Four USA Badminton board members resigned Tuesday in a surprise move that further exposed the divide within the Anaheim-based national governing body over the leadership of former chief executive Jeff Dyrek and longtime chairman David Simon, and the organization’s response to the threat of decertification by the U.S. Olympic Committee.
The resignations of David Simon, Yucca Rieschel, Ray Ng and Jon Schmieder came four days after Dyrek resigned and board chairman Ben Lee, a 1992 Olympian and former Olympic team coach, accused the USOC of a “cover up” and supporting Dyrek’s refusal to comply with repeated requests to supply the board with financial documents. .
All four resigning board members voted in a private December meeting to give Dyrek a two-year contract extension despite a USOC review that was highly critical of USA Badminton, according to a letter obtained by the Orange County Register.
Lee accepted all four resignations Tuesday afternoon leaving the board with eight members.
“There are two ways of looking at this if you’re the USOC,” Lee said of the resignations. “The USOC could look at the board resignations and (decide USA Badminton) needs a lot of help and maybe decertification is the solution. Or you could look at it as a new beginning.
“This is time for us for rebuilding. I’m still moving forward, trying to do my best to work with the USOC, not against them.”
But all four outgoing board members expressed doubts about the direction of the NGB and cited Lee’s stinging letter to USOC CEO Sarah Hirshland on Friday in submitting their resignations.
Lee said he stood by the letter “110 percent.” Dyrek resigned for personal reasons and the resignation was not related to the financial concerns, Lee said.
The USOC formally notified USA Badminton in an April 15 letter that it would be appropriate to decertify the NGB because of the “severity” of its continued deficiencies regarding athlete safety, financial and accounting practices and governance. The demand letter also calls for a new “independent” board member to be appointed chairman.
USA Badminton has until July 15 to make a series of wide-ranging reforms or the USOC will begin proceedings to strip USA Badminton of its NGB status.
“With the current behavior of the leadership, deeply divided board, and some questionable ethics among the board members,” Rieschel, a board member recommended led by the USOC, wrote in her resignation letter. “I have no confidence that USAB will achieve the reforms that were requested by the USOC in April 15th’s demand letter. Decertification of USA Badminton is the only path I see possible in order to establish a base and reliably support our athletes going forward. After all, that is why we are here.”
Lee, who became board chairman in January, acknowledged he was surprised by the resignations.
“The board has definitely been at odds over some issues,” he said. “But certainly the resignations were not expected.”
The resignations are the latest embarrassment for an organization that has had its dysfunction repeatedly exposed in the past year.
The USOC first raised the possibility of decertification last September following a highly critical review of USA Badminton operations, especially in regards to following SafeSport requirements. The results of the audit were first revealed by the Register in October.
The USOC’s audit division found four areas of “high risk” in USA Badminton’s Athlete Safety program including failing to conduct required criminal background checks on members, not following Safe Sport training requirements, not verifying Safe Sport course completion in a timely manner and not requiring background checks or Safe Sport training for individuals in “frequent contact with athletes” including doctors, trainers, therapists and other medical personnel.
“A sampling of 25 individuals that were required to have criminal background checks were tested as part of the audit,” Wendy Guthrie, USOC vice president for athlete safety, wrote in a Sept. 14 letter to Dyrek. “Badminton’s records indicated that no background check was completed for 12 of these 25 (48 percent) individuals.”
Guthrie also wrote “A sampling of 25 individuals that were required to complete Safe Sport training were tested as part of the audit. Badminton’s records indicated that SafeSport training was not compliant for 14 of these 25 (56 percent) individuals.”
In his letter to Hirshland, Lee wrote “We were failing to protect our athletes and USAB’s lack of compliance with SafeSport is a responsibility of our office staff led by Mr. Dyrek.”
Simon, however, in an email wrote “In my opinion the USOC performance audit, while important, is not intended to be the deciding factor in whether an executive keeps his or her job.”
“It identifies issues that need attention, and it requests specific actions that an NGB needs to take in order to be in compliance with the USOC’s expectations,” Simon said of the audit. “With the exception of one bylaw change, Jeff responded by making, or getting the board to make, all of the audit’s requested changes within 90 days.”
Dyrek was given the contract extension in December after what Simon described as a “thorough airing of views” by the board in a closed-door executive session. Simon said the extension was approved by a “majority of the board.”
The vote to extend Dyrek was 4-3, Simon, Rieschel, Schmieder and Ng voting in favor of Dyrek, while Lee, Rena Wang, and Patty Pflaging, the board’s finance chairman, voted against the deal, with other board members absent, according to a Wang letter to the board.
“Mr. Lee and his supporters vehemently CHALLENGED the structure and renewal terms of Jeff’s contract at that time,” Schmieder said in an email.
Lee declined to comment on the vote, citing confidentiality rules.
“There was no one who advocated terminating Jeff’s contract until after the results of the USOC performance audit came out in October,” Simon said. “…Throughout the process, no one on either side of the issue questioned Jeff’s integrity.”
The USOC audit was a point of emphasis in Lee’s letter to Hirshland in which he called for the resignation of Rick Adams, the USOC’s chief of sport performance and national governing body services, as well as Denise Parker, vice president of NGB services, and C. Onye Ikwuakor, the USOC’s associate general counsel.
“While the USOC demand letter requires that I be replaced as Chair, the letter does not address the fact that the CEO Jeff Dyrek & the former Chair, David Simon, led USAB to an abysmal Audit score,” Lee wrote.
Simon on Tuesday said “I’m proud of Jeff’s legacy (as) CEO – and mine as Chair from 2016-18.”
Dyrek has not responded to requests for comment. The USOC declined to comment Tuesday.
Lee and other board members have expressed concerns about the transparency of the organization’s finances under Dyrek since receiving an invoice on Feb. 22 from the USOC to recoup a $123,821 grant to hire a national team coach in 2018.
“In order to pay this invoice, both the finance committee and I have requested financial information from CEO Dyrek, who has refused to supply the financial information requested to the finance committee,” Lee wrote Hirshland. “This lack of transparency is counter to everything you have publicly stated, and the USOC through Rick Adams appears to support the CEO’s position to refuse financial transparency to me and our finance committee. Jeff Dyrek refuses to turn over credit card statements and check receipts for his spending on behalf of USAB for the period 2017 through 2019.”
“Without question in my mind your demand letter of April 15th, 2019 was a strategic move on the part of the USOC to cover up repeated requests for financial transparency to our CEO Jeff Dyrek,” Lee continued in the letter to Hirshland. “I continue to be dismayed by the USOC’s handling of our matters and their disregard for our sport and our athletes. When I personally requested your help by email on January 28, 2019, regarding malfeasance on our Board and the former Chair David Simon, who was trying to conduct a Board Chair vote before a new Board member was seated, you replied ‘I am not going to intervene in your board meeting,’ but now it appears you feel you have the authority to force USAB to violate both our Bylaws and federal law.”