Uchiyama Scandal, Part 1: In 2006, National Team Director Resigned in Return for USA Swimming’s Promise Not to ‘Move Forward With Any Further Investigation’
October 7, 2013After ‘League of Denial’: Football, American Boys, and the Doomed Search For Moral and Ethical ‘Further Study’
October 9, 2013
by Irvin Muchnick and Tim Joyce
As we reviewed yesterday, Everett Uchiyama, the national team director for USA Swimming, secretly resigned in 2006 when an alleged victim of his sexual abuse in Southern California came forward. Under the terms of the Uchiyama severance agreement, he did not contest the allegations and accepted a lifetime ban, and the organization promised not to pursue the investigation. Most importantly for the institutional interests of our Olympic national sport governing body, no announcement was made to the country’s more than 300,000 youth club swimmers and their families that Uchiyama had departed in the face of credible charges of molesting a minor.
USA Swimming chief executive Chuck Wielgus did not apprise even the board of directors as to why Uchiyama left.
The next step in the scandal is USA Swimming’s role in landing Uchiyama a new job — and not just any old job but the aquatics directorship at the Country Club of Colorado. The country club is located six miles from USA Swimming headquarters in Colorado Springs and is a regular site for the group’s board meetings.
Pat Hogan, USA Swimming’s director of club development, led the way in finding gainful employment for the disgraced national coach. In 2007, Uchiyama applied for a desk attendant job at the country club. Documents obtained in discovery in the lawsuit by swimmer “Jane Doe” over her molestation at the hands of a monster coach in California, Andy King, who is now in state prison for the rest of his life, show that Rose Snyder, the aquatics director at the Country Club of Colorado, interviewed Hogan about the applicant.
According to Snyder’s notes, Hogan spoke glowingly of Uchiyama. “Great people person,” Snyder jotted down.
Not long after that, Snyder left the country club and Uchiyama was promoted to her position.
And every time the USA Swimming board then met there, every attending director who walked from the front door to the conference room passed the signs denoting “Everett Uchiyama, Aquatics Director.”
Next: List of all members of USA Swimming’s board of directors who attended meetings at the Country Club of Colorado while Uchiyama was the aquatics director there.