We Are Failing Our Athletes

Let’s call it what it is: we’re failing our athletes.

It’s no secret that making a living in swimming is incredibly difficult. Yes, there’s a solid amount of money in the sport, but most of it exists within pool infrastructure and club teams. The moment an athlete tries to make the leap to college or the professional ranks, the money dries up.

For years, we’ve worn our “every four years” mentality like a badge of honor.

“Look at us. Our sport only matters once every four years.”

Not only have we accepted that, we’ve somehow convinced ourselves it makes us look cool.

It doesn’t.

The Grind

We love the grind.

The long hours in cold pools. The early mornings without any immediate reward. The fleeting moments of glory often followed by: “Is that it?”, “What do I do now?”, or “Was that really worth it?”

I’ll admit—I love that aspect of the sport too, unfortunately. But the sport is broken, it has been for a while, and we’re finally starting to see the cracks—just look at the current state of college swimming.

The core question I’m trying to raise here is this:

How do we make the three non-Olympic years of the quad more valuable—and how does our Olympic cycle affect every level of the sport in those down years?

Impact on Club Swimming

The Olympic cycle impacts club swimming more than most are willing to admit.

Our retention problem isn’t going away. And with a new generation entering the sport—one that sees through bull **** faster than any before—we’re on even less stable ground.

With club swimming as the bedrock of our sport, if our response to the question “Why should I keep swimming?” continues to weaken over time, then we’re failing—and the blame doesn’t fall on the club coach.

These kids see the endgame more clearly than previous generations, and they’re less willing to tolerate a system that doesn’t make sense.

They’re asking smarter questions and we better start finding ways to give them better answers that don’t stretch the truth… too much.

Impact on College Swimming

College swimming is backed into a corner.

We’ve coasted for far too long, hoping a day like today—when real accountability hits—would never come. But deep down, we all knew it was inevitable. We tried to force an “every four years” mentality onto a format that functions entirely differently.

It didn’t work.

Now we’re left with a season built around dual meets—meets that differ completely from the championship format, cost a lot to run, and hold little to no weight at the end of the season.

AND I LOVE DUAL MEETS.

This might feel like a small rant, but it hopefully just highlights how upside-down things are when it comes to creating value at the program level.

During an Olympic year, it's easier to show value to an Athletic Director—assuming you’ve got someone on the path to qualifying. Outside of that? You’re left with meets no one understands, confusing qualification standards, and zero media coverage. That doesn’t exactly scream “irreplaceable” to a department looking to cut costs.

The dreaded line—“Raise $[INSERT LARGE NUMBER] and we’ll keep you around”—has been heard by many programs. And we all know the translation:

“Raise a pile of money, we’ll stash it in an account, skim 4% annually to fund you, and pretend your program doesn’t exist.”

A 3.69 team GPA won’t save a program when an AD needs an extra $2,000,000 annually for football or basketball.

Impact on Professional Swimming

Pro athletes are hit hardest here.

A professional swimmer can bring value to a brand—and, in return, generate income for themselves—by doing a few things really well:

• Becoming a household name
• Building a massive, consistent social media presence
• Qualifying for finals at high-visibility meets
• Modeling or endorsing products effectively

While there are certainly other less obvious factors, those are the big ones. The problem? Brands want reach, and right now, we provide that only once or twice every four years.

Brands will clear up room in the budget to spend on Olympians after they’ve made the team, then drop them before the end of the year—even if they’ve performed well—because...

...there’s nothing valuable on the calendar for another three and a half years.

A sad reality, but business is business and you once again can’t place too much of the blame on the brands reacting to the way we choose to operate. Our value disappears as soon as the calendar flips from 2024 to 2025, and it’s largely because we’ve neglected our sport’s media properties (meets) for decades.

We need to aggressively pursue ways to build value in 2025, 2026, and 2027. Until we do, our athletes will keep paying the price—and when membership numbers stagnate, or even decline, you’ll likely find a lot of the reasons spelled out in every paragraph above.

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Our sport needs to evolve.

The three-year dead zone between Olympics isn’t something we should accept—it’s a fundamental problem we need to solve. Athlete value plummets for 75% of the quad because we’ve done little to change the structure. Club coaches are stuck trying to convince swimmers to stick with it through a system that doesn’t promise much on the other side. College programs are vulnerable—armed with little more than the Olympic shield when budget cuts come knocking.

If you’re a fan: be loud about your dissatisfaction, but still show up to meets.
If you’re a club coach: be vocal about what needs to change—and show your athletes you care about the future of this sport.
If you’re a college coach: be a leader and innovator, even though it shouldn’t fall on your shoulders alone.

I wouldn’t have committed my career to this sport if I didn’t believe it could be more than it is today.

It can be—but only if we start thinking differently, working harder, and, as a community, finally say:

“Enough is enough.”