Potomac Valley Swimming
Competition Committee Meeting
Overlee
Community Center
September 30, 2017
·
Attendance
– Blair Piddington-PVS, Mark Faherty-PVS,
Tim Husson-PVS, Dave DiNardo-PVS,
Greg York-YORK, Sarah Boyle (athlete)-MACH, Morgan Henderson-Kunz-MACH, Kent
Williams-RMSC, Bob Walker-ASA, Mike Kraeuter-BWST,
Brian Pawlowicz-NCAP, Evan Stiles-AAC, Mark
Eldridge-RMSC, Heather Purk-PVS, Pete Morgan-NCAP,
Mike Clark-CSC, Manga Dalizu-FAST, Erik Collins-SNOW,
Mark Murray-FBST, Callan Heidkamp-FISH, Joe Faherty-JFD, Melanie McKula-SDS
·
Call to
Order – The Meeting was called to order at 11:35, by Age Group Chair, Blair Piddington
·
Approval
of Spring Meeting Minutes – Motion to
approve the Meeting Minutes from the 2017 Spring CCM, seconded and approved.
·
Board
Reports from convention
§ General Chair – No report submitted
§ Admin Chair – Tim Husson
reported that in 2017 we exceeded 12,000 athletes in PVS. This is over a 6%
increase. We contribute this to a post-Olympic year bump, after 3 years of flat.
·
At
convention USA Swimming announced a new Governance structure for the USAS. The
Board will move from an Operational board to a Governance oversite board. All
the operations of USAS will be moved to the staff. Board members will be
elected as At-Large members, and will vote their own chair from those members. The
Zone Directors have been moved from the BOD. The hope in making the board
smaller is that they will be able to get work done more efficiently. As they
proceed, USA S will set up a nominating committee to vet out the nominees.
§ Age Group Chair – Many of the meetings focused
on Governance
·
Tech suits was a
big topic among the Age Group coaches. There was a lot of discussion as to who
would decide who is allowed to wear tech suite; what ages? Which meets? Who
will ultimately decide, Zones? LSCs or individual clubs? It is recommended that
each club should have a policy as to who and when the
tech suits are worn.
§ Senior Chair –
·
Junior
coaches (under 18) – A new rule will allow for 16
& 17 year olds to be coach members. They will have to go through all the
same requirement except for BGS (due to their age). During all practices and
meets the Jr. Coaches are required to be within direct visual contact of
another USA S coach member.
o
Keep in
mind that each state has their own laws regarding
youth employment.
o
They can
be athletes and coach, but not have to be an athlete. If you have a coach who
is also an athlete, they will only have to pay one
membership fee.
·
Flex
Memberships – In an effort to increase the interest in the sport, USA S will
begin to allow athletes to join at a reduced cost. These athletes with a FLEX
Membership will only be allowed to swim in 2 LSC meets a season. If they want
to swim in more they will have to convert to a full membership, only paying the
difference.
o
It will
be up to the LSCs if they want to offer Flex memberships. It will begin Sept 1
2018 for the 18-19 season. The fee is $20; USAS will received $10 and the LSC will receive $10 (currently we get
$28 per athlete with a full membership).
·
Spring
Zones – The Spring Zone meet in 2018 and 2019 the Age Group Zone meet will be a
qualifying meet and up to each individual team whether or not they want to
participate. The QT’s are now posted on the site. The spring 2018 will be in Webster,
NY. They have the room to change to a dual course if needed. They are concerned
it will be poorly subscribed.
o
The meet
directors will send out an interest survey in January to see what clubs and
approximate numbers will be so they can better determine the format.
o
The
summer meet continues to work in the zone, so for now Summer Zones will
continue to run as in the past.
·
EZ
Sectionals – There is no longer a “no earlier” date that the EZ can old
Sectionals.
·
Miriam
Lynch, an NCAP coach and former PVS Diversity Chair was awarded the USA
Swimming Diversity & Inclusion Award at the 2018 USAS Convention.
§ Coaches Reps
·
USAS has
almost finished with swimmer concussion training. They plan to have it on the
USA Swimming soon (no date has been announced yet).
§ Operations Chair – nor report submitted
§ Strategic Planning Chair – LEAP 3 has been
completed and we were recognized a convention. There is a little more paper work to complete.
In December we will hold another planning session with USA Swimming and Jane
Grosser, on December 16. If you are interested in attending, let Dave DiNardo know and he will add you to the invite list.
