CEO Kevin Ring Gets Real About State of USA Swimming, How We Will Move Forward

SwimSwam's Editor-in-Chief, Braden Keith, sat down with the new CEO of USA Swimming, Kevin Ring, for a candid conversation. Keith asked Ring 10 hard questions about the state of USA Swimming and what he will do to address those issues. Ring answered honestly and with some breaking news peppered in. This includes raising APA rates (athlete salaries) for the first time in over a decade and holding an SCM meet to help select rosters for SCM World Championships.

Today on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we are previewing the US Open, Short Course European Championships, and the Minnesota Invite.

As a Freshman at Texas, Nate Germonprez was training freestyle and backstroke, focusing on IM but also swimming on the 800 free relay. Flash forward year and a half later, and Germonprez is the #4 performer in history in the 100 breast, only .2 off the NCAA and US Open records. Listen to the junior at Texas as he explains what has changed about his training since the arrival of Bob Bowman and how he has capitalized on his breaststroke ability.

Will Modglin made a statement last weekend at the Texas Hall of Fame Invite. In his first swim, the 50 back leading off the 200 medley relay, he swam 20.00, the fastest 50y back in history. He went onto swim a 43.26 in the 100 back, breaking the American record and coming within .06 of his teammate, Hubi Kos's, NCAA record. Modglin also swam a 50.91 100 Breast, one of four loghorns who broke the 51-second barrier in the event. The funny thing about that: Modglin doesn't train breaststroke. At all. The WUG's gold medalist from this summer gets into this and more in today's episode.

Today on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss Rylee Erisman reclassifying to 2026 and going to Cal, Audrey Derivaux to Texas, and recap the first week of Mid-Season Meet pandamonium.

Today on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we preview the major Mid-Season Meets coming up this week in the NCAA.

Entering his 3rd season with the California Golden Bears, Noah Yanchulis has already experienced many highs of coaching a college team. He's been a part of a conference champion team, chased an NCAA team title, and been a part of a Team USA coaching staff. We spoke with Yanchulis today about his time with the bears and how he's developed his system for coaching the 400 IM/distance groups, which now has up to 24 athletes on any given day, with the massive addition of 20 freshmen (men and women) this fall. This past summer, after Cal put 5 athletes on the world championship roster, Yanchulis was named an assistant coach on Team USA. He discusses the lessons learned coaching overseas in Thailand and Singapore as he helped guide the Red, White, and Blue through sickness during the championships.

Ryan Coughenour has had a full journey leading into his senior year of high school. His grandfather was an Oklahoma state champion in the 1940s and went on to swim at Kansas State University (when they had a swim program) as well as compete at the US Olympic Trials in the 1950s. He has supported Ryan through his swimming career and encouraged him to pursue it in college. During the pandemic, when Ryan was in middle school and just starting to swim seriously, he started buying sneakers online and re-selling them for profit. Well, not for profit at first. But eventually, he learned how to make a profit and ended up making quite an income. Coughenour even convinced his coach to let him out in the middle of practice one day in order to secure a pair of valuable shoes, which he ended up re-selling for a profit of $1,100. Bow in his senior year, Ryan has committed to swim at Florida State. He's coming off a summer that saw him rapidly improve in LCM, going best times nearly every time he dove in the pool and capping his season at Summer JRs. Learning to be a leader on his high school and club team, the breaststroke specialist has a lot to look forward to.

Today we have swimming superstar Summer McIntosh. She talked a little over an hour and nothing was off-limits. Before we hit record, she said, “Go for it. I’m ready to discuss anything.” We caught up during her three-week altitude block at the U.S. Olympic Training Center, where she’s working under new coach, Bob Bowman. And, of course, she recently announced her global partnership with Arena. (see link below). This podcast is loaded. Summer provides insight and backstory across a lot of topics. She certainly breaks through the noise of the internet, allowing us  us peek into the mind of the most dominant female swimmer on the planet in her run-up to LA2028.

We sit down with Texas A&M Director of Swimming and Diving Blaire Anderson, a coaching talent to watch in the coming years as she develops the Aggies in the new era. In just her first year running the combined Aggie program, Anderson has already left a mark, guiding the men’s team to a 5th-place finish at the 2026 SEC Championships and 12th at NCAA Championships, while the women’s squad placed 8th at SECs and 25th at the NCAA Championships.