Q & A With Jim Sheehan, USA Swimming President Candidate

JACKSONVILLE, Florida, September 13. THE upcoming United States Aquatic Sports Convention will feature the election of a new president of the USA Swimming Board of Directors. Swimming World gave each of the three candidates — Jeff Gudman, Jim Sheehan and Mary Jo Swalley — the opportunity to respond to our questions about USA Swimming and the issues facing the organization.

Sheehan was interviewed by Swimming World Publisher Brent Rutemiller at the American Swim Coaches Association’s world clinic, and we present a transcript of the interview below the video player.

>>You’re watching Swimming World TV. I’m your host, Brent Rutemiller. And today I’m with Jim Sheehan, the Vice-President of USA Swimming Operations … or USA Swimming’s Vice-President of Operations. Thanks for joining us Jim.

>> Thanks for having me here.

>> Jim’s running for President of the USA Swimming and we thought we’d talk a little bit about the candidacy and some of the vision that you have with the organization. Let’s just start with the vice president of operations, program operations. What does that all entail?

>> Well, program operations entails several committees. Officials, times and recognition and championship evaluation. But it also involves the oversight and management of our National Championship events. Each nationals, whether it’s juniors or Olympic Trials, or any of those are conducted by program operations. Those are the areas of responsibility for program ops.

>> Okay. And now you’ve been on the Board of Directors for four years now.

>> Yes.

>> And have been a long time involved with the LSC in New Jersey.

>> Yes.

>> So your roots go very long and deep within USA Swimming.

>> Well, it’s been a number of years, but it’s been a, a rewarding period of time. It’s a great sport and you know, it’s-

>> Yeah.

>> It’s just wonderful to be part of it.

>> So to take on the responsibility as a volunteer to be President of USA swimming, it’s a great time for USA Swimming. Lot of successes and still a lot of challenges. Can you kind of look over and tell our audience what you think are some of the strengths that USA Swimming has right now, and maybe we can go into some of the weaknesses that you might see.

>> Well, you know, the strengths, there are many of them. Key is the staff we have in Colorado Springs. All very talented, very committed and passionate people. Working hard every single day for our sport. The volunteers, it’s amazing what people do in their “spare time” for swimming. My involvement with the committees that are within program operations has really shown me the meaning of volunteerism and the passion with which these people take the time for athletes, for our coaches, for our sport. Those are two really big strengths of our sport.

>> Can you give a number out there how many volunteers there might be, just within the USA Swimming?

>> Oh, well, there’s over 12,000 officials. And it’d really be hard to say. You’ve got more than that in the coaches of course. They’re not volunteers all the time, but they do volunteer on committees and various other parts of governance. So you’re, you’re probably talking 30,000 to 35,000 volunteers whne you add it all up.

>> And when you look at the NGB, the national government body for swimming as opposed to all the other Olympic sports — gymnastics and wrestling and track — USA Swimming has been the model. And for you to lead that organization is a huge responsibility.

>> Yes it would be. It is a wonderful NGB. There many of the NGBs that have great organizations within them but, I think, USA Swimming over the last two decades has really come out in the forefront as an excellent example of good governance and a good program for success.

>> So, weaknesses. Where do you think that there’s room for improvement?

>> Well I’m glad you said it that way, as opposed to weaknesses. I think that opportunities for excellence and one of them is I think it’s really important to find ways to increase the involvement of our volunteers. We’ve got a lot of good people out there who would like to be involved at the national level and there are only limited number of spaces on committees. And I think we have to really think hard, and work hard to take advantage of that body of knowledge and expertise to benefit our athletes, coaches and the sport. A second one is getting the involvement of our senior coaches in governance at all levels of the sport. LSCs, national. These are the people who really know how, how best to support the athletes and their knowledge and expertise is invaluable and is needed, at those levels. Another one, I think we have an opportunity, and we should take it periodically, to step back and look at our organization and say, okay, are we structured correctly? You know, we’ve been working the same way for 35, 40 years since the break from the AAU, and it’s always a good thing, no matter what the organization, to step back and look at it and say, okay, are there better places to do things, or better ways to do it? Or are we really doing it the right way and a little tweak here, a little tweak there is all we really need? And then within Safe Sport, one of the things that’s really been a challenge has been trying to get our parents and our athletes to take the Safe Sport training. All our officials, all our volunteers, our coaches, all mandatory, all tracked within the system. But we haven’t been able to get that going with the parents.

