AD's Decision To Elimate Clemson Swimming Handled Poorly

On April 30th 2010, the Clemson Athletic Director, Terry Don Phillips, announced via a press release that the Clemson’s Men’s and Women’s Swimming teams were being phased out after the 2011-2012 academic year. According to Phillips, the reason for eliminating the program was that “Having an Olympic size pool has become most important in swimming. We have made a decision not to build a 50-meter pool, and thus feel our program is in a state where it will be very difficult to compete at the highest level in the ACC and nationally.”

Men’s and Women’s Swimming has a long history at Clemson. The program was established in 1918 and reached its pinnacle in the 1980s. During this era, the program captured 4 ACC Championships while boosting multiple individual ACC Champions and 2 Olympians. The program hasn’t been as successful in recent years, failing to capture an ACC Championship since 1997; however, the Tigers have been showing improvement under Head Coach Chris Ip, and have always been outstanding representatives for Clemson and the surrounding community. Clemson Swimmers have dominated the ACC Academic Honor Roll and lead all Clemson sports with 56.5% of the team making the list. Honorees from the swimming program include twelve 4.0 scholar athletes and five Academic All ACC students. In addition to excellence in the classroom, the swimming program leads all Clemson sports in community service.





Even if you don’t have strong feelings about the decision to eliminate the swimming program, the process by which the decision was researched and handled by Clemson’s Athletic Department should be infuriating and is just another symptom of the poor leadership from the top of the university down. I recently had an opportunity to exchange emails with swimming supporters behind the website Save Clemson Swimming (Save Clemson Swimming). Through these conversations, I was able to gather more information on how the decision was reached and was shocked by the lack of time and research that was put into a decision of such magnitude.

Phillips was asked to do an economic feasibility study on all Clemson sports programs by taking into account coaching, recruiting, and facilities. Phillips alludes to this in the press release announcing the decision. It was determined from that initial study that swimming and diving presented the biggest long-term financial challenge to make the team more competitive, due to a lack of a 50-meter swimming pool. The Athletic Department then briefly researched the cost to build the 50-meter swimming pool by looking into the costs to build similar pools at Florida State and UCLA. The costs on the surface were deemed too high, so the study was stopped without digging deeper into the numbers, and the decision to eliminate the program was made by the AD. No other facilities were bench marked. No consultants, pool contractors, or builders were asked to give their opinion on the cost to build a pool in South Carolina as opposed to Florida or California. No other options, such as building the facility piecemeal, were considered by the AD even though the majority of Clemson’s athletic facilities were built in this fashion.

The decision was made hastily without the necessary research and then announced with almost no warning catching the program off-guard. In fact, on April 23 2010, a mere 7 days prior to the announcement, North Augusta High School swimmer Hannah Collins signed a partial scholarship to swim at Clemson (Clemson Signs Collins). The coaches were literally out recruiting and signing athletes to swim at Clemson for the next 4 or 5 years while the AD was knee deep in plans to eliminate the program. The AD didn't even have the decency to tell the entire team in private prior to making the official announcement to the media. This lack of communication between the Athletic Department and Coach Ip and those involved with the swimming program is a sad turn of events that should never happen at a major university.

After the announcement was made on April 30th, the program and its supporters were told that money was not the motivating factor in eliminating the program. It was repeated by the AD that the primary reason for eliminating the program was its inability to be competitive in the long-term without a 50-meter pool. This reasoning seems odd considering that Clemson was coming off back-to-back Top 25 recruiting classes. It also begs the question that if the program isn’t a burden financially, then why does it need to be eliminated in the first place? Why can’t the program at least continue to operate under the status-quo into the immediate future while other options are explored? If all financial avenues were researched thoroughly, then perhaps in 5 or 10 years Clemson might be in a position to build an aquatic facility.

The lack of proper research and the subsequent handling of the decision to eliminate the Men’s and Women’s Swimming program is just another example of the void of competence in the Clemson Athletic Department. Taking into account the egregious lack of leadership and communication skills demonstrated by this administration throughout the process, it should not be shocking to anyone that Clemson has won a grand total of 9 ACC Championships under the Terry Don Phillips regime.

To learn more and to support Clemson Swimming & Diving go to Save Clemson Swimming.