The coaches led soccer teams and sailing teams, guided water polo champions and budding volleyball stars. At least two had won N.C.A.A. championships. A third gave Michelle Obama and her daughters tennis lessons from his post at Georgetown.
The coaches charged Tuesday in a massive federal college admissions fraud scandal were some of the most prominent in their fields. But it was their apparent willingness to exploit their access to the admissions process at several exclusive universities that has them facing federal charges.
Who are they? Several had deep associations with the University of Southern California, where Donna Heinel, a senior athletic department administrator, is accused of playing a central role in the scandal. For nearly a decade, Heinel had overseen the admissions of athletes into U.S.C., working closely with several of the current and former Trojans coaches who have been indicted. She was fired Tuesday.
Here is a brief look at the current and former coaches identified by a federal complaint.
Jovan Vavic
U.S.C. water polo coach
Vavic won 16 national titles at U.S.C., more than any coach in university history (10 in men’s water polo, the most recent coming in December, and six in women’s water polo). He was fired Tuesday after he was arrested in connection with the admissions scheme. He had coached the women’s team, currently ranked No. 1 and the defending national champion, since 1995 and had been the sole head coach of the men’s team since 1999. A 15-time national coach of the year, Vavic was named the Pac-12 Conference’s “coach of the century” for water polo in 2015.
According to the indictment, the co-conspirators in the admissions fraud paid $250,000 to an account that financed the U.S.C. water polo program, and in return Vavic recommended two students as recruits to the water polo team. The ringleader of the scheme, William Singer, known as Rick, is said to have paid the private school tuition for Vavic’s children through one of his company’s charitable accounts “under the guise of a fabricated scholarship.”
Gordon Ernst
Former Georgetown tennis coach
According to the indictment, Ernst, known as Gordie, earned more than $2.7 million between 2012 and 2018 in payments that were falsely labeled “consulting” fees. He “designated at least 12 applicants as recruits” for Georgetown’s tennis teams, court papers said, “including some who did not play competitively.” One such player, listed in the complaint, was encouraged to make playing tennis part of her application essay and claimed to be a top-50-ranking player in the U.S.T.A. for junior girls, which was not true. She was accepted at Georgetown in 2016.
A spokeswoman for Georgetown said Tuesday that the university had fired Ernst in December 2017 after an internal investigation found he had violated university rules concerning admissions. Ernst, a native of Rhode Island who is in the New England Sports Hall of Fame, was named the women’s tennis coach at the University of Rhode Island last August. The university placed him on administrative leave on Tuesday.
William Ferguson
Wake Forest volleyball coach
Ferguson has been the women’s volleyball coach at Wake Forest since 2016. Before that, he coached the men’s team at U.S.C., winning 150 matches and leading the Trojans to three N.C.A.A. Final Fours. He was the American Volleyball Coaches Association coach of the year in 2009 and 2012. His success has not continued at Wake Forest, where he was 22-41 in his first two seasons. After Tuesday’s charges were unsealed, Wake Forest announced that he has been placed on administrative leave. Ferguson is accused of accepting $100,000 from Singer in 2017 to help Singer’s client’s daughter, who had been wait-listed by the school, gain admittance to Wake Forest as a volleyball recruit.
Jorge Salcedo
U.C.L.A. men’s soccer coach
Salcedo has been U.C.L.A.’s men’s soccer coach since 2004. The Bruins are one of the nation’s top programs annually, and Salcedo has produced dozens of players who have gone on to play professional soccer. A former All-American at U.C.L.A. who had a brief career in Major League Soccer and other leagues, he has been a member of the Bruins’ soccer program as either a player, assistant coach or head coach for two decades. He is accused of helping two students gain admission to U.C.L.A. as student-athletes in exchange for $200,000. The Los Angeles Times and others reported that he had been placed on leave Tuesday.
Ali Khosroshahin and Laura Janke
Former U.S.C. women’s soccer coaches
Khosroshahin won a national championship in his first season with the Trojans in 2007, when he was named national coach of the year, but he was fired in 2013 after missing the N.C.A.A. tournament three years in a row. U.S.C. went 8-10-2 in his final season; he was 82-53-15 over all.
Janke joined Khosroshahin’s U.S.C. coaching staff as an assistant after playing for him in his previous job at Cal State-Fullerton. A biography of her at the Geffen Academy, a private school in Los Angeles for students in grades 6 through 12, lists her as the physical education department chair. A previous announcement hailed her hiring as the head of the school’s girls soccer program.
In the indictment, Singer is said to have contributed $350,000 a private soccer club run by Khosroshahin and Janke in exchange for their suggesting four children of Singer’s clients as recruits.
Khosroshahin and Janke were also asked to create misleading recruiting profiles and to serve as references for students who were not competitive soccer players in order to help them gain admission to other colleges.
Rudy Meredith
Former Yale women’s soccer coach
A third cooperating witness in court papers was an unnamed person whose description closely matches Meredith, who served as Yale’s women’s soccer coach from 1995 through late last year. Meredith was also a participant in the scheme, according to court filings. Meredith resigned as Yale’s coach in November after a disappointing season, but also after, the authorities said Tuesday, he had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of payments to facilitate the admission of a non-soccer-playing soccer recruit to Yale. When he stepped down after last season, Meredith told the university that “it is time to explore new possibilities and begin a different chapter in my life.” A month later, he was elected to the Connecticut Soccer Hall of Fame.
John Vandemoer
Stanford sailing coach
Vandemoer is accused of taking financial contributions to his championship-winning sailing program from an intermediary in exchange for agreeing to recommend two prospective students for admission. “Neither student came to Stanford,” Stanford said in a statement Tuesday. “However, the alleged behavior runs completely counter to Stanford’s values.” Stanford said Vandemoer had been fired.
Michael Center
Texas men’s tennis coach
The Longhorns have one of the top programs in the country, having reached the N.C.A.A. tournament every season since Center took over in 2000. He was placed on administrative leave Tuesday after being accused of accepting $100,000 from Singer in 2015 in exchange for recruiting a student who was not a competitive tennis player. According to court papers, the student’s application to Texas said he played one year of tennis as a freshman, but his other activities included being manager of his high school basketball and football teams. The student withdrew from the tennis team shortly after beginning classes at Texas.