With the recent escalation of accusations against Ken Stopkotte, an Indiana swim coach who seems to have falsified swimmers’ times, it got me thinking: How wrong is making up times? It’s obviously not on the level of sexual abuse, but on the spectrum, how bad is it, and what’s an appropriate punishment?
Without trying to attack any specific person, including Mr. Stopkotte, without their due process, how bad do you think any coach falsifying a swimmer’s times, for official purposes, is? In general terms?
Here’s the case for each of the options. Leave your comments below, and be sure to vote in the poll on the right side of the screen!
If You Ain’t Cheatin’, You Ain’t Tryin’.
A coach’s job is to get his swimmers every advantage possible. If a coach fudges a few times to get his kids into a faster meet or to get his kids a little better seed in a meet, then he’s just doing his job.
Case of a Coach Losing Sight of His Priorities.
Sure, coaches are supposed to do anything they can to gain an advantage for their swimmers…within the rules. This is obviously outside of those rules, and this coach needs to remember that he’s not just teaching his swimmers about how to move fast through the water. Most of them will go pro in something besides swimming, so lessons about integrity and fairness are just as important. A simple retraining on these facts will do the trick.
It’s Pretty Bad, But Everyone Deserves a Second Chance.
A coach fudging his or her swimmers’ times to gain an unfair advantage is bad, but not bad enough to ruin the career of a quality coach. Perhaps we could turn this into a positive, and a few Saturdays volunteering with Cullen Jones’ Make-a-Splash program could atone.
A Year Out of Coaching Will Make Sure He Learns His Lesson.
Should the guy’s career be over for a case of poor judgment? No. But a suspension for a full cycle might make sure it doesn’t happen again. A suspension will remind the coach of how lucky he is to have one of the best jobs in the world, and also allow him to get back to it in the future.
Immediate Lifetime Ban.
Falsifying times not only teaches poor lessons to the children, it destroys the integrity of the sport and the entire time-standard system that USA-Swimming uses. Falsifying enough times can shift time standards, leaving deserving swimmers out. Think Tim Donaghy wagering on NBA games that he officiated. It’s that bad.
Falsifying times should never happen to ensure there is a level playing field once a meet with time standards occurs. It’s not fair to other swimmers to make up times. I am a coach and I try to be as accurate as possible. Accidents happen, but if it becomes habit, it is wrong. As for punishment if caught, I think just a warning for first offense to the coach directly, either by employer, meet director, or governing body of wherever he coaches. If it escalates after that, I think it’d be either up to the meet director to allow that team entry into the meet in the future. Or, the governing body that coach is in to decide the necessary punishments. I think once parents of swimmers on the team found out about a coach “cheating” in this manner, there would eventually be a revolt against him or her to oust them out of that position. That to me would serve as enough punishment as the coach who tries to get a job somewhere else might have his/her previous employer give a poor rating upon a phone call reference from the new employer.
Hmmm, it depends. If times were falsified in order to received scholarship money than a crime was committed.
Given the circumstances of his situation, I would expect pretty harsh. In this situation, he altered times for swimmers to get on an all-star team. Times they did not swim, did not earn, 1 year minimum ban from coaching anywhere, 3 year ban from Sectional and above deck credentials, lifetime ban from LSC travel team coaching staffs.
My question is to all those lifetime ban voters, do we then change our LSC championship fines to include banning from coaching. There is a fine, but is it enough? Sectional championships allow you to enter meets without proof of time, and you can swim knowing if you miss, you pay. You obviously can’t at the Jr. & Sr. national level meets and the introduction of the OME to larger meets prevents some of this, but where do we draw the line.
How many of us had a coach take a gamble on someone who hasn’t had a LSC champ cut, put them into an event because they were close? I have not done that, nor do I see doing it ever (because I can’t bring myself to do it and those fines add up…), but should it elicit the same penalty at all levels? Just meets where there are time standards?
Scenario for everyone: I have a swimmer who is 50.00 in the 100 yard free and never swam it long course. Is it unethical, or on the same level as Stopkotte if I enter him with a time comparable to swimmers near his SCY time at a meet that has no time standards. Do I deserve a lifetime ban for that?
Got hammered pretty good. 2 years Indiana Swimming, 5 years USA Swimming.
http://theswimmerscircle.com/blog/featured/stopkotte-reaches-settlement-with-usa-swimming/
What was even more amazing was that he wasn’t just fudging entry times. He was actually submitting results to SWIMS different from the times that actually happened, and entered 31 DQ’ed times! Unbelievable!
I’m not sure about the fines. I think the fines are meant to curtail it if it’s one or two issues, rather than a huge institutional problem like this. and dropping a little tiny bit off of entry times just means your swimmer gets to swim in a meet, and afterall they still have to actually swim those times or they don’t count for anything. In Stopkotte’s case, he actually changed results. This affected the selection of all-star teams, meaning that there was official record that those kids had swum those times.
I still disagree with changing entering times as a general rule, but don’t think it’s of the same scale and scope as what happened here.
I should have read up beyond the all-star thing. I was thinking that was what happened, changing the selection of an all-star team is huge. 31 DQ’ed times, man that’s ridiculous.
I would venture to guess that people in the future who act at this level of deception will get this at a minimum, assuming they give themselves up. I have a feeling, not fighting saved the POTENTIAL to have a future in swim coaching. No guarantees for a future career..
Braden, what kind of discipline would you hand to me given the situation I presented?
Whelp, I guess it depends on a few things, including whether the meet allows yards times for entry, converted times, etc. My personal preference would be to enter him as the converted time.
I think in the situation you presented, if you get caught having done it once, a slap on the wrist and a DQ is probably in order, as long as you don’t fight the decision. Second time, probably mandatory attendance at a workshop. Third time I would start getting into fines and suspensions from meets, perhaps not allowing you to be on deck for a few months, and require the club or parent sign off on all entry times.
I would imagine keeping you off-deck and having the club be on the hook for your actions would probably put an end to it right there, because after that, you’d probably be canned. But in a meet with no entry times and where it’s just to get a better seed, while it’s not right, I don’t think it’s on the level of a “scandal” or a membership suspension like Stopkotte received.