's never gonna be, you know, nine to five checkout, you know, and and completely turn off the other piece of it. So what you're looking for more than anything when you're there is is harmony and not balance, right? The idea that, you know, some way that you can be in Wilton and thinking, like, this is actually what's best for USA swimming, that I come and, you know, see, see my daughter, see my wife, as I said, as you said, watch a movie, you know, on the airplane, like and do those things that you know will help you to be at your best without that sort of latent guilt hanging in the background.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Oh, interesting you say that. We, you know, we always, whether you're whatever your business is or like, you know, we you always write that strategy that makes sure you know you focus on the things that are most important because you can't be everything to everybody and still be successful. And we talk about that even with, you know, when we when we launch our mission, vision, and values and our four pillars and all of that, because we want to make sure we focus on those four things. I think as a as humans, what we often do is we don't do our own personal strategy of how we actually make sure we still focus on the things that have the most meaningful impact for ourselves. And that includes our jobs, our families, whatever is important to you or important to me, how we actually try to do all of it and focus on keeping our North Stars in mind, not just the professional North Stars, but our personal ones as well, too. And as I said, I am the worst candidate to talk about that, but I'm trying to be better.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna get you up to a better level. Well, now I know exactly what we're gonna talk about when I uh see you in Indianapolis in a few weeks. Kevin, thank you so much for being willing to do this, for being willing to follow this conversation wherever it's going. You know, usually at this point in the podcast, I let people plug things. I don't know if you have things to plug, direction.

SPEAKER_02 53:54

Chris, I my only plug is uh I guess I would show I'm a big believer in gratitude and thanks. So thank you for this hour to be able to talk about it and to talk about what we're trying to do. And thank you to the coaches, the people listening to for believing in me, the outsider to the swim community, and in in you know, the trust that you've all put in me. So it's not plugging anything, it's just some gratitude and thanks to to your community and your audience.

SPEAKER_01 54:18

Well, I really appreciate you being willing to come here and being open and you know, showing that engagement. I I I will pay you a compliment. I'll end with uh flattery, I guess flattery slash gratitude on my end, because I I have been telling people I've here's what I've been talking about behind your back. And I know that's a scary statement, but you know, in my history, uh I'm 42 years old, I'll be 43 in a month. In my history, you know, of USA swimming, I don't think I've ever seen the organization where it is today in terms of the openness and engagement. And I think it goes, I can see it in you, but it I can see it throughout the organization now that that just the way that I end up interacting with your average employee throughout whoever it is, whether it be club services or you know, Joel or or Nikki in your comms department, there's just a different character going on. And so I I I think that's a compliment to what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

Thank you. We've got great people here who care about everybody, and I appreciate you saying that because I think culture is so important to success.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right, time to end the love fest. Uh if people want to get in contact with me, you can email me at crdesantis at gmail.com. You can go to my website, chrisdcoach.com. You can fill out a contact form. You can go to Instagram, Chris D underscore coach, and find clips of this podcast and and more. Thank you to everybody who listens, and I'll be back with you guys again in a week.