Congress Needs to Ask USA Swimming Top Exec Pat Hogan What’s the Difference Between Him and Belatedly Banned Rapist Coach Mitch Ivey

by Irvin Muchnick and Tim Joyce

As we’ve been reporting, infamous 64-year-old predator coach Mitch Ivey has been banned by USA Swimming, but no one should be celebrating. It’s all part of a multi-front campaign by the national sport governing body and its parent U.S. Olympic Committee to ward off mounting government investigations of systematic sexual abuse crimes in amateur sports.

In that connection, here’s a good question for prospective public hearings on C-SPAN. It is directed to Pat Hogan, USA Swimming’s managing director of club development.

The question is simple: “Mr. Hogan, what is the difference between you and Mitch Ivey?”

As an adult coach, first at the fabled Santa Clara Swim Club, Ivey harassed and molested underage female swimmers under him.

As an adult coach for the Dynamos club in Atlanta, Pat Hogan first started dating Julie Ginden Sears when she was in high school. They married when she was 18. Her father was a banker, and Hogan stopped out from swimming for a while to work as a branch manager for First Atlanta Bank.

At the 1983 Junior Nationals in Indianapolis, Hogan was involved in a murky incident with one of his swimmers. Traumatized — sources say raped — the girl scratched her events.

Like Mitch Ivey, Hogan had a stint coaching at Trinity Prep in Winter Haven, Florida — jobs probably brokered by John Leonard, head of the American Swimming Coaches Association. In Ivey’s case, it was a nice landing after he was dismissed by the University of Florida in 1993 on the eve of a report by ESPN on his serial predation of swimmers there.

Also, when Hogan’s ex-wife Julie was coaching at Jacksonville (Florida) Episcopal High School last decade, she arranged for Ivey to be on the deck as an unpaid assistant. That arrangement worked well for Ivey, who was trying to duck child support payments for twin children borne by one of his victims.

Like John Leonard, Pat Hogan has always had a soft spot for colleagues who get raw deals. When a California swimmer informed USA Swimming in 2006 that its national team coach, Everett Uchiyama, had abused her when she was underage, Uchiyama resigned, secretly and overnight. It was Hogan who gave the Country Club of Colorado a glowing recommendation for Uchiyama (“great people person”) and helped engineer his installation as its aquatics director. Hogan, USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus, and their board of directors regularly held meetings at Uchiyama’s pool.

Mitch Ivey, Pat Hogan … peas in a pod.