With Outsider’s Perspective, Kevin M. Ring Aspires to ‘Smart Growth’ for USA Swimming
Kevin M. Ring’s work experience in sports has cut across different dimensions. He’s been in the for-profit sector and on the governing body side. He’s been a part of established brands and relatively young ones. He’s gotten a taste of the Olympic movement.
Straight out of college, he worked as the assistant director of communications for Lake Placid’s Olympic Regional Development Authority, getting a sense of the prestige of the Olympic movement. Later, over a decade as the PGA of America’s Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Revenue Officer, he saw the value of a mission-driven organization with a long history.
Those two resonant threads united with the opportunity to lead USA Swimming: A long-established brand within the Olympic movement with a strong sense of mission. It made the opportunity to become its chief executive officer something that he couldn’t pass up.
Ring was announced Thursday as the new President and CEO of USA Swimming. He fills a seat that has sat empty for a year, and he brings an outsider’s perspective that he hopes will be conducive to learning and innovating.
“One of the parts that I truly love is having a mission-based background,” Ring said in an interview with Swimming World. “With PGA of America, that was all volunteer- and mission-based, it was something where I got to see and learn from coaches, learn from people at the grassroots, those people who are that tangible connection to the sport. And what I realized being in the for-profit world in the last four years is that I truly was driven in that area. The ability to give back, the ability to use my skills for the greater good … it’s a way that I can work with a community that’s passionate about what they do.”
Ring was hired after nearly four years as the president of Legends Global Golf, a company with a global portfolio of golf experiences. His remit centered on marketing, business development and partnership management. He has a long history of managing business partnership, dating back to 12 years as a director, then vice president at IMG, including as the managing director of IMG Golf Consulting Practice.
While much of that experience has been with higher-end products and relationships, his time with the PGA of America instilled an appreciation for the grassroots that seems essential for USA Swimming. His work with the PGA included driving “ongoing change, ongoing innovation, ongoing modernization.” He views his new mandate as that, “Everything you have to do, in my mind, has to be through the lens of not just the high-performance and Olympic level, but has to be through the grassroots.”
“There’s a lot of commercial opportunity to work with the grassroots to find ways of, how do we find a commercial partner that has similar perspective, brand aspirations, similar desires and people that want to be involved in with a group,” he said. “And how can we find that, from a commercial standpoint, that actually can be supportive? And that doesn’t have to be through these big, revenue-driving ideas.”
Ring’s sporting experience is entirely outside of swimming. He played hockey in college, is versed in winter sports and has primarily worked in golf. But that outsider’s perspective means he enters the job with few preconceived notions.
His early tenure upon taking the job officially on Sept. 17 will be spent listening and learning from the subject-matter experts. He’ll aim to inject his experience of what works in non-swimming arenas to augment their expertise – to, in his words, “modernize and innovate” on the foundation that exists.
“There’s a lot of complementary opportunities in that, because there’s so many experts in the swimming community and filling headquarters and people in media and local swim clubs on the board that I’m going to learn from and draw from,” he said. “But I also am bringing that membership-based past and a business and sports executive past and the ability to, I think, combine the expertise that exists in the building and also my expertise that is outside of swimming. And hopefully that blend and that mesh is something that is in the best interest of everybody.”
Ring posits the 2028 Olympics as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity”. While it didn’t necessarily factor into why he reentered the Olympic movement at this juncture, it does inform much of what his attention will point toward.
The next three years are a crucial opportunity to capitalize on in the sport. Ring’s mandate is to bring what he calls “smart growth” of the organization. That extends well beyond what happens in Los Angeles.
“We’ve got to look at opportunities for smart growth with this,” he said. “And when I say smart growth, it’s making sure that we’re putting money, putting investment towards places where we can get more kids in the pool in communities that might be underserved right now, that we’re not putting a lot of time or attention to, to places and pools that don’t have the capacity to grow. Because then that just becomes frustrating for the coaches, the swim clubs and for the people who are trying to get involved in the sport. I think growing that is going to be something that’s going to be important.”
