New Year, Same Administration: Former Cal Swimmers Still ‘Waiting for Accountability’

With Cal’s fall semester officially starting Wednesday, the university has no update on the follow-up investigation into athletic director Jim Knowlton and associate athletic Jennifer Simon-O’Neill that was launched in March after women’s swim coach Teri McKeever was fired in January.

McKeever’s dismissal was the result of an eight-month, $2 million independent review that focused on the toxic team culture she created in Berkeley over the past six years rather than the role of athletic administrators in potentially enabling her emotionally abusive behavior for decades. Notably, the entire section titled “Prior Complaints to the University” was blacked out because it was technically outside the scope of the law firm’s probe.

Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill had been publicly accused of ignoring dozens of bullying complaints against McKeever for almost a year before Cal decided to formally investigate the pair in March. Five months later, former Bears swimmers tell SwimSwam that they’re still “waiting for accountability.”

“After all the attention on failures at multiple levels in Cal’s athletic program, we are wondering why the university is commencing the school year with the same athletic administration,” said Katherine Touhey, who swam for McKeever for two years starting in 2000. “To date, there has been no public update nor communication from the internal investigation they started in February into systemic abusive coaching within the women’s swim program. It makes it seem like the university is not serious about athlete safety and success.”

Touhey is the lead plaintiff along with 17 other former Cal swimmers who sued the University of California regents in May claiming that Cal officials prioritized athletic success over the well-being of athletes by ignoring McKeever’s bullying and, in certain cases, enabling it.

“After terminating McKeever, athletic director Jim Knowlton thanked those who courageously came forward to share their stories,” Touhey added. “When will Knowlton courageously look at how his lack of leadership allowed for the abuse to happen in the first place?”

During her 29 years at Cal, McKeever won four NCAA titles and served as the only female coach of a U.S. Olympic team. Dozens of her former swimmers claim that her coaching methods involved emotional and verbal abuse, with nine of them telling SCNG that they made plans to kill themselves or obsessed about suicide for weeks or months because of what they describe as McKeever’s bullying.

“It is hard to find the words to express my frustration with the athletics department and Cal’s leadership,” said Danielle Carter, who arrived at Cal in 2019 but never ended up racing in a meet for the Bears before transferring to UCSB. “My mental health and my college career were severely impacted by my time at Cal. My family and I tried to communicate to the university while on the team. AD Knowlton ignored our concerns. I have participated in the university’s outsourced investigations. We are waiting for accountability.”

This isn’t the first time in Knowlton’s career that an external review was needed to clean up a swimming scandal. At his previous job as athletic director at Air Force, an awful series of hazing incidents led to the first criminal charges in school history for a hazing case. Since Knowlton arrived at Cal in 2018, at least four programs have been the subject of serious allegations (women’s swimming, women’s soccer, rowing, and football).

Reporting by Scott Reid of the Southern California News Group (SCNG) revealed that Cal officials including Knowlton, Simon-O’Neill, and former athletic director Sandy Barbour received more than 30 complaints from Cal swimmers or parents accusing McKeever of bullying dating back to 2010. Simon-O’Neill has been with the Bears since 2008, when she was hired as director of Olympic sports operations. Last May, SwimSwam reported that McKeever is godmother to one of Simon-O’Neill’s children.

“My clients have cooperated with Cal’s personnel investigations into Teri McKeever, Jim Knowlton, and Jennifer Simon-O’Neill,” said Kelsey L. Campbell, an attorney for Touhey, Carter, and the 16 other plaintiffs suing the UC Board of Regents. “The university took a good first step in parting ways with Coach McKeever. However, she did not exist in a vacuum. Her propensity for abusive coaching was widely known. If programmatic changes have been made, all student-athletes — former, current, and future — deserve to be informed. Where the university fails to take appropriate corrective action, we hope to spur such accountability and change through litigation.”

The UC Regents, who are represented by O’Melveny & Myers LLP, filed a demurrer to the swimmers’ complaint last month that challenges the basis for the whole lawsuit. The hearing on the demurrer isn’t scheduled until December 13.

McKeever has denied any wrongdoing and her attorney, Thomas Newkirk, said she will sue the university for wrongful termination.

• Related: What does the Cal women’s soccer coach have to do with the Teri McKeever investigation?