The last time USRowing needed help building and directing a men's group for a championship, former national team athlete and Olympic team coach Mike Teti was asked to lead the effort.
That happened in 2011, just after the men's team failed to qualify an eight for the London Olympics and Teti was brought in from his job as the men's coach at the University of California.
Now, Teti is back again.
And he is bringing with him a cadre of the top collegiate men's coaches to help and work with current men's coach Bryan Volpenhein in a coordinated effort to select, train, and develop the athlete pool at the USRowing Training Center in Princeton ahead of the World Rowing Championships in Sarasota FL this September.
USRowing is scheduled to make an official announcement today.
"I'm excited to be joining in this collaborative effort, to be able to work with Bryan and my fellow college coaches and help the team," Teti told row2k.com Tuesday. "Look, I coached this team for a long time and I was on the team for a long time, and I want to see them do well."
Teti said that he - in conjunction with Volpenhein - will lead and coordinate the effort while remaining the head coach at Cal.
In an interview with row2k prior to the USRowing announcement, USRowing High Performance Committee Chairman Rob Milam said Teti will serve as the lead coach of the group and work closely with Volpenhein.
"Bryan has done a really great job developing a young group of athletes in Princeton, and they have been getting faster all spring," Milam said.
"Mike is going to be the lead coach, and he has been chosen in part specifically given his desire to lead a collaborative project this summer with Bryan and a consortium of top U.S. collegiate coaches as we prepare for Worlds.
"Bryan is a key part of the continuity of the group throughout the summer and hopefully into the next several years," Milam said. "I know he and Mike look forward to working together."
In the interview with row2k, Teti said he is "not" leaving his job at Cal and that previous speculation that he will completely take over the position of head men's coach and move the men's Princeton training center group to Berkeley CA have not been accurate.
The plan at present is for Teti to coach through the world championships, return to Cal, and subsequently for USRowing to evaluate how the model worked and make a decision on how to proceed for the future.
Teti said that he has kept the Cal athletic administration and its donors informed. "I met with and told everyone at Cal when the rumors started that I wanted them to know that I am one-hundred percent continuing to coach at Cal."
Teti said he will begin his work at the training center as early as Saturday.
He said he was working on the dates and details of a full plan for the summer and would, with the help of the other collegiate coaches, begin the process of identifying U.S. collegiate athletes, steer them to the national team training center, and begin building up a stable of potential Olympians.
"We're going to bring in as many of the top talents that we can," Teti said. "The other coaches will come in and out of the training center and help coach and develop these guys."
Right now, that list includes Yale head coach Steve Gladstone, Washington's Mike Callahan, Harvard's Charlie Butt, Dartmouth's Wyatt Allen, and Princeton's Greg Hughes.
"It will be good to have this group there. I can't be there the entire time and these other coaches will come in to help," Teti said.
"This is a great situation where we can help build the training center group, and Bryan and I can develop these kids. I'm excited. I know we can all learn something by working together. The goal is developing talent and helping the team do well at this world championships."
According to Teti, that process has already begun and that the current Princeton group, which now has about eight athletes, is expected to number at least 20, and that a few of the 2016 Olympians who have been away from the training center since Rio will also be coming back in.
The full 2017 men's training center roster will not be formed until after the Henley Royal Regatta, to allow athletes participating there to finish their responsibilities to their collegiate teams.
Also, Teti told row2k, because the World Championships will not be held until September, much later than the usual late August dates, some athletes will not be able to participate this year.
"It's going to be complicated for the college guys, with Worlds being this late," he said. "Some athletes would have to put off an entire semester or year for one month, and they won't be able to do that," he said.
The plan to find a new head men's coach has been ongoing since the Rio Olympics and the failure of the men's team to medal. The men's eight was the only men's training center crew that reached the final, in which they finished fourth. The U.S. priority crew, the men's four, and the lightweight men's four did not make the final.
The performance instigated the formation of a committee to study what went wrong and what could be made different before the start of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic cycle. The Task Force report was a contentious and difficult process that precipitated a collapse of USRowing's leadership.
In January, four members of the USRowing Board of Directors resigned. Glenn Merry, USRowing Chief Executive Officer, announced he would resign days later. (See the row2k story here.)
As the results of the study Task Force began to be examined and new directions begun, Luke McGee, who shared the role of men's coach with Volpenhein and coached the men's eight during the 2016 Olympic cycle, resigned.
In the wake of the Task Force report, USRowing also reconfigured its High-Performance Committee, and a search for a new men's coach was begun.
According to Milam, once the new committee was formed and the task force report was finished, a list of candidates was created and a set of expectations and criteria was developed to determine which of the potential candidates was best suited for the position.
Milam said that interviews were conducted with current and former athletes and coaches to get as much input as possible from people who understand what the job required and who would be able to help develop, select, and train the training center group, and would be best able to get the desired result.
"The high-performance committee spoke to a ton of both current and former athletes, going back in some cases a long period of time, as well as other major stakeholders," Milam said. "We developed a list of what we thought were the top potential candidates for the job and the task at hand, all the big names in the sport, all the top international coaches and domestic coaches as well as some up and comers."
While all the candidates on the list were highly qualified, "it did not mean they were necessarily the right person for the job," he said.
Milam said that through the interview process, Teti received the overwhelming support of coaches and athletes. "The high-performance committee spoke to a ton of athletes and the vast majority put Mike at or near the top of any list they came up with on their own. Obviously, no candidate will please everyone, but the feedback we've gotten puts a strong consensus in favor of Mike," he said.
"If you think about all the things we were looking for - someone who has a proven track record of success across competitive levels, great experience at the international level, preferably with Olympic experience, someone who has proven to be able to develop talent, and someone that knows the U.S. system and how the U.S. collegiate system works - Mike is the right choice.
"We've had some terrifically talented international coaches in the past, but every country has a different system and it helps to have a coach who knows the U.S. system and the players on day one. We have a unique system here when you think about the collegiate focus on the eight and the open opportunity afforded to athletes to compete for a place on the national team."
Given the amount of change USRowing has seen as an association and the fact that the search for a new CEO continues, careful consideration will be given to how the organization moves forward with future decisions, Milam said.
"There will be a new CEO joining the organization this summer, and as we think about long term planning, we would like to be patient and thoughtful and involve as many of the stakeholders as possible, old and new, including the new CEO.
"As the summer progresses, we can reevaluate exactly what we want to do through the rest of the quadrennial, and how we want to do that based on real time feedback from the athletes, their performance, and the progress we are making.
"This is not just on Mike. We all need to pitch in to support our athletes," Milam said. "We see this as a great opportunity to bring as much talent into the group as possible and set the stage for a longer term build up to Tokyo."