USA Swimming hires Legends exec Kevin Ring as CEO

Once once more, USA Swimming has a brand new CEO, hiring Legends government Kevin Ring to guide the group with three years to go earlier than the 2028 L.A. Olympics.

The rent concludes a yearlong course of to exchange Tim Hinchey that included the announcement and subsequent withdrawal of Chrissi Rawak as USA Swimming’s CEO choose earlier this yr.

With a profession constructed largely in golf, Ring brings a business background and expertise producing income. While each abilities will serve him within the function, with the NGB rating within the prime 5 for income within the motion, it’s unifying a various and, to some extent, sad base of constituents starting from the grassroots to the game’s greatest icons that awaits Ring.

“What I was always in love with was the power of sport and the athlete and mission-based organizations,” Ring mentioned. “I love working in areas that can bring my skills and really help athletes, coaches, volunteers and, it sounds almost cliche, but helping people reach their dreams.

“A domestic Olympics coming up made it just that much more appealing. So it was really the ability to use skills, give back, (it being) membership driven that made me really want to go after this.”

CAA led the seek for a brand new CEO, with USA Swimming bringing within the company this spring because it launched into a second course of to fill the function. USA Swimming declined to say the size of Ring’s contract or his compensation, however the function has been among the many highest paid within the motion.

Ring joins USA Swimming after serving as president of golf at Legends, which he joined in 2022. He spent a decade at PGA of America, the place he served as CRO and CMO. His prior stops embody IMG, the place he was VP of consulting, and on the Olympic Regional Development Authority, the state group that manages services in Lake Placid.

“When you look at Kevin’s background, the strength of the resume on paper stands out,” board chairman Chris Brearton mentioned. “But then when you speak to Kevin and sit with him, he’s very passionate about the mission-driven nature of leading an NGB. What really appealed to him — and I think ultimately what led him away from Legends, a job and a position that he was very happy in and very successful in — was the ability to lead an NGB and do that very important stakeholder-driven, athlete-first work. And that’s what really I think appealed to us.”

Brearton mentioned robust relationships that Ring already has with NBC, the USOPC and LA28 can solely assist swimming. In addition to Ring’s business background, Brearton was impressed by his capacity to make connections along with his expertise and swimming, akin to by learn how to tackle points round entry which can be related in each sports activities.

Ring’s rent had leaders inside the sport and the motion wanting ahead with optimism after an at-times turbulent yr inside USA Swimming.

After Hinchey’s departure, the board appointed a process pressure to collect suggestions from varied stakeholders across the sport and employed NU Advisory Partners to guide the search. It employed Rawak in February earlier than asserting later that month that she wouldn’t take the place.

The board of administrators made adjustments to the taskforce main the transition and introduced on CAA to assist with the seek for a brand new CEO.

Then-interim CEO Shana Ferguson — who had been its CCO and COO, in addition to spearheading its transfer to place Olympic trials in an NFL stadium — had been a candidate for the job however left for LA28 in March. Former board chairman Bob Vincent has been main USA Swimming as interim CEO since.

While the group introduced Greg Meehan as its nationwide group managing director, the challenges to find management and a narrowing edge over the remainder of the world competitively have led to criticism from inside the sport.

Though the U.S. group topped the medal desk on the world championships final month — claiming 9 gold medals and 29 total regardless of a gastroenteritis outbreak on the group — Olympic Gold Medalists Michael Phelps, Rowdy Gaines and Ryan Lochte have been amongst these publicly citing structural points and an absence of management at USA Swimming.

Ring mentioned listening to varied stakeholders, together with the group’s most outstanding alumni, is among the many priorities in his first 100 days on the job. Rather than a rebuild, he views the discussions as a possibility to modernize the NGB and innovate.

“They’ve lived it, they’ve heard it, they’re coming from a point of passion and to me, if you’ve got passionate people having open conversations, we can get to solutions and get to great places and I’m looking forward to hearing them out,” Ring mentioned.

Brearton famous that Ring has been interviewing as these criticisms have been public and that he views them as a possibility to have invested alumni and stakeholders form the way forward for the game.

“We need to make sure that our athletes feel that they are the best supported athletes in the world, full stop. And right behind that or right next to that, our coaches need to feel the same way,” Brearton mentioned.

“Kevin comes with no bias. Kevin comes with no agenda other than making USA swimming all that it can be. And I think that it presents a really strong opportunity for everyone to lean in to speak to Kevin, to be part of what he’s building.”

In addition to a listening tour of kinds that may function a basis for Ring’s tenure, he’s targeted on capitalizing on the affect of this quad on income — each in membership progress and business alternatives — in addition to making certain the energy of the pipeline of the game from the grassroots to the nationwide group. Ring will be part of a unbroken effort from inside the motion to guard broad-based sport and Olympic packages on the collegiate degree, the place they’re underneath menace following the monetary impacts of the House settlement.

USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland mentioned she is optimistic in regards to the rent, with Ring having the chance to repair among the points USA Swimming is dealing with.

“It’s really important that those entities are working together for the greater good and everybody’s got an environment where they can provide input where they see something that can be improved,” Hirshland mentioned. “This is a strong national governing body. It’s a strong membership base. There’s opportunity for growth, and that’s going to require alignment and collaboration across all the different components of the sport to get there.”

Ring will begin on Sept. 17 and can cut up time between the group’s headquarters in Colorado Springs and his dwelling in Connecticut, the place his youngest daughter is in highschool.

He will hit the bottom working, with the game’s House of Delegates electing four new board members earlier than its annual assembly on Sept. 27. With stability for the primary time because the Paris Olympics and LA28 on the horizon, USA Swimming has a CEO that it hopes can lay the trail for fulfillment on this quad and past.

“This is an opportunity that we need to maximize,” Ring mentioned. “And that’s going to require being bold, being ambitious, working with speed, but also doing this in the best interest of the athletes and really using this pivot point when you come out of the Olympics.”