The U.S. Center for SafeSport just banned another athlete — and once again, the quasi-governmental body is keeping the public in the dark about it. Former U.S. national youth water polo standout Lucca van der Woude received a three-year suspension for sexual misconduct, but you won't find his name in the database SafeSport built specifically to alert families about dangerous individuals in their sports.
An arbitrator this month upheld SafeSport's March 2025 suspension of van der Woude for "sexual misconduct, emotional and physical misconduct; criminal disposition," according to SafeSport documents reviewed by the Southern California News Group. But because his violations occurred when he was a minor, van der Woude does not appear in SafeSport's centralized disciplinary database — meaning potential teammates, athletes he might coach, and their families have no way to learn he is suspended.
New SafeSport CEO Benita Fitzgerald-Brown has pledged a "renewed commitment to transparency." The van der Woude case shows what that pledge is worth. SafeSport told the Orange County Register it "does not comment on cases to protect the integrity of its investigative process" — the same institutional stonewall Americans get from every bureaucratic body caught between its mission and its failures.
The underlying conduct is serious and documented. Van der Woude admitted in Los Angeles County Juvenile Division Court on Nov. 7, 2024, to sexual penetration with a foreign object against a minor, according to court records and SafeSport documents reviewed by SCNG. Complaints filed more than two years ago alleged he sexually assaulted two Harvard-Westlake School and LA Premier club teammates on multiple occasions over a 16-month period.
John Manly, an Orange County attorney who represented hundreds of Larry Nassar survivors, acknowledged the genuine tension in SafeSport's approach: "While you want to be sensitive to mistakes made by kids, there are some individuals who present a clear and present danger."
The case also exposed that the 3C2A, California's junior college sports governing body, has failed to enact measures preventing SafeSport-banned individuals from participating in junior college athletics.
The Register framed the story around whether SafeSport is doing enough to protect young athletes. The accountability angle — who oversees the overseers — went largely unexplored.
Meanwhile, the broader landscape of sports governance remains chaotic. CBS Sports reported that former Purdue basketball star Trey Kaufman-Renn filed a lawsuit seeking a sixth year of eligibility, navigating a tangle of conflicting court rulings, stays, and NCAA technicalities about what burns a "season." Athletes' futures hang on which courtroom they land in. Whether it's SafeSport hiding names from its own database or the NCAA burning eligibility years through bureaucratic fine print, the pattern holds: quasi-governmental bodies control Americans' athletic careers, answer to no elected official, and explain themselves to no one.
Nobody disputes that dangerous individuals should be kept away from young athletes. The open question is why Americans are expected to trust institutions that won't even maintain the databases they themselves created.
