Athletes allege culture of abuse
Women say McKeever bullied and verbally abused them for years
Her first few months on Berkeley campus were dominated by a singular obsession that consumed every moment, every aspect of her life.
All Danielle Carter wanted to do was to make Cal women's swimming head coach Teri McKeever happy.
“I was trying so hard trying to please Teri,” Carter said. “In every way.”
But nothing worked. McKeever, the 2012 U.S. Olympic women's team head coach, accused Carter of lying that she had epilepsy, according to Carter and five other people. Then McKeever accused Carter, then a freshman, of lying to Cal coaches during her recruitment, saying she concealed the illness from them.
McKeever was screaming at Carter at almost every practice, usually in front of the rest of the team, according to Carter and five others.
She was “lazy,” Carter and the others recalled McKeever yelling at her.
She was “worthless.”
She was “a waste of time.”
She was “a piece of (expletive).” Carter was unable to eat, unable to sleep. She couldn't focus in class. Sometimes she was so exhausted from the stress, from the lack of sleep she fell asleep in class. She had panic attacks on an almost daily basis. There were mornings when she couldn't find the strength to get out of bed. All of which led to an increase in her seizures, according to Carter and her parents.
“Teri made me feel so little,” Carter recalled “and I didn't want to feel like that anymore.”
So one night in the fall of 2019, Carter went into her dorm bathroom with an X-acto knife intent on slitting her wrists.
“It got to the point where I literally couldn't take it anymore from
Teri,” Carter said. “I can't do this anymore. I don't want to be alive anymore. That night I literally didn't want to be alive. It was like, `OK, I'm ready to die. I want to kill myself. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be alive.'”
Carter got scared at the last minute and texted a teammate.
Cal swimmers told McKeever about the incident and the coach confronted Carter the next morning at practice, pulling her out the pool.
“Did you try and kill yourself last night?” McKeever asked her, Carter said. Three other people confirm that Carter shared details of the conversation with them.
“Yeah,” Carter responded. “I don't want to live.
“Teri literally laughed in my face and said, `Do you know how pathetic that is? How stupid that is? How selfish that is?'”
McKeever was particularly enraged, Carter and teammates remembered, that the swimmer had confided to a teammate that she was feeling suicidal. Carter had no way of knowing that the teammate had a sibling who had earlier attempted suicide. McKeever, however, brought it up in berating Carter, yelling that she had created a distraction for the teammate, Carter said.
“You just totally messed up her (practice),” McKeever said, according to Carter.
Carter is one of at least six Cal women's swimmers since 2018 who made plans to kill themselves or obsessed about suicide for weeks or months because of what they describe as McKeever's bullying, according to a Southern California News Group investigation.
Cindy Tran, a six-time NCAA champion who swam for Cal from the 2010-11 to 2013-14 seasons, said McKeever's alleged bullying also helped push them to the brink of taking them own life in 2014.
The women characterize their attempts or suicide
plans, verified by more than a dozen teammates, parents and friends, as desperate cries for help from within a toxic culture created by McKeever.
“I didn't want to exist in a world where I had to see Teri every day,” said former Cal swimmer Chenoa Devine. “I didn't want to be alive. I didn't want to exist.”
For parts of four decades, McKeever, 60, has been one of swimming's leading coaches, the architect of one of college sports' premier programs, producing Olympians and NCAA champions in the pool and standouts in the classrooms of the nation's leading public university.
She is the most well known and most successful female coach in the sport's history. McKeever was the first and only woman head coach of the U.S. Olympic team, leading a squad that included six future, current or former Cal swimmers who earned a combined 13 medals at the London Games. McKeever's father Mike was a football star at USC and so was his brother Marlin. Teri McKeever swam at USC and was an All-American and then a USC assistant coach before coaching 29 seasons in Berkeley, winning four NCAA team titles and producing 26 Olympians who have combined for 36 Olympic medals.
“It kills me inside that you guys don't appreciate being coached by the best coach in the world,” McKeever told her team at the Pac 12 Championships this past February, according to three swimmers present during the talk.
But in interviews with SCNG, 19 current and former Cal swimmers, six parents, and a former member of the Golden Bears men's team portray McKeever as a bully who for decades has allegedly verbally and emotionally abused, swore at and threatened swimmers on an almost daily basis, pressured athletes to compete or train while injured or dealing with chronic illnesses or eating disorders, even accusing some women of lying about their conditions despite being provided medical records by
them.
