Long Course Season Begins
There’s a lot to like about long course: No longer do you need to determine “Which end is the girls’ course?” The swimmers have only half as many turns to drench your pants and shoes. And think of the calories you’ll burn while walking the sides! As we reconfigure the pool, there are big doings occurring at this time of the year.

Upcoming Meets

April 2010
Date	Meet	Location	Officials Contact
16-18	March Madness in April	Oak Marr	Jim Thompson
23-25	MACH LC Classic	Takoma	Scott Robinson
25	Munchkin Mania	Fairland	Randy Bowman
30-2	RMSC LC Meet	MAC
May 2010
Date	Meet	Location	Officials Contact
1-2	Early Bird LC Invitational	Fairland
8-9	Snow Spring Classic	Claude Moore	Mike Ryan
8	LC Pentathlon	Freedom Center
8-9	LC Derby Meet	GMU	Al Meilus
29-31	Virginia State LC Championships	Oak Marr	Brian Baker

Online Tests Unavailable
On April 15, the online officials certification tests will be deactivated for the annual revisions to bring the test up to date with the 2010 rulebook. Before April 15 continue to use the 2009 edition of the USA Swimming Rules and Regulations when taking the tests. When the tests are activated on May 1, 2010, you will then use the 2010 copy of the rulebook.

Did You RSVP Yet?
The PVS Officials Social will be on April 18 from 6-8:30 pm at River Falls. If you have not received an Evite, contact the PVS Administrative Assistant. Hope to see you there!

New Officials / Advancing Officials
We’d like to welcome these new officials—and congratulate advancing officials—who have recently completed the requirements for first-time PVS certification in the following positions.

Stroke & Turn Judge:	Referee:
Gwen Caudle	Steve Bajorek
Peggy David
Olivia Devereux	Starter:
Vance Gore	Lynn Oliver
Andrew Lumley
David Schaefer	CTS Operator:
Jane Uhl	Michael Oehler
Mark Uhl
Greg Vistica
Yilong Wang
Dan Weiss
Winslow Woodland
Carla Yegher

You Make the Call
The coach of a hearing impaired swimmer requests that she be seeded in an outside lane near the starter’s strobe light. Should this request be granted?
See the answer at the bottom of this newsletter.

The 15-Meter Rule
We all know that, in the Freestyle, Backstroke, and Butterfly, a swimmer may be submerged at the start and after each turn, provided that the swimmer’s head surfaces by the 15 meter mark. Why was that rule established? It was after the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. David Berkoff, of the U.S. developed a technique in backstroke that enabled him to dolphin-kick underwater on his back until well past the 35-meter mark. He would disappear at the start and reappear a body length ahead of the rivals almost at the end of the first length. He arrived in Seoul as world record holder and favorite for the 100m Backstroke. However, Daichi Suzuki of Japan had been practicing the technique in secret, and beat Berkoff at his own game. Fearing a race in which all eight finalists would spend much of the race out of sight, FINA, the world governing body, adopted the rule to require the swimmer to surface no more than 15 meters from the wall out of starts and turns.

Meet Manager 3
HyTek’s Meet Manager 3.0 is now being used at many meets. This new version includes many new and useful features that can make a HyTek Operator’s life easier. The complete User’s Guide is available on the PVS website. Check it out!

Questions? Suggestions?
Do you have a question about officiating or a tip you’d like to share? Is there a rule that you’d like to have clarified? Do you have a suggestion for a future item in this newsletter? If so, please send your questions/comments to the newsletter editor, Jack Neill.

Finish Sweeps by Morgan Hurley
One of the duties of the starter at national-level and NCAA meets is to record the order of finishes for each heat. Generally, this task would be performed by an off-duty starter so that the on-duty starter can focus attention on the next heat or athletes.

Recording the order of finishes is a good practice at LSC level meets when meet conditions allow. Prior to the start of each session, the starter should confer with the referee about whether finish sweeps will be performed. The determination as to whether or not to record the order of finishes will be based on factors such as how many starters will work the session and whether dive-over starts are used. If only one starter is available and dive-over starts are used, it might not be desirable to record the order of finishes, since the athletes will finish one heat at about the same time that it will be necessary for the starter to announce and focus attention on the next heat.

When finish sweeps are used, the starter should record the order of finishes for each heat on the starter’s program. When there is a change in starters, the outgoing starter should record the order of finishes for the last heat that he or she started so that the incoming starter can focus on the next heat of swimmers.

The order of finishes as observed should be recorded. Only the places about which the starter is certain should be noted.

The record of finish provides another resource for the timing judge in cases where it is not possible to determine an athlete’s finish time from available primary, secondary and tertiary timing data. Examples where this might be necessary include cases where there is only one manual or semi-automatic time, and it differs from the automatic time by more than 0.3 seconds, or when the data from the manual, semi-automatic and automatic timing systems are otherwise inconclusive.

Resolution to ‘You Make the Call’
Yes. Rule 105.3 states: “The Referee may reassign lanes within the swimmer’s heat, i.e., exchanging one lane for another, so that the strobe light or Starter’s arm signal can more readily be seen by the deaf or hard of hearing swimmer.”