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April 21, 2015by Irvin Muchnick
Former long-time USA Swimming board member Brandon Drawz, who last year ran unsuccessfully for the presidency of the organization, has been fired as executive director of the prestigious SwimMAC Carolina in Charlotte, sources there have told Concussion Inc.
In 2007, MAC was named American swimming’s first so-called “center of excellence” — though it was another center, the scandal-plagued program in Fullerton, California, that would capture most of the headlines, for all the wrong reasons, when director Sean Hutchison was exposed as having a relationship with one of the swimmers there, Ariana Kukors.
According to our sources, Drawz had a falling out with MAC’s CEO, David Marsh, who hired him in 2012. What has delayed a public announcement of Drawz’s dismissal is negotiation of severance terms. (Neither Marsh nor Drawz responded to our email requesting comment.)
As we will develop in coming articles, Drawz is a figure who has been involved in numerous questionable business dealings. In 2007 he also was arrested in Indianapolis, where he was attending a swim meet, for drunk and disorderly conduct, battery, and resisting a police officer. He ultimately got diversion — meaning the case was dismissed after he stayed out of trouble for a year.
Just prior to taking the job at MAC, Drawz was chief operating officer of the Texas-based National Swimming Center Corporation (NSCC), a “nonprofit partner” of USA Swimming’s fundraising arm, the USA Swimming Foundation. NSCC was involved in a string of failed proposals with municipalities to build ambitious aquatic complexes — including Corpus Christi, Texas; Cape Coral, Florida; and St. Croix in the Virgin Islands.
In 2013 the board president of NSCC, Fred Yeo, and a director, Andy Sarwal, pleaded guilty in Texas federal court on charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. They are now in prison.
Follow this site for more developments and background in the Brandon Drawz story.