The interviews, as well as emails, letters, university documents, recordings of conversations between McKeever and swimmers, and journal entries, reveal an environment where swimmers from Olympians, World Championships participants and All-Americans to non-scholarship athletes are consumed with avoiding McKeever's alleged wrath. This preoccupation has led to panic attacks, anxiety, sleepless nights, depression, self-doubt, suicidal thoughts and planning, and in some cases self harm.
Tran said. “You do things at Cal out of fear of getting yelled at.”
“You live in constant dread because of Teri,” said Chloe Clark, a former Cal swimmer.
McKeever's bullying and abuse continues, the swimmers and parents allege, despite repeated complaints about the coach's behavior to Cal's athletic department and university officials since at least 2014.
“She's Teflon Teri, nothing sticks to her,” said Scott Carter, Danielle Carter's father. “She's been getting away with this (expletive) for years.”
SCNG's investigation revealed:
• McKeever recently used a racial epithet and profanities in disparaging rap music,
according to five swimmers familiar with the conversation and an email to Cal detailing the incident.
The university's Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination has opened a formal investigation into the incident that will initially focus on potential racial discrimination but could be expanded to also consider possible discrimination based on sexual orientation and national origin, according to confidential university documents obtained by SCNG.
• McKeever has also complained that a current African American swimmer had too much “attitude,” according to five current swimmers.
McKeever routinely bullies swimmers by screaming and/or swearing at them, often in front of the rest of the team, all 19 swimmers confirmed.
“Teri swore at me at least three times a week,” said Anna Kalandadze, a former Cal swimmer. “I had a `(expletive) attitude.' I was a `piece of (expletive).'”
McKeever has also thrown kickboards and water bottles at swimmers on multiple occasions, current and former swimmers allege.
• McKeever each year targets one, two or three swimmers for almost daily bullying and verbal and mental abuse, according to
all 19 swimmers.
“I don't think there was a practice I wasn't yelled at by Teri,” said a former Cal swimmer who competed at the World Championships. “She called me a piece of (expletive) every day.”
• Cal swimmers are routinely pressured by McKeever to train and compete despite physical reasons for sitting out, including suffering from chronic illnesses such as epilepsy or Crohn's disease, injuries such as broken bones or concussions, or while recovering from eating disorders.
Clark recalled a practice during the 2019-2020 season where she was doubled over in pain from Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease, and what would later be diagnosed as appendicitis.
“I was crying in pain,” Clark said.
McKeever was unmoved, Clark said. “Teri said, `No one died from swimming with a stomach ache, get in the water,'” Clark recalled McKeever telling her.
Clark got in the pool. Weeks later she underwent an emergency appendectomy.
• Two swimmers and their parents allege McKeever shared confidential medical information about them with the Cal team, a violation, they maintain, of federal privacy laws.
Clark said McKeever
revealed the swimmer's Crohn's disease at a team meeting she was not allowed to attend.
“So basically, that's how my friends found out that I had it,” Clark said.
• Of the 61 swimmers who joined the Cal team as freshmen between the 20132014 and 2020-21 seasons, 26 (42.6 percent) left the program before completing their NCAA eligibility. Four swimmers on the 202122 roster have either transferred or placed themselves in the NCAA's transfer portal since the season's end.
“Teri was the only reason I left,” said Kalandadze, now an NCAA qualifier and All-Ivy League swimmer at Penn. “She was awful to me.”
Six of the 12 swimmers of color to join the team during the 2013-14 to 2021 period left before using all of their athletic eligibility.
SCNG contacted the Cal athletic department last Wednesday, May 19, to request an interview with or comment from McKeever. A Cal spokesman was informed of the allegations contained in this report. Cal was provided a noon Friday deadline by SCNG. That deadline was later extended at Cal's request to the end of business Friday. That deadline passed without any response from McKeever. On Monday morning, McKeever, through a Cal spokesman, declined to comment on this report.
“Teri creates a culture of fear on that team,” said Nick Hart, a former member of the Cal men's swimming and diving team, who is close friends with several athletes from the Golden Bears 2019-20 team. “There are one or two people she dislikes and bags on them and if Teri doesn't like that person, nobody is going to like her, because nobody wants the wrath of Teri.”
A current swimmer, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from McKeever and the school's administration, said she dreads “going to bed at night because I know when I wake up, I have to go to practice and deal with Teri.
“Swimming was my safe place. Now it's the place I want to be the least.”