Men’s swimming head coach Skip Kenney intentionally removed the times of five swimmers from the team’s media-guide record books, the University confirmed yesterday, following an investigation by The Daily. Several of the swimmers expressed in interviews their belief that the omissions were purposeful and vindictive — an effort to get back at swimmers who left the program on bad terms.

In an interview with The Daily yesterday morning, Kenney denied any bad blood with former swimmers and maintained that the omission was an honest mistake. By the afternoon, however, the coach had changed his tone, and the University released a statement by Kenney in which the coach apologized for “a serious mistake in judgment on [his] part.”

“To exclude these five student-athletes from our media guide was an error, and it will be corrected immediately,” Kenney stated. “I apologize for my actions in this matter.”

Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby told The Daily he had first spoken with Kenney about the issue Wednesday night.

“I think it’s just a mix-up somehow,” Kenney said by phone the next morning. “I don’t want to guess as to why.”

“I don’t believe they were accidental or a mix-up,” Bowlsby later said. “It was a very bad piece of judgment.”

“It is a matter of maintaining the integrity of the University’s record,” he added. “That’s something that all of us have responsibility for.”

Bowlsby also released an official statement yesterday, in which the athletic director denounced the omissions as “unacceptable” and said the University “will immediately restore our records to accurately reflect the history of our men’s swimming program.”

“We will follow up with Coach Kenney,” he said, “and take appropriate corrective and punitive steps after the NCAA Championship meet.”

A PATTERN

A careful examination of the records shows that the missing times were not randomly omitted. Each swimmer whose name was missing from the guide had his times removed from several different events, meets and years.

The times of Jason Plummer ‘92, Rickey Eddy ‘06, Michael McLean ‘06, Tobias Oriwol ‘06 and Peter Carothers ‘08 disappeared from the 2007 media guide’s list of Stanford’s all-time top-15 performances. While the times all appeared in the 2006 edition of the media guide, they were also stricken from the top times list on the official Stanford Athletics Web site (http://www.gostanford.com).

Two of McLean’s times were also omitted from the 2007 guide’s Pacific-10 Conference and NCAA Championship results from 2006, but remain in athletic department press releases of the results from last spring. Finally, the names of McLean and Carothers do not appear in a graphic featuring the 12 other Stanford swimmers who received 2005-2006 Pac-10 All-Academic honors, despite text on the following page that states “14 were honored.”

The Pac-10 confirmed that McLean and Carothers continue to hold their All-Academic records.

THE HISTORY

In terms of results, Kenney’s record is hard to dispute. Last month, the men’s swimming and diving team took home its 26th straight Pac-10 conference title, and 19 swimmers will represent the second-ranked Cardinal at the NCAA Championships, which start on Thursday.

Outside the pool, however, some former swimmers discussed a string of mistreatments, culminating, they said, in the removal of their times from the media guide. McLean filed an NCAA violation in August 2005 when Kenney left him off a preseason trip after McLean took a summer internship instead of training with the team daily in the offseason. Since then, he said, the once cordial relationship between coach and player soured.

“We had a discussion in front of the team,” McLean said. “It fell apart after that.”

Carothers and another swimmer were let go from the team last year after the two were found drinking during the season. Carothers protested, and was not allowed to return. The other swimmer did not protest, however, and was eventually reinstated.

Plummer — who graduated more than a decade ago — is an outlier of the group. Speaking by phone from Brisbane, Australia, he told The Daily that he first noticed his times disappearing from the record books in the mid-1990s.

“I thought it was a typo, but it never seemed to be fixed,” he said. “I always assumed it was because Skip didn’t like me.”

Plummer said the animosity between himself and Kenney began after he suffered a shoulder injury during his junior season in 1991.

“He basically just threw me off the team,” he said.

Kenney has coached the Stanford men’s swimming team since 1979, a run that has included seven NCAA titles as well as the conference-record 26 Pac-10 championships. He coached the United States men’s Olympic swimming team at the 1996 Atlanta games, in which American male swimmers won 15 gold medals.

Also in 1996, Kenney was named in a sexual harassment suit by a former temporary employee of the University. The lawsuit, in which the plantiff asked for damages of more than $25,000, was settled out of court.

The coach’s aggressive style, inherited from his time as a sniper for the U.S. Marine Corps in the Vietnam War, is marketed to recruits as a powerful and successful motivational tool. Many swimmers on the team revere Kenney, who has recently received positive press from The San Francisco Chronicle and the Stanford Magazine.

Saying that his current and former swimmers would “lie down in traffic for him,” Adam Messner ‘01 told the Stanford Magazine for its January/February issue that “no one can read his athletes like Skip can.”

But the same style comes across as abrasive to some of his swimmers.

“You either loved Skip or you hated Skip; there was really no middle ground,” Plummer said. “He’s a real polarizing force.”

Kenney was also known to hold a grudge, and the swimmers whose names were removed said in interviews that they were not surprised to find their names scratched from the record books.

“This was obviously vindictive,” said one former swimmer, who asked to remain anonymous because he still has ties to the University.

McLean, now an investment banker based in San Francisco, said he found the omission “disappointing.”

“The records are something you assume only change when they get broken,” McLean said. “Stanford’s all about tradition, building off of the past.”

In his interview yesterday morning, Kenney appeared to echo McLean’s comments.

“Tradition is extremely important, it’s like a family,” he said. “It’s not about me anyway. It’s about the team. It’s never a personal thing.”

TRUST THE GUIDE

Media guides are more than just the purview of journalists. They are handed out to swimmers’ families, alumni and recruits, according to Gary Migdol, senior assistant athletic director for media relations. This year, however, sources close to the swim team said that Kenney wanted to distribute the guides only to current swimmers, media and select alumni.

But the University maintains the guides as the public face of the program and said there is no reason to disseminate incorrect information.

“We’re in the business of providing accurate data on our teams,” Migdol said.

Before leaving Stanford earlier this year to take a similar post at Cal State-Northridge, Bob Vasquez served as media relations director for men’s swimming and diving. In an interview with The Daily last week, Vasquez said changes to the media guide are made solely at the coach’s discretion.

“Those are the times that he [Kenney] wanted in the media guide this year,” Vasquez said. “I’m not one to really ask him why.”

Vasquez said his former department usually approved changes to the guides made by coaches, for financial reasons. The media guides are funded through the budget of each respective sport, not from the sports information office.

“Whatever they want in the media guide we sort of approve,” Vasquez said. “We offer our feedback, but the bottom line is that the buck stops with the coach.”

While Vasquez initially said he did not remember changing specific times, Bowlsby was quick to condemn his former employee for perpetuating the “intentional omissions” at Kenney’s direction.

“Both are equally responsible for a tremendous mistake in judgment,” Bowlsby said in his statement.

FOR THE RECORD

According to Bowlsby, the University’s media relations office will complete a thorough review of swimming records and past media guides. The missing times, he said, will return to their rightful places.

The corrective and punitive steps made against the coach, he added, would likely be kept confidential.

A few of the swimmers expressed happiness upon hearing that their records would return to the books, but they worried that nothing will change.

Plummer, for his part, took the high road.

“The guy’s never liked me,” he said. “That’s fine. I hold no grudge.”