By David

Last weekend, two swimmers I help swam in the Charlotte Grand Prix. I was hoping they would swim close to their personal best times. In fact they were well rewarded. Skuba swam three personal bests and Andrew swam one. The table below shows their Charlotte performance compared to their previous personal bests.

Both swimmers have put themselves in a good position to continue the progress of their careers in the Mare Nostrum series in Europe beginning next week. Given the pleasure we all felt at the Charlotte swims, it was distressing to receive the following email from some coach who said he was “It (sic) fact a (sic) ASCA Level 5 coach myself.”

You are a pompous ass! And I say that laughing out very loudly. All you have done is coached Meeder and Sckuba to some average times in 1 or 2 events. They were much better swimmers with an arsenal of events, swimmers that had promise before you coached them. Instead you have feed them lies and empty dreams about make the Olympics. Maybe for New Zealand they could but certainly not the USA, not with you coaching them some bullshit old way of coaching. Seriously – US Open cuts for 22year old, big deal. You act like you have a swimmer going 22 in the 50 and placing at Trials! I really feel bad for those 12 yrs old girls who are being sacrificed at the cost of 66K a week, with crappy technique and can do no better than 2nd in 1 miserable event. $5 bet that if they stay at Aqua Crest they are nowhere to be seen at age 18! Any takers?

The coach has some serious anger issues matched only by his inability to express them in clear English. If he is going to question the progress of a US Swimming athlete, he should at least spell the poor fellow’s name correctly. It does little for a reader’s confidence in his argument when there are a myriad of grammatical and spelling errors. Besides, I’m always a bit suspicious of anyone who finds it necessary to use three exclamation marks in one paragraph. A compelling argument can usually stand on its own merit.

However, all this is of little consequence to the clear violation of US Swimming’s Code of Ethics. This Level 5 coach has requested we publish a document that calls the Aqua Crest program “some bullshit old way of coaching”, involving swimmers with “crappy techniques” who are fed a diet of “lies and empty dreams”. One would hope the governing body’s Code of Ethics was designed to protect athletes from Level 5 Coaches who consider this acceptable behaviour. Oh, and by the way, I’m pretty sure placing bets on the career of a twelve year old swimmer is not really the sort of thing a Level 5 coach should be up to.

I feel little need to defend the Aqua Crest program or its swimmers from this tirade. Just about every wise person I’ve spoken to has said, “Forget it” or “Leave it alone” or “Don’t drag yourself down to that level.” Even Skuba and the twelve year old thought the email was ridiculous; unworthy of further comment. However it is worth correcting two factual errors.

First, “They were much better swimmers with an arsenal of events, swimmers that had promise before you coached them.” Before Skuba came to Aqua Crest he’d been retired from swimming for quite some time. He wasn’t swimming at all. In six months, to qualify for the US Opens does not deserve to be portrayed as “US Open cuts for 22 year old, big deal.” It is mean and vicious and should be sanctioned. Skuba’s progress in that first six months was the remarkable product of personal hard work and talent. I just wish the idiot who wrote this email had been there to see the character Skuba displayed as he struggled to swim one thousand meters on his first day back. US Open cuts in six months – yes that was a big deal. A very big deal.

Second, in a portion of the email not quoted above, the Level 5 coach says. “Since arriving in south Florida David has produced NO — even lower a High School swimming champion.” One would have thought that someone who has assumed the roll of speaking so forcefully on Andrew Meeder’s swimming career would have known that, in his sophomore year, Andrew Meeder was Florida State 100 freestyle High School Champion and he was swimming at Aqua Crest. That said, I do not like the term “produced”. I did not produce Andrew’s results. He did that for himself by hard work and application. I also disagree that a High School title is in anyway “even lower”. It was a fine achievement when Andrew did it and will be for future champions as well.

By now you may be wondering, who is this Level 5 genius? Well we don’t know – you see, the email was from someone called Anonymous. Most of these emails usually are anonymous. It says everything really – about the email and the character of its author.