It’s not everyday that a pair of your former teammates accuse your coach of sexually harassing female members of the team and employing training methods that not only violate NCAA statutes, but are dangerous to those told to use them.
But such is the scenario that the members of the Utah swim team are faced with.
Just days after former U swimmers Konrad Thiel and Brendon Bray made the allegations against second year U swim coach Mike Litzinger, the Utes are going on as though nothing unusual is going on.
Litzinger said that, in the wake of the turmoil that was unexpectedly foisted on his squad, the Utes’ response is simply to not respond.
“We’ve had the opportunity to discuss this as a team, and we feel that [an external] dialogue won’t help anybody,” Litzinger said. “We just want to focus on the upcoming season. The kids want to concentrate on swimming.”
As a result, the U swimmers have declined to comment on the issue.
After a fifth-place finish at the MWC Championships a year ago, and 16 new faces on the roster for the upcoming season, Litzinger said he and the team had enough to worry about without focusing upon yet another peripheral distraction.
But as the Utes prepare to open the season on Oct. 19 and 20 at the Early Bird Invitational in Fort Collins, Colo., it would seem as though distraction is a foregone conclusion given the nature of the accusations.
The coach, however, is unconcerned.
He said that a team meeting held Monday gave everyone the chance to address the issue, and once it was over, he came away with the strong conviction that everybody’s focus was on improving the team standing within the MWC, and not on what a pair of former athletes have to say.
“I gave them the opportunity to talk about any concerns they had. We wanted to see if there’s anything out there, and there’s not,” Litzinger said. “We all know where we stand.”
Litzinger was hired in 2000 to replace outgoing coach Dennis Tesch, who resigned following a fifth-place conference finish that year. Tesch had headed up the U men’s team since 1994, and he took over the entire program in ?98.
The team has won 22 conference titles in its history, but none since ?95.
Litzinger came to the U after spending the previous three years as an assistant for Ohio State. Prior to his tenure at Utah, he had nine years head coaching experience, and six years with top-20-ranked NCAA Division I schools. He has coached four Olympians, six world-ranked swimmers, 14 All-Americans and 49 conference champions.