The Chuck Wielgus Blog: Summertime
The Chuck Wielgus Blog: Summertime
Chuck Wielgus is the Executive Director of USA Swimming
My three favorite summer sounds are lawnmowers on a Saturday morning, a bouncing basketball and the happy noise that comes from kids splashing around at the pool. Yes, summertime is by far my favorite time of year, it always has been.
Summertime is also that time of year that most people consider to be swimming season. The weather promotes jumping in the pool (safely, of course) and summer league swimming explodes in many parts of the country. It has been estimated that for every one athlete member of USA Swimming there are 10 kids who are not members but swim on local teams in their home communities. Talk about a great grassroots sport!
This summer is going to be extra special with our upcoming Phillips 66 USA Swimming National Championships from August 6-10 in Irvine, California. In the four-year quad leading into Rio, it’s the second-biggest swimming event held in the United States, behind only the Olympic Team Trials.
Broadcast on NBC, NBC Sports and Universal Sports – and streamed live at usaswimming.org – the meet is now a major sporting event, with a prominent place on the national sports calendar. It will help lay the groundwork to decide who will represent Team USA at major international events over the next two years. You can call it the entry ramp to making the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team.
We have already credentialed more than 60 members of the national media, including journalists from Sports Illustrated, USA Today, New York Times, ESPN and many more. The Road to Rio starts now.
In addition to the great swimming, I enjoy experiencing the amazing support from our corporate partners, local volunteers and families of participants. Phillips 66 has been a title sponsor for more than 25 years, and the Irvine swim community will have more than 500 volunteers working at the meet. Our sport has always relied on the involvement of parents and others who put in long hours to help ensure the success of an event like these national championships.
I have some great memories of past National Championships. My very first one was held in Nashville, and old timers will remember that as the year the bulkhead broke away. Over the years we traveled to Fresno, Minneapolis, Fort Lauderdale, College Park, Maryland, Stanford, Indianapolis and Irvine, among other places. Happily, last week we learned that one of our favorite venues – “The Nat” in Indianapolis – will be receiving a much-needed $18 million facelift, which will no doubt lead to a return visit there soon.
Today’s national spotlight for our sport is fantastic, but that wasn’t always the case.
In 1997, when I joined USA Swimming as the new executive director, the general public thought of swimming as a summertime fun activity, with competitive swimming an Olympic year only sport. My charge was to change that. We began with a new business plan, one constructed around the three simple principles of BUILD, PROMOTE and ACHIEVE:
- Build the base
- Promote the sport
- Achieve sustained competitive success
The PROMOTE part of this plan was very clear: place our major events on television; engage with corporate partners who would grow the sport through their relationship with swimming; develop high-quality communication tools (Splash magazine, our website and the Deck Pass app being the most important); and promote our top athletes as sports stars.
As I reflect back on the journey that leads us to today, I can’t help but remember the fond memories that have come over the summer months. Summer and swimming go hand-in-hand.
And so to the list of favorite summer sounds, I now add the happy noise that will come from thousands of family members and swimming fans who will be vociferously cheering for their favorite swimmers at the Phillips 66 USA Swimming National Championships. If you’re in the Irvine area, please join us for five fantastic days of summer fun.
Chuck Wielgus can be contacted at [email protected]. All of his blogs are archived at www.usaswimming.org: click on “News” and then click on “Org News & Blogs”
