“I strongly believe this is in the best interests of our student-athletes, our swimming program and Cal Athletics as a whole,” Athletic Director Jim Knowlton wrote in a letter to the workforce and athletic division employees.
The faculty positioned McKeever on paid administrative depart in May after athletes alleged to the Orange County Register that she “verbally and emotionally abused, swore at and threatened swimmers on an almost daily basis [and] pressured athletes to compete or train while injured or dealing with chronic illnesses or eating disorders.” The Register reported that the allegations had been reported to high school and athletic division officers, together with Knowlton, on a number of events since 2010.
“I want to apologize, on behalf of Cal Athletics, to every student-athlete who was subject to this conduct in the past, and I want to thank everyone who had the courage to come forward and share their story with the investigators,” Knowlton wrote Tuesday. “Looking to the future, I acknowledge that there have been evolving standards in intercollegiate athletics when it comes to how we develop our student-athletes to be their best, on and off the fields of competition.”
McKeever was fired after a nearly 500-page report, commissioned by the varsity and compiled by California regulation agency Munger, Tolles & Olson, upheld the accusations of greater than 40 swimmers that “Coach McKeever yelled personal insults and epithets,” used humiliating and belittling language and singled out athletes for abuse on the idea of race and incapacity. The regulation agency decided that the actions violated the campus’s 2016 anti-bullying coverage and that she had used abusive language towards 15 swimmers earlier than that. McKeever is also underneath investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
Danielle Carter, one of many swimmers who spoke out about McKeever’s conduct, told SFGATE in December that McKeever made her really feel like she was “no longer a human being” and “property for Teri to use at her disposal.” McKeever’s favourite insult for her and others, she stated, was “piece of s—.” Six different swimmers told the Register the identical factor.
One swimmer, granted anonymity by Sports Illustrated, wrote in an essay in June: “These women were my classmates and friends, and over time I began to see the effect that Teri’s behavior had on them. They cowered at her wrath and inevitably inferred that there was something wrong with them. Whatever Teri made fun of or chastised, my friends would focus on fixing, even if they couldn’t because the problems were physical — challenges with Crohn’s disease, eating disorders, and shoulder and ankle injuries. Many of her targets developed mental health problems and began doubting themselves. Were they being too sensitive to their injuries? Were they letting their teammates down? I was relieved that I wasn’t a target, but my stomach churned at the thought of living in their shoes.”
Dave Durden, the varsity’s longtime males’s coach and the coach of the U.S. Olympic males’s workforce on the Tokyo Games in 2021, was named performing director of the Cal males’s and ladies’s swimming and diving applications in August. David Marsh, one other embellished Olympic coach, was employed as affiliate head coach of each applications.