Appointment of swim coach makes waves
First female chosen to Olympic swim staff plunges organization into controversy as many feel selection criteria flawed

JAMES CHRISTIE
The Globe and Mail
Sports Reporter; With files from Nikki Dryden, two-time Olympic swimmer and 15-time national champion.

Toronto -- The appointment of Canada's first female Olympic swim coach began as an affirmative-action move, a positive exercise in political correctness.

But within a week it has sunk the tradition-bound sport deep into a pool of controversy and name-calling over whether head coach Dave Johnson of Calgary overlooked highly qualified senior coaches and flouted selection criteria to appoint 26-year-old Toronto Torch coach Shauna Nolden.

Johnson, who has been coaching Olympic swimmers since 1976, and Swimming Canada chief executive officer Harold Cliff readily say that Nolden's appointment did not follow the criteria used to select the male coaches.

Rather, they said, the chief factor in choosing Nolden as the first woman on the Olympic staff was to get "the right person," not necessarily the most accomplished. Comparing coaching records was deemed "irrelevant" in this case, Cliff said.

The federal government funding agency Sport Canada is pushing national sport bodies to have females make up 30 per cent of coaching ranks by 2004, Johnson said, and swimming needed a trailblazer personality.

That has spurred outrage in different sectors of the swim community. Some members of the coaching fraternity -- long regarded as an old-boys' club -- have called Nolden undeserving. None of the swimmers who train with her qualified for finals at the Olympic team trials in Montreal last week.

Moreover, Swimming Canada must apply to the Canadian Olympic Association to get Nolden an exemption from the COA's requirement of a Level 4 coaching certificate. She is about to complete Level 3, she says, and is enrolled in Level 4 courses.

Other female coaches are angered that the appointment was arbitrary and there was no opportunity to apply for the position. And there is a torrent of gossip though the chat rooms of Internet Web sites frequented by national-level swimmers -- juvenile insults, vicious personal attacks and a call for Johnson to quit.

"I'm sorry it [the mudslinging] is out there. It casts a shadow on a really great thing," Nolden said. "Dave Johnson is extremely professional, as am I. You don't make an appointment to an Olympic team and risk the performance of the team."

Many coaches say they understand the initiative to advance women in their ranks. Most of Canada's graduating female swimmers don't give a thought to coaching because they've never seen a female coach rise above the grassroots level in a male-dominated hierarchy.

None of the experience and expertise women swimmers receive from the system gets churned back in because they see no hope of getting to the top. Nolden's advancement would send a different message, Johnson said.

"It's not my preferred modus operandi in terms of transparency," Johnson admits. "We don't have a lot to defend on that side of things. I considered a number of different people and felt this was best candidate at this time.

"Generally speaking, there's been a lot of lip service to promoting women in swimming but nothing was ever done. We had to send a message we were clearly serious about it. It's a bloody hard decision, but I think it's the right decision.

"This top-down approach has more potential than to develop a system and wait for one [a female Olympic coach] to emerge. We've been waiting 25 years and no one's emerged with the system we have. I felt jump-starting the system is a more appropriate way to go than waiting and constructing the model. I'd rather have a coach with Olympic credentials in the mix for the next four years and put others into the scene, rather than arrive in 2004 with a number of untried candidates."

But critics say it's unfair to other women who have coached longer and had international experience to put Nolden on the squad without some kind of selection process. There will be a teleconference emergency meeting of the Canadian Swim Coaches Association on Monday to discuss the issue and what course of action is available. The association represents about 900 swim coaches, both male and female. Its 12-member board of directors includes two women.

Nolden coached at the world short-course championships in Greece and on the World Cup circuit last year.

"I can honestly say that I have not seen an act of such political incorrectness and questionable integrity as that which Mr. Dave Johnson has made," said Andrew Moss, assistant coach at the National Training Centre in Calgary.

"It is an absolute insult that Johnson's personal approval of a coach's potential should override a process which was laid out in great detail prior to the Olympic swim trials and which all coaches at the competition understood to be in effect."

Johnson said the job given Nolden was created when more swimmers than anticipated qualified for the team.

Among other possible candidates were Lucie Hewitt of Oakville, who had two swimmers in the finals at the Olympic trials and Linda Kiefer of Toronto who was head coach of Canada's World University Games team.

"If there was no set criteria, the appointment lacks credibility, which sets women coaches back instead of elevating them," Hewitt said.

Kiefer concurred: "We are trying to find out the criteria that was used. If there was none, then I think this is a step back for women in coaching."

Johnson said the feds didn't put a gun to the head of Swimming Canada to force the issue of a female coach for this Olympics. But Cliff, Swimming Canada's CEO, said there was definitely a politically correct angle to the move.

"That's not necessarily the wrong thing to do. We believe it's the right thing to do. If we had to defend it on process alone, we couldn't: It wasn't in the selection criteria, and it wasn't advertised in advance. We consulted with swimmers and the swimmers' representative [to Swimming Canada] and the coaches' rep and everyone was okay with it -- albeit with nervousness about the lack of process.

"We felt it's the right opportunity and I trust Dave, and if he tells me it's going to be of benefit, he has my support. We didn't displace a coach. We completed a selection process and named her as an additional coach. We didn't take a spot from one of the eligible coaches.

"She's not there as a pure token. We weren't interested in that."

Nolden said a female coach provides a different frame of reference for women swimmers. "I can understand what they're going through when they're tired, when their stroke isn't right, and when they're frustrated. I can understand as a female and as a coach.

"Our female swimmers have so much to offer with their technical ability and experience. If women aren't coming to coach because they don't feel they can have a leadership role, we'll never achieve our potential.

"I wrote a paper in university -- are second stringers leading the country in U.S. politics? I suggested maybe the best people don't want to be in politics because they don't want to deal with the scrutiny. Comparatively, you can say the same women in coaching. There's a lot to put up with.

"But our swimmers are smart, beautiful, confident, ambitious girls. They're used to trying to make it to the top. They want a career that feeds into that. They perceived they couldn't break into the old-boys' [coaching] network and I think that's where Harold Cliff and Dave Johnson were coming from. It's not tokenism. I'm going to coach. I have a skill set."

The controversy will continue. Victor Lachance, chief executive officer of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, says the situation cries out for a sport mediation or arbitration process "and it's a priority with the Minister of State for Amateur Sport, but we don't have a new one in place yet.

"There have been historical wrongs [limited roles of women in sport] but you can't lose another principle in addressing them. You can't trade one noble principle -- objective selection of staff -- for another, advancing women in sport."

Reprinted with permission

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