Originally published on Mar. 9

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 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.

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.

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.

Kenney was 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."

A few days after Kenney's decision to delete some former swimmers' times from the media guide was revealed by The Daily, Bowlsby announced that the swim coach had been suspended with pay pending an investigation into his actions. On Apr. 20, the athletic director said that Kenney would be suspended for 60 days but would keep his job.