>> So, you touched on four things. Volunteerism is an opportunity. Getting coaches more involved is another opportunity. The reflection on where USA Swimming is at this point in time. And then furthering Safe Sport. When you look at that kind of vision and move in that direction, USA Swimming has a division between staff and volunteers. And if you were elected as President of the Board, how do you see that division continuing and what responsibilities as far as the staff goes, and then looking at the board, what is their role in making sure that the staff is moving in the right direction?

>> Well, you said it very correctly when you said at the end “moving the right direction.” The staff runs the business of USA Swimming. There’s a lot of operational things that go on day in, day out. And that’s what the staff is there doing. But, the board’s responsibilities are essentially for helping set the strategy, based on information produced by staff, and, having oversight for the directions that the staff is taking, based on that strategy. That’s the board’s job. The staff is there to operate the business. Our job on the board is strategy and oversight.

>> When there’s ideas that come forward are your leadership style would it be you’re waiting for the ideas to come from the staff to the board and then the board pretty much, you know, questions it or are you looking for the board to look at it from this direction and let’s try to implement these kind of ideas going forward?

>>It’s really both. The staff is working on things day in, day out, and they’ll see things through that operation that the board won’t see directly. So there’re huge opportunities there, especially when you have people out in the field visiting coaches and visiting clubs. The things you learn and you see provide great opportunities. On the other hand you’ve got the board and its vice presidents and other positions that have committees reporting to them. Those people are doing an awful lot of work. And they’re out there in the field as well. So, we’re going to get good ideas on initiatives from both areas. And, the board meetings really involve those things coming out in reports from both staff and from our vice presidents and our zone directors and other board members. It’s a collaborative process.

>> Yeah, as a possible president for USA Swimming, when you look at initiatives coming forward, and let’s look at the initiatives, some of them are full-blown organizations. The foundation is kind of … it’s got its own entity and it’s moving forward. We’re now in the early stages of Swim Today, which is an initiative to grow membership and include the industry in that. And then, diversity. Do you see a lot of board involvement with those or just, you, at this point in time are you just basically into oversight situation?

>> Well, we’re an oversight situation, but we’re also champions of these things. You know, we’re not going to be out there necessarily unless we wanted to volunteer individually to help out in some of these initiatives. But they’re really things that are — this job is assigned to one of the divisions to take care of Swim Today for example. Well they’ve got a plan, they’ve got staff, they’ve got resources working on it. You know, we’re not jumping into the middle of that, they’ve got it organized and they’re running it. But we need to not only have oversight to say, hey, is it working? How is it working? What’s going on with it? What’s your next direction, staff? Where do you think we need to adjust if necessary? But also we need to champion these things. We need to be out there telling people about these wonderful programs that we’re putting together.

>>Let’s go back a little bit on your experience as Vice President of Program Operations. It’s a semi-short title. But the responsibility is huge. The communication level with all the various committees that go into Operations. Is that going to be an easy transfer going to this larger position where you’re overseeing a lot more committees? You’re getting more reports and all that. What’s giving people confidence that you’re ready for that?

>> Well, I’ve got the time to put into it. I retired just last December from my day job. And so I’ve got the available time to put into it. And it’s a different job. The job I’ve got now has certain responsibilities and I think I’ve dealt with them appropriately. The new job is larger in scope, but it’s got more people dealing with the issues that are facing us. I’m a big fan of delegation. I want people to know where we’re going, and that’s part of the board’s responsibilities, but then I like to get out of their way and let them perform, get their job done and then assess just the same way we assess how things are going with staff. Same thing with the members of the board. They’ve got jobs to do and they need to report on them. I’m going to let them get there, get it done and, and be successful.

