Athletics staff involved in bribery scandal


Men’s and women’s water polo head coach Jovan Vavic was indicted March 12 for his alleged role in the bribery scandal. (Josh Dunst/Daily Trojan)

Following last Tuesday’s exposure of an alleged college admissions bribery scheme in which parents allegedly paid to have their children falsely admitted as student athletes at USC and other universities, the University has terminated senior associate athletic director Donna Heinel and water polo head coach Jovan Vavic. Both Heinel and Vavic worked for USC Athletics for over a decade.

Athletic Director Lynn Swann, who denies having had any knowledge of the alleged illegal activity taking place within the department, has insisted he will not be stepping down from his job. Some have called for Swann’s resignation and firing for allegedly allowing such bribery and high-scale corruption to take place under his watch.

“I think everybody was blindsided by this,” Swann told the Los Angeles Times Friday. “[Heinel and Vavic] are people that have been here a long time, and people who had been here during difficult times and had seen bad things done and knew better.”

Swann said that the alleged illicit behavior in his department went unnoticed due to faults in the system athletics officials used to correspond with the admissions office.

Heinel was the sole person in charge of submitting athletes’ academic records to USC’s Office of Admissions and subsequently returning admission information to coaches. Because her power went unchecked, Heinel could add the names of fake athletes to a list given to her by a particular coach, and remove that name before returning correspondence to the coach after it was sent to admissions the FBI investigation alleged.

“When there’s trust that this one person is doing the right thing, which [Heinel] had been doing for years, there’s not a problem,” Swann told the Times. “We will work with the administration, admissions, sports administrators, recruiters and scouts so there are more eyeballs on this.”

Vavic had worked with the women’s water polo program since it was established in 1995. The men’s and women’s teams won a combined 16 national championships under his leadership.

Along with cooperating with the government’s investigation, the University said it will be implementing new procedures to ensure that such a scam does not occur again. In the athletics department multiple administrators will be in charge of athlete admission information going forward.

Swann declined to comment on the admissions scheme. Interim women’s water polo coach Casey Moon also did not comment on the investigation.