American Canoe Association

This organization repeatedly has a history of discrimination against female athletes. The organization does not do a good job of supporting veterans in sport programs. Despite being well funded to to so. There is limited oversight done by leadership into safety of sport program affiliates. The national team is disorganized and limited support exists for women and minorities in the sport. The leadership is non responsive and very disrespectful. The current organization head has no background in the sport at all and has no actual knowledge of the whitewater industry or sport.

Veterans that go to this organization as competitive athletes need to be very wary. This organization gains access to funds to provide programs and opportunities but none really exist for real in elite sport categories.

This organization has a history of deprioritizing women’s sport categories and does not do what is required to actually support athletes period and resources are directed at a few people that always seem to be white male athletes.

There is no true diversity even though the organization states that it desires inclusion.

The instruction department lacks there are few courses actually available to gain recertification for teaching. There are no real established coaching courses for coaching paddle sports.

This organization never seems to place individuals with actual proper training and academic backgrounds in hi performance department supervision roles.

The sport clubs often have poorly trained staff that don’t have any organizational coaching endorsements because there are none. Athletes get injured repeatedly trying to compete internationally with limited proper coaching or organized training plans.

There is such limited supervision of youth at world level events that youth end up in problematic situations.


The adaptive sport programs are not effectively monitored by any authority or agency that monitors the health and well being of disabled athletes. There are no Paralympic classifiers that are on staff. Yet the organization states it has adaptive programs.

There are no PT, OT or any professionals that actually advise these programs.

The organization is pretty much a show that will endorse but not provide the real substance that is required to ensure programs run properly.

There is no oversight from this organization at all for the organizations and instructors they endorse. Many of the ACA endorsed schools are ones that don’t follow the established regulations by the instruction department. Yet the organization does not provide any oversight to make sure that industry standards are kept.

There is no policy on sexual harassment that has been enforced there is no policy on drug use that is enforced and the ACA endorses companies that often have these issues.