>> Well, let’s just kind of go forward a little bit. Let’s just say USA Swimming is in a good situation, everything’s being managed correctly. Are, are there things outside of USA Swimming that U.S. Swimming should be concerned with? The NCAA kind of comes in mind here, and then there’s the the broader aspect of water in that regard.

>> Well, the NCAA situation of course is very high profile right now in the news. And it’s something we’re concerned with. We have to pay attention to it. We can’t really influence anything in there. This is their world, and they’ve got to live in it. What we have to do is we have to be ready to deal with any ramifications of that.

>> And when you say that, you’re referring to the possibility of college athletes being paid as NCAA athletes. And what’s the immediate effect of that? What’s the worst-case scenario?

>> Well, I hate to have to conjecture on what the worst case is. But, you’ve seen reports where, well if they have to now pay the football players and the basketball players, there’s going to be no money left for Olympic sports. Or there’s going to be limited money, or they’ll change Olympic sports that are less expensive. There’re all those things.

>> So as far as our audience is concerned, that what’s out looming out there is if the NCAA’s budget is constrained to a point of paying athletes, they’re probably going to lend more to those athletes that are bringing in dollars, such as football and therefore —

>> That’s the concern.

>> Olympic sports might not become NCAA sports, which is a big concern. So, how does USA Swimming position themselves? Do you just hope that it doesn’t happen, or do you prepare for something in that regard? And is this really a Board level question?

>> It’s something we have to be paying attention to. As I said, we, I don’t know that we can influence anything because the courts are involved, there’s still lawsuits going on. We have to be a very interested observer on it, and we have to be thinking about, well, what if. And be prepared to react accordingly.

>> Moving over to Safe Sport. We touched on that a little bit earlier, but it was a white hot topic for a long time. And now we’re kind of in a situation where’s it’s settled out. What’s the temperature? What’s the report card right now in your eyes?

>> Well, I think we’ve done a tremendous job over the last four years. Where we were four years ago, as you said, it was a white hot topic. We couldn’t get out of the way of the news, no matter what we did. But we’ve taken great steps over those four years to protect our athletes as well as we can. It’s still a work in progress and will always be a work in progress. It’s something we have to keep doing. We have to keep improving it. We have to keep finding ways of spreading the education, as I mentioned earlier. The work with the USOC and the new organization that’s coming out I think is going to be critically important to making sure we’re protecting our athletes and protecting everybody’s rights in the process.

>> Okay. The final thing I would say is right now it’s 2014. Your term would be for two years. If there were a change in leadership on the staff level, the Executive Director Chuck Wielgus’ contract is coming up here. Where do you see your role as far as either bringing Chuck back or carrying on getting a new leader within USA Swimming? Because I think these questions are going to fall in your term.

>> Yes. Yes. Chuck’s contract is up at the end of 2016. He’s given indications that he would like to continue beyond 2016, all things being equal. Chuck’s been a wonderful Executive Director for us for 17 years. We’ve had great success, and I don’t think there’s anybody that wouldn’t like to see Chuck continue doing the great work he’s been doing. But if there’s a change needed, the Board has already done work on preparing for the time when we do need to have a search for a new executive director and we’ll implement that plan, and find candidates and vet them and come up with a good candidate.

>> Yeah. Well all said and done, I think we’ve given our audience a good chance to get to know Jim Sheehan a little bit.

>> Well thank you.

>> Is there anything you’d like to add?

>> Well I’m very fortunate to have been involved in this sport. The things I’ve been able to do. The people I’ve met. It’s incredibly rewarding and I don’t want to say I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth. That would be presumptuous.

>> That line was used by the way.

>> I think somewhere, yes. But it’s been a wonderful 25 or so years that I’ve been able to participate and work in a sport that’s as wonderful as it is and with the people that are here. They’re just absolutely great people.

>> Well, thanks for your service and I appreciate it.

>> Well, thanks very much for having me Brent.

>> Good luck with the election there.

>> Thanks very much.

>> Yep. Well, this is Brent Rutemiller, Swimming World TV, saying, if you want to win, first help someone else win.

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