The Fight Of Their Lives
For Chicagoland parents of Olympic-sport athletes, emotions run deep in #SaveHawkeyeSports movement
On September 23, the Iowa State Board of Regents held a meeting.
Two hours in, the topic of athletics came up. Specifically, the University of Iowa’s August decision to slash four varsity sports—men’s and women’s swimming, men’s tennis and men’s gymnastics. At the time of the announcement, the university cited several reasons for the cuts, including an anticipated budget shortfall of $60-$75 million resulting from the then-postponement of football due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A 30-second exchange from the meeting between a regent, Iowa President Bruce Herrald and Athletic Director Gary Barta got much play and reaction on social media:
A disinterested viewer might watch the clip and react as they might to any slice of video on Twitter—meh. Where are the dancing cats?
But for hundreds, if not thousands of people connected in some way to the Iowa Swim and Dive program, they saw the video and had a visceral reaction, stoking the conflicting emotions so many are grappling with.
How could a university they love so much reject them so callously?
Mark Kaufman still has the program.
In 1976, a then 12-year-old Kaufman and his parents drove the 38 miles north from his hometown of Olds, Iowa to attend his first Iowa Hawkeye football game, against Ohio State.
Remaining in Olds, with no stop light and one highway that went through town, was not an option for Kaufman. He aspired to leave one day and his first trip to the ‘big city’ shaped his future destination.
“I’m from a town of 200 people and I’ve been an Iowa fan as far back as I can remember,” Kaufman said. “My parents still live in the same house I grew up in.”
Kaufman would eventually leave Olds, attend the University of Iowa, converting his passion for athletics into sports training.
He attended wrestling meets coached by the legendary Dan Gable, assisted athletes on the men’s basketball team, coached by the late great Lute Olsen. Kaufman had a roommate who was a swimmer and began to understand the grueling training regimen of that sport. He was the student trainer for the 1985 Iowa football team that won the Big Ten Conference and played in the Rose Bowl.
“I was a small town athlete who knew he couldn’t play at Iowa so I found athletic training and it kept me connected with sports,” Kaufman said.
(Photo Credit: Iowa Center For Advancement)
In 1991, Kaufman founded Athletico, a sports rehabilitation and physical therapy company. He settled in the Chicago area but remained connected to the University of Iowa. His three daughters, Margaret, Fotini and Christina, all became state-level swimmers at Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, IL.
Fotini chose Northwestern. Margaret decided on Iowa but elected not to swim for the Iowa program. When the youngest, Christina, accepted an offer from Iowa a few years later to swim for the Hawkeyes, Kaufman and his wife, Maryann, knew a large portion of their lives would again center around Iowa City and swimming starting in the fall of 2019.
President and CEO of Athletico, Kaufman is responsible for the performance of the company’s 500 locations and over 4,500 employees. He is also a board member on the Center for Advancement at the University of Iowa, the main fundraising arm for the school. Kaufman can juggle many roles, a requirement for a chief executive and fundraiser.
But there is a new role Kaufman is now forced to accept, one that he attacks with the same vigor and persistence as he does the others, but with an emotional conflict he struggles with daily.
“I now find myself in a combative relationship with the university I grew up loving,” Kaufman said.
The catalyst for this contentious turn is the university’s August decision to make women’s swim and dive part of the four sports it was discontinuing.
Instead of texting other parents ideas for post-meet gathering spots, the group text now takes a tone of confusion and resentment.
“The chain is usually reserved for picking restaurants, going to Giordano’s or Olive Garden,” Kaufman said. “Now it’s a lot of anger, sadness and disappointment.”
But one does not start and operate a successful business by sitting in the dark and wallowing in misery. While the acrimonious feelings are raw, Kaufman is leading a charge towards answers and truth, with the tenacity of a father rescuing his daughter from a life setback, and a jilted alumnus attempting to repair relations with a university he holds so dear.
Pete and Michelle Puccini did as thousands of parents across the country did in the middle of August.
They drove and dropped off a child at college.
In the afternoon on August 18, the Puccini’s daughter, Alexa, moved into her room at Catlett Hall on the University of Iowa’s campus in Iowa City.
“We felt like the toughest part would be the drop off and we got past that,” Pete Puccini said.
A multi-year girls swimming state qualifier at Naperville Central High School in Naperville, IL, Alexa Puccini committed to Iowa her junior year of high school, in 2019. For over a year, she trained and prepared knowing she’d be doing so at one of the Big Ten’s best women’s swimming programs, with a cathedral-like training facility, built in 2010 for a cost of $69 million.
Finally, in August of 2020, Puccini had arrived at her dream school to begin life as a college swimmer and student.
“She fell in love with the culture, fell in love with the facility and the coaches. It was a very easy decision for her (to attend Iowa),” Puccini said, adding Alexa is receiving a partial swimming scholarship from the school.
Three days after being dropped off in Iowa City, Alexa called her parents. What she told them was nothing they expected.
Alexa told her parents the university had called a mandatory meeting for members of the women’s swim and dive program. In the meeting, the Iowa Athletic Director, Gary Barta, told team members they were being cancelled—the program was cutting the sport after the 2020-21 season.
“Every parent has gotten the call from a crying daughter or son. It was a bomb,” Pete Puccini said.
The next day, fed up with the university’s decision, Alexa Puccini’s roommate transferred to Iowa State. She took her futon and refrigerator with her.
“We had to drive (back to Iowa City) and buy (Alexa) that,” Pete Puccini said.
Soon after, the Puccini’s received an email from the university.
They would be billed an additional $2,000 if their daughter maintained a single room.
It wasn’t like Alexa Puccini chose to be roommate-less. And as a college athlete, she is paired with a fellow swimmer. That is intentional in normal circumstances as the synchronized schedules of athletes make for easier co-habitation.
But with colleges navigating through the coronavirus pandemic, it is even more important athletes room with athletes. At Iowa, swimmers are tested once a week for the virus while for regular students, testing is available but voluntary.
“Alexa gets tested every Tuesday,” Pete Puccini said. “We told the university it’s not smart to put her with a roommate who is not a swimmer.”
The roommate situation has yet to be resolved. For now, Puccini lives by herself and takes most of her classes on her laptop (one class on Thursdays is in-person). She is training and eating with her teammates, able to use the shining nanatorium that is still scheduled to host the 2020-21 NCAA Men’s Swimming National Championships.
But all competition is postponed until Jan. 1.
The fall out from the cancellation remans.
Torn between allegiance and preservation, there are Facetime calls from Alexa in an empty dorm room. ‘Should I stay at Iowa or leave?’ she asks her parents. The university said it would honor all scholarships for those those who remain at the school. But Puccini wants to compete and colleges are already recruiting current high school juniors.
“She’s talking to other Division 1 schools but at the end of the day she loves Iowa and wants to stay,” Puccini said. “We’ve had plenty of calls where she’s pretty upset and not knowing what to do.
“As parents, we tell her this is not a decision she has to make right now.”
There is one decision the Puccini’s have made. They are telling everyone they can about the situation, how the university has turned its back on their daughter and family.
“We have friends who are Iowa alums and my wife and I are not bashful about sharing our thoughts on Facebook and Twitter,” Puccini said.
One friend and Iowa alum took a fundraising call.
“She told the person do not come back for a donation until the swim team is reinstated,” Puccini said.
Is that even possible? Could the university change its mind and bring back swimming and the other sports?
That’s the other part of this story, where passion and the protection of one’s kin, collides with purpose.
In Part 2, The Kerr Report looks at the #SaveHawkeyeSports campaign and the role of a former Hawkeye football player in helping to preserve his son’s sport