| On the Same Page The E-Newsletter of the USA Swimming Officials Committee January 2009 |
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Congratulations
Congratulations to Melissa Hellervik-Bing, Clark Hammond and Mark McCaw who represented the USA at the Junior Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Guam held January 8-11, 2009 with the Open Water on January 12.
Congrats to Jim Sheehan and his officiating crew for Short Course Nationals and Jay Thomas and his officiating crew for Short Course Juniors. Click here for complete officials list and pictures.
Thanks and Best Wishes
Thank you to Boots Hall for her service as the Communications Sub-committee team lead on the Officials Committee. Boots has retired from the committee but will still be active in her LSC training and mentoring officials. Thank you Boots!!
Thanks also to our athletes, Amy Ng and Erin Shea for their contributions to the committee.
2009 Applications to Officiate
The applications for the 2009 National meets are now posted online. Also included is an application for the Open Water Nationals in Ft Myers, FL in June. Please be sure to complete your applications early! We need you to make the meets a success for our swimmers! Click here to go to the applications page on the web site.
Updated Breaststroke Interpretation
An updated interpretation was release by Bruce Stratton, Chair of the Rules & Regulations Committee, for the Breaststroke as it relates to what constitutes the initiation of the first arm pull and the allowed single downward butterfly kick at the start and after each turn. Click here.
Assisting a Coach
Effective January 1, 2009, any type of coaching including, but not limited to, swimming and dry land training, must be provided by a registered USA Swimming member Coach. As an official, if you are helping swimmers at a practice with things like practicing starts or reviewing strokes & turns to identify illegal actions, please make sure that a certified coach is directly supervising the session. Click here to see a copy of document that gives a full description of what is and isn’t permitted.
Changes to the Officials Tracking System (OTS)
Several enhancements have been made to the OTS include those listed below. Additional enhancements are in the works including support for LSC certification and being able to print your own national certification card. Look for further updates as the year progresses.
The latest enhancements include:
- Evaluators can print evaluations from a meet with several options: All evaluations – one per page (for handing out) or continuously (for a record of the meet) or each evaluator can print all that they did (one per page or continuously). They can also print them one at a time as before.
- Access to "My History" is now directly from the first page of the OTS.
- The "My History" pages now have a feature that allows “history” to be displayed for a longer period than 66 months (for National Meets) and longer than 27 months (for all other meets and activities). This can be done by overwriting the default numbers and refreshing the pages.
Should you have any comments, questions, or suggestions for either this newsletter or for the officials committee, please contact us. Click here.