Commentary: At What Cost Is Success Chased? Details Of Teri McKeever Saga Are Downright Chilling

I am horrified as a parent of a D1 athlete. We don’t spend much time taking about swim because there are so many wonderful other things in my son’s life. Now I feel like I need to check in to see what is going on in his swim life. Thank you for reporting on this I don’t want to miss something important with my child’s mental health. My thoughts and prayers are with the athletes who suffered abuse. I hope that they find peace in the future.

My daughter had a coach that did the same. Tried to intervene and there was retaliation against my kid. Stopped swimming January of senior year, decommitted from her college choice and is still in therapy years later. It destroyed our entire family.

I grew up in the late 80s and 90s, when I think this was the trend more so for coaching in general (for all sports)- beat them down, yell and scream, weigh girls, throw kick boards, be afraid of your coach, etc. I think things have changed since then – as they should. BUT, I think that this was the expected and accepted culture back then. Swimming, in general, is such a beat down sport – and has so much room for improvement in terms of quality of life – it reminds me a bit like the hazing of physician training. We also need to do something about mental health – these swimmers are rock stars (no matter what level) and swimming is such a small part of their entire life – the skills they are learning are very transferable to other areas in life – and useful long after they leave the pool. Disclaimer – I am a former collegiate, age group swimmer, now a swim mom, and a physician – not a coach.

Cindy uses they/them pronouns 🙂

It is unfortunate that coaches sometimes don’t recognise how their aproaches lead to mental health problems rather than mental toughness. Mental toughness has a positive relationship with mental health, not a negative one. If a coach’s approach to mental toughness has a negative effect on athletes, they should recognise it and change their approach. If not, the coach is plainly sadistic and self-centred.

This behavior has been going on for decades in programs across the country. I distinctly remember being on deck getting ready for a workout with my Masters teammates back in the early 90s, and the college coach began ripping into one of his (star) female swimmers in a manner that was so horrible that the entire facility grew quiet…because it sucked the oxygen out of the entire facility.

In speaking with one of the women on the team some days later, she told me that her goal was to do “just enough to blend in and not bring attention to herself so she avoided his wrath”…and that because she wasn’t one of his stars, he never really cared how she trained anyway, since she wasn’t a point scorer at their conference meet. When I asked if anyone had brought this atrocious behavior to the attention of the Athletic Department, she just smiled at me and said that “they aren’t going to do anything about it because he wins…and the girls just deal with it because they are successful too”…

…but at what cost??

OMG! I am so glad you have highlighted this awful behavior. I would have thought this kind of behavior would have been rooted out long ago! I lived within a similar environment for years. It was on the razors edge between extremes of super-positive to brutal negative judgement. So many athletes excelled that it was expected for everyone to thrive with the same “exceptionalism.” Luckily I was one who excelled. I won two Olympic gold medals at age 17, and went on to one of the most successful collegiate careers ever.

But I know that many other swimmers gave their all and didn’t have the same success. It is terribly heart-rending when you don’t receive the coaches’ support while doing your best to survive, thrive and deal with just living, growing up, and dealing with the demons in your own mind. I was lucky. I had a kind of strength inside that helped me transcend the enormous pressure our sport can exert on an athlete.

I learned some specific techniques to focus my attention on what I wanted to experience rather than succumb to FEAR, and that made me special in the eyes of my coach, my teammates, and the world in general. I’m surprised that these techniques aren’t taught more widely throughout our sport.

I have a new focus to help athletes, coaches and parents understand these techniques that will allow them to thrive. Let me know if I can help! Brian@GoldMedalMinds.com

Swam mid-major D1 and also experienced this. Exhausted seeing coaches who think this kind of behavior is “motivational” or whatever ridiculousness they claim it to be.