Minutes were approved at the December BOD meeting
Potomac Valley Swimming
Board of Directors
Overlee Community Center
2030 Lee Highway
Arlington, VA
November 16, 2015
· Attendance – Bill Marlin, Tom Ugast, Tim Husson, JD Foster, Mark Faherty, Steve Menard, Greg York, Jim Garner, Heather Purk, Merari Chollette, Kurt Thiel
· Call to Order – The meet was called to order at 7:00 pm by General Chair Bill Marlin
· Proof of Quorum – There are 8 voting Board Members in attendance, enough for a quorum.
· Approval of October meeting minutes – Motion to approve the minutes from the October Board of Directors Meeting, seconded and approved.
· Approval of Chair Reports and October Financials – Motion to accept the Chair reports as submitted and the financial statements as prepared by the controller, seconded and approved.
o Reports to pull – LEAP from the Admin report pulled by the General Chair
· General Chair – no additional comments
· Old Business –
o Sr. Champs/Jr. Champs Qualifying times – Mark will send them out within the week to be posted. Minor changes from last year have been made.
o PVS Athlete of the Year update – Only 7 teams voted, we will send it out one more time on November 17 and will ask for all ballots to be returned by November 25. [The ballots were not sent out as instructed/planned. There has been a request to continue the voting at the January CCM where more teams will be in attendance.]
· New Business –
o Officials Travel – There was one more application that came in from Summer Junior Nationals. The Officials Chair recommends we accept this request. Motion to accept the travel reimbursement for one Official from Summer Junior Nationals, seconded and approved (1 against)
§ It was turned in after the due date, this will be accepted this time, but it was recommended that Officials are required to submit their requests within the same 30 day periods as with the athletes.
o PVS Open Meets – Tim Husson feels we need to uphold our policies that are written in P & P and that recently there are a number of polices we are not following.
§ Cub Run submitted a timeline with intervals of 10 seconds, in a way to come in under 4 hours.
§ Fairland had a timeline for one of their 12 & sessions was 4 hrs. and 20 min. If over 20 min, it needs to go to the Technical Committee.
§ Policy that we do not sanction a dual meet/tri meet the same weekend. OCCS ran a tri meet this same weekend. We need to either follow our policy or remove the policy. If there is a tri/dual meet request, then we need to get approval of the Operations plus Age Group and Senior Chairs.
· In trying to keep within the 4 hour rule it is recommended to split the 12 & Under sessions into 2 sessions in the future. We need to better balance the meets for the swimmers, coaches and officials.
· Ugast recommends that we have our Strategic Planning Chair to look at the data and give us recommendations as to how to split the sessions and split the larger teams.
o Operations – There were a few Operation issues. There is an official’s committee this week and Tim will discuss these issues at the meeting. There currently is not a certification process for Meet Referees. There are teams who are just barely referees to be Meet Referees. Maybe we need some certifications/training for the Meet Referees and Meet Directors.
§ At Fairland we thought we had equipment until Thursday night, at which time we scrambled to get equipment. Thanks Tim for taking care of getting equipment.
§ Tim feels that some of these issues were due to the fact that some of these individuals (meet directors/meet referees) simply didn’t know what to do. He believes that if we had a little more training/education for these positions things would go more smoothly.
§ Issues will be addressed, but we need to know about the issues. Heather has created a survey and we will start getting more feedback from the coaches, officials and families.
o Backstroke flags at Lee District – 13 & Overs were mad, athletes complained. Coaches and Officials were upset about the DQs that were not thrown out after the flags were fixed. It was a hot topic at the October Open.
§ With a 50 meter facility it is difficult to run the flags the length of the pool. There is also discussion on the height of the flags off the water. Not only are they high, but they were not even. They are not really fixed at any one end.
§ This will be address with the facility.
o New Meet Directors Mandatory Training – Bill would like to see there be meet directors training for clubs and clubs to have mandatory training before they run their first meet.
§ Bill and Tim will discuss ways to do this.
o LEAP (update from Tom) – LEAP 2 is now done. Everything has been submitted to USA Swimming. We should have our badge by the end of the month. Tom handed out a list of all LEAP 3 requirements. Many of these things have been done already. Tom and Bob Vincent plan to complete all these requirements by December 31, 2015.
§ Bill will like to do a Strategic Planning sessions with USA Swimming and will plan for someone from USA-S to come out and work with PVS.
o Safe Sport – There was an incident at UMD a couple of weeks ago. There was a coach placing “his” hands on a child. The information was channeled in the proper way, S&T to Meet Referee to Greg to Susan. This was handled well.
· Safe Sport banners have been made and shipped. They can go to our Championship meets and hung up.
§ A coach came forth with a transgender athlete but didn’t know what to do. The recommendation is to give them the option to use the “family changing room”, you simply cannot say “you have to”. But it is up to the facility and how they want to handle it. It also has to do with what they are identified as in SWIMS. At this time we do not have guidelines, and USA Swimming does not have guidelines.
· It is up to the facility as to which “locker room” they are to use.
· They must swim as the gender they are registered as with USA Swimming.
· We should post something on our website stating the guidelines, which should also include to contact Greg with any questions.
· We are unique in that we have three different jurisdictions; DC, MD and VA, so we need to make sure we know the policies for each jurisdictions.
· Round Table Discussions – nothing new
o Heather Purk sent out a coaches newsletter. And encourage yourself and other coaches to take the survey.
· Next meeting – December 14, 2015 (Monday) – video unless we need a face to face.
· Adjourn – Motion to adjourn, seconded and approved.