The Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame has announced an 8-member class of 2014 that will be inducted on October 11th, including former men’s swimming and diving coach Skip Kenney.
Kenney was the head coach of the men’s team at Stanford for 33 years before retiring after the 2011-2012 season. During his time at the farm, he won an astonishing 31 team conference championships and 7 NCAA team titles.
His 31-straight conference titles annihilated the Pac Ten/Pac-12 conference record of 14-straight titles won by John Wooden’s UCLA men’s basketball teams.
His teams were NCAA runners-up 7 times, and finished in the top 4 at every NCAA Championship from 1982-2012.
He was also an assistant coach for the 1984 and 1988 U.S. Olympic Teams, and the head men’s coach for the 1996 U.S. Olympic Team, and his swimmers made 23 Olympic appearances and won 18 medals combined from 1984-2008.
The other 7 honorees:
- Nicole Barnhart, women’s soccer
- Notah Begay, III, men’s golf
- Toi Cook, baseball & football
- Laura Granville, women’s tennis
- A.J. Hinch, baseball
- Anika Leerssen, sailing
- Heather Olson, synchronized swimming
To read more about all of the Stanford class of 2014 honorees, click here.
Skip Kenney deliberately erases several of his athletes’ records for purely vindictive reasons and yet he qualifies for the Hall of Fame? That’s beyond shameful and it discredits the entire institution. Consider:
His actions were intentional.
He was only remorseful after getting caught.
And he was old enough to know better.
Great motivator of men! He was great for Stanford, great for the Pac-8, Pac-10 & Pac-12, great for NCAA Swimming, great for Nike Swim and great for USA Swimming. He made us all better!
Congratulations Skip!
Skip — clear the air now with a public apology to Michael McLean and his family for what you did. It does not diminish the great accomplishments you had and it is the right thing to do.
What did he do? Why he should apologize publicly?
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Coach-erases-athletes-records-Stanford-2611209.php
Well according to the article you linked, he did publicly apologize. Whether he did to McLean in person is another matter.
He apologized to the Stanford administration for his error in judgement. People do that sort of thing when told to in order to save their job. He did not apologize to the kids he humiliated or their families.
I moved away from home to train with Skip. He was my introduction to “big time” swimming. I’m afraid to say how many years ago that was, but we’ve remained friends for a few decades now. Huge Congrats on this honor.
Congrats to Skip; it’s a well-deserved honor! I had the privilege to announce Stanford men’s meets from 1996-2001, and had the opportunity to see him work with his athletes. He got the most out of his swimmers, and almost always got them to nail their tapers.
My favorite season was 1998 when he took his Stanford team to NCAAs at Auburn (home of the defending champions). Every single swimmer (led by captains Tom Wilkens and Scott Claypool) swam “lights out”, and the team won by over 200 points. I’ll never forget Skip’s speech to the team that Saturday night at the banquet after the meet: “Men, you are blessed. It’s almost not fair just how blessed you are. You’ve got… Read more »
I had the privilege of doing a summer swim camp ad an age grouper for 2 years. Both Richard Quick and Skip ran it at the time, around 1995-96.
They were both gracious, and masters of their craft. I ended up with neither the swim times or the grades to get into Stanford; but I spent many years wearing my Stanford gear to every swim meet I could.