Latest / Best of: Features / Cal coach who admitted decades of abuse hires right-wing blogger to tell her side

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Cal coach who admitted decades of abuse hires right-wing blogger to tell her side · Best of: Features

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  Calcoach, who admitted decades of abuse, hires right wing blogger to tell
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  her side. This article is being read by an
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  automated voice generated by Everlet. Disgraced former Cal women
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  swimming coach Terry McKeever is writing a memoir that addresses the psychological
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  abuse allegations that some of her former swimmer are suing the University
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  of California Board of Regents over. McKeever, and by extension, the Golden
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  Bear Swimming Programme was once considered the paragon of the sport. Competing
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  under her meant that a swimmer was among the best in the
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  country, and the results followed. She won four NCAA team titles and
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  is still the most successful female coach in swimming history. Cal even
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  once described her as a maker of Olympians. But that prestige came
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  with a dark underbelly of psychological torment that went on for years,
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  according to the accusations of dozens of swimmers that Cal spoke with
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  before the school decided to fire her on january thirty first, twenty
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  twenty three. Orange County Registered journalist Scott Reed broke the news on
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  these allegations in a bombshell report published in twenty twenty two. Now
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  the former coach wants to tell her side of the story with
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  a book titled From Podiums to Pariah. According to a blurb on
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  her website, McKeever will in fact provide her perspective on the accusations
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  that ended her longtime college coaching career, and how the lessons she
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  taught athletes helped her through what followed. Currently, a group of more
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  than a dozen former swimmers is suing the UC Board of Regents
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  for allegedly turning a blind eye to the bullying culture, McKeever is
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  accused of cultivating and for allowing the coach to keep her job
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  despite the knowledge of the alleged circumstances. The group had its case
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  dismissed in twenty twenty four, but an appeals court ruled in June
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  that the case could move forward because the OC Register's original reporting
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  reset the statute of limitations on the accusations. Kelsey Campbell, the lawyer
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  who has represented this collective throughout that whole process, told SF Gate
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  that she had only just found out about the book last week,
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  when SF Gate first brought it to her attention. Campbell said the
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  clients had no comment on the book. After her side's appeals victory,
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  Campbell is preparing to enter the discovery process for the case, which
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  Campbell told S F Gate could take up to a full year
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  from now. It isn't clear when the book will come out, as
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  it is simply listed as coming soon on McKeever's website. But the
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  book already has a cover mocked up in a listed co author
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  alongside McKeever, longtime swimming reporter Karen Krauss. Krauss was at one point
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  a highly recognized sports journalist, most prominently reporting for the New York
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  Times, from two thousand five to twenty twenty one, with a specific
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  interest in the swimming world. Her time at the paper ended in
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  controversy, though. In twenty twenty one, the Times suspended Cruz for failing
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  to disclose an agreement to ghostwrite a book for twenty three time
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  Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps, when she continued to report on
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  Phelps. Krause responded by resigning. Her Grey Lady tenure also included frequent
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  interviews with, and references to McKeever, sometimes alongside glowing praise for the
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  decorated coach. In a two thousand eight story about women's coaches breaking
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  barriers ahead of the Beijing Olympics, Krusk called the coach a trailblazer
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  on the training front, noting the innovations she brought to the workout
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  regiments of her swimmers. She highlighted McKeever’s as one of the glass
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  ceiling breakers in swimming as a woman coaching men in twenty fourteen.
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  There's even an odder reference to her in a twenty twelve report
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  that mentioned the coach's mom wanting her daughter to meet Roger Federer
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  at the Olympic Village, and she obliged, because he'd be nice looking.
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  Krauss is not the only reporter to have written positively about a
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  woman with abuse allegations that spann decades. Those accusations only became public
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  the year after Krauss resigned from the Times, and the frequency of
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  coverage was a natural end product of McKeever's success as a coach.
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  But unlike other reporters, Cruz's stories about or mentioning, McKeever were of
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  a former college teammate and sorority sister at the University of Southern
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  California. Though it's not disclosed in any of the New York Times
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  articles that SF Gate reviewed. Krauss, who attended USC from nineteen eighty
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  to nineteen eighty four, according to her LinkedIn page, was a teammate
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  of McKeever's on the Trojans women's swim team, as McKeever swam at
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  the school from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty three, and the Tua
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  were also members of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. Krauss's most recent
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  journalistic venture has been to join Sport and State, the editorial brainchild
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  of conservative sports commentator Clay Travis. In one of her blogs she
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  says public figures can have headlines about then twisted by others to
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  devastating effect, and that her editorial goals for the site are to
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  shine a light on an example or two of people punished by
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  those who projected onto The their own insecurities, prejudices, and weaknesses. It's
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  a common right wing trope of whining about cancel culture, although these
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  excerpts manage to avoid saying the two magic words. In another blog
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  she harkens back to her days at the times when an editor
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  suggested finding fewer damsel in distress narratives, which caused her to reflect
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  on how her stories about female athletes included dark topics like abusive
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  coaches and suicidal ideation, among others. She then notes that, ultimately, the
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  story she published after the conversation, one about the eating disorder of
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  figure skater Gracie Gold, was one of the sports section's most read
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  stories of the year. The lesson she learned was, as she’s put
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  it, distressed damsels pique the public's interest. The thesis of the blog
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  this appears in is that the WNBA's leap in viewership is because
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  of outrage hunting fans of off court drama, uninterested in on court
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  performance or clean sportsmanship. On December 28, 2023, the U.S. Center for
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  Safe Sport suspended McKeever for three months and placed her on probation
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  for twelve months following an investigation into her tenure at Cal. Part
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  of the former coach's agreement with SafeSport included an admission that she
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  emotionally and physically abused swimmers under her watch for over 20 years,
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  according to a report from the OC Register. Her reputation is no
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  longer that of the Olympic coaching hero who helped usher in a
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  golden age of American swimming success. Instead, she's a pariah whose success
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  was built on the backs of swimmers she allegedly tormented for decades.
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  In other words, Cruz has found her new damsel in distress to
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  write about. Editors Note. This story was updated at ten AM, october
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  seventh, to correct the name of the lawyer representing the group of
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  swimmers. This story has been updated.