Suspended Cal swim coach defended
McKeever's attorney says claims of verbal abuse from women athletes stem from gender bias
In the first direct response to dozens of bullying allegations, an attorney for Cal women's swimming head coach Teri McKeever says the accusations against her are clouded by “gender bias” and insisted that the university fully approved of her coaching methods.
In fact, said attorney Thomas Newkirk, school administrators who recently suspended McKeever had given her a contract extension in early 2020 that runs until mid2024, paying her $242,000 in annual base salary and $55,000 in potential bonuses.
“This award was based on hundreds and thousands of interactions with students, parents, and peers over many years,” Newkirk wrote in a recent document to top university officials that he shared with the Southern California News Group, noting that Cal had approved McKeever to mentor other coaches on leadership methods. “Why would it permit that if there was the slightest concern about some pattern of behavior?”
While acknowledging that the allegations toward McKeever primarily come from other women — to date 36 current and former swimmers have shared stories of often horrific verbal abuse — Newkirk argued in an interview that female athletes are socialized to react to coaching and stress differently than male athletes.
“It happens all the time where the female coach is described as saying something negative but she never said the words,” Newkirk, an Iowa-based attorney who specializes in gender bias in college athletics, said in the hourlong interview with SCNG, a partner of the Bay Area News Group. “But because she's a female she's supposed to respond in a nurturing way. … And when Teri McKeever
and other females do not respond in that expected way, the athletes assume that she's being critical of them.
“`She called me stupid.' `She said I was dumb'. `She told me I was an idiot.' The coach never actually says that stuff,” Newkirk continued. “The athlete is superimposing their feelings from what the coach actually said.”
The words of McKeever's attorney outraged swimmers who have gone public with their treatment at her hands. Athletes have said she routinely bullied them, often in deeply personal terms, using traumatic experiences from their past against them, employing racial epithets and body-shaming, and pressuring athletes to compete or train while injured or dealing with chronic illnesses or eating disorders.
Their stories are specific and consistent, and many of the episodes they described were witnessed by other athletes who confirmed them.
“I just feel like I'm being victimized all over again for speaking out,” said Chloe Clark, a former Cal swimmer who said she transferred because of McKeever's treatment which included accusing her of lying about having Crohn's disease. “He's calling us out for `not being able to handle it.'”
“This has nothing to do with gender bias,” said Danielle Carter, a former Golden Bears swimmer, who said she nearly committed suicide because of months of bullying by McKeever.
Cal, citing an ongoing investigation that led to the university placing McKeever on paid administrative leave on May 25, shortly after the news groups published the initial story detailing her swimmers' allegations, declined to comment specifically on Newkirk's claims.
“The campus is required by law to refrain from commenting upon personnel matters,” the school said in a statement.
McKeever is the most successful female U.S. swimming coach in history, having guided the Golden Bears to four NCAA championships over 29 years at the school, served as the 2012 U.S. Olympic team head coach, and coached 26 Olympians who have won 36 medals.
But now her future is in doubt over the allegations. Among the most incendiary are charges that McKeever singled out athletes of color for abuse.
The university's Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination launched an investigation in May into allegations that McKeever recently used a racial epithet and profanities in disparaging rap music. The investigation initially focused on potential racial discrimination but has since been expanded to also consider possible discrimination based on sexual orientation and national origin, according to five swimmers, two parents and confidential university documents obtained by SCNG.
In the interview, Newkirk defended the use of the racial epithet while stopping short of acknowledging it.
“If she said the word in that context she's not directing it at African Americans,” Newkirk said. “How in the world is that inappropriate? Is it just inappropriate because it's politically incorrect? Because you're not ever supposed to ever say the word even if it's being used in a different context? Professors can't say the word? Lawyers can't say the word even though I'm defending a client who is African American?
“Does … she engage in behavior against African Americans that is significantly different than white Americans? No.”
Speaking about McKeever's own responsibility for the allegations against her, Newkirk said she employed “normal coaching behavior,” admitting only that she might sometimes have been having “a bad damn day.”
“So the first problem here is that in college athletics the entire system accepts that there's a gender difference in how men and women complain about the same thing,” Newkirk said. “This is why when you do a story on a bunch of young women who allege some emotional harm or they've been hurt or they've even thought about suicide, we're all responding in this patronizing, emotional way. Like, `Oh, my gosh, it must be terrible. What's going on here?' Would we respond the same way if a group of men brought forward these type of complaints about any coach other than a female? I don't think we would.”
While insisting he is not accusing McKeever's accusers of lying, Newkirk said the athletes are blaming problems on their coach that are, instead, largely their own.
“So what you have is Teri McKeever engaging in normal coaching behavior and so these athletes, not every athlete, but some athletes are having a negative response to it,” he said. “And what they'll do, because their coach is a female, is they're more likely to place blame on her for the cause of those feelings even if the female is not doing anything that is outside the lines or would justify those feelings.”