§ Safe Sport Chair – The Safe Sport office is
open at the USOC. They will handle all sexual misconduct cases. You can send
them to the club/LSC or USAS, but they will be sent to the USOC. USAS will
continue to handle issues such as bullying.
·
Still
looking for a Safe Sport person for each club – let Safe Sport Chair, Merari Chollette know if you are interested.
§ Diversity Chair – No report submitted
§ Officials Rep – No report submitted
§ Athletes Reps – No report submitted.
·
Meet
Schedule for 2018-2019
o
Short
Course and Long Course – Motion to
approve the 1819 PVS meet schedule, seconded and approved as amended.
§ When will NCSA meet be in 2019?
§ What about moving the LC Open meets and
Distance in 2019 one week later each
§ Amend
to move AG/SR 1 to June 16, LC Distance 22-23, AGSR 2 June 30, seconded and
approved.
§ Motion
to move LC Age Group champs to the 18-21, seconded and approved.
§ Motion
to move LS Junior & Senior Champs the weekend prior to AG Champs, July
11-14, seconded and approved.
·
Will
there be enough time to get entries in and changes made with AGSR 2 being held
June 30. Yes.
·
Outstanding
Athlete Award – The main opinion is to make this an award that is in the best
interest of the athletes in PVS. Historically there has
been various issues in getting the nominations, compiling the information,
getting the information out to all the coaches to vote. There is one thought of
using power points, Tim and Kelly R have created a spreadsheet to calculate
power points, with power points if we decide to award the Outstanding Athlete
based upon power points.
o
There was
a lot of discussion as to the best course of action to move forward with the
PVS Outstanding Athlete awards. Some options that were discussed were;
remaining the process the same, with nominations and voting by clubs; using
power points to identify the top 3 athletes in each age group and vote; use
power points to determine the top swimmer/performance for each age group
(multiple swimmers could win any one single age group.
o
At this
time the body feels PVS should continue with the criteria we have previously
set; with nominations and voting. We need to find a way to get the information
out in a timely manner.
·
Athlete
Travel Assistance – Mark Faherty proposed the criteria
for reimbursement for athletes at National and Junior National meets: Athletes
who qualify for reimbursement will receive, $600 for
Winter USA Nationals, Winter Juniors, Summer Nationals and Summer Juniors.
o Motion
to set the criteria for PVS Travel Assistance as; 4 swims in at least one PVS sanctioned
meet from Sept 1 through Aug 31, seconded and approved.
·
Long
Course Championship Meets Recap – Meet Directors from the PVS LC meets were
asked how they felt the meets went.
o LC Age Group Champs (Mark Murray) – the meet
went well. It ran efficiently and the numbers in attendance and on deck all
went well, even with the extreme temperatures. Feels it will be even better in 2018 since we
will be back at UMD.
·
New
Business
o
LC
Qualifying Meets -
§ There was a discussion as to whether or not
PVS is interested in adding another LC meet, either
earlier in the season or a lower level “championship” meet later in July.
·
Facility
availability and club hosts were the two biggest obstacles brought up. The
discussion will continue and be brought back in the Winter.
·
It was
also noted that any once club could host another meet, even if PVS is not
interested.
o
LC
Championship Meet format
§ Mark Faherty
presented a LC Champ meet format change. Looking to get the information out and
start the discussion. He hopes the information presented will get coaches
thinking and the discussion will continue on deck this fall and
§ Motion to remove Junior Champs from Senior champs and create its own meet on a separate date or
to combine with the 13-14 AG Champ swimmers, seconded and defeated.
·
There was
a discussion amongst the coaches in attendance.
·
Tim
commented that from an Official’s perspective the officials will set up and
make this what the body decides will happen
·
What
about added another level (lower) and adding it at the end of July?
·
Motion to table discussion and give clubs the
opportunity to go back to their clubs to discuss, second and approved.
o
Freestyle
Rule Change in the Individual Medleys – USA Swimming sent out the new rule to
all coaches and club. This was brought up as information in case anyone didn’t
see the email.
§ In the IM, freestyle swimmers can push off on
their backs as long as they are on their breast before they initiate the kick
or the pull
o
Scholastic
All Americans – the list came out end of August. PVS has 48 Scholar Athletes this year, which
is the 6th highest in USAS. NCAP had 31 of the athletes which is the
2nd highest team in the country. Next year’s program the
qualifications will stay the same but they will be 9th graders.
o National Age Group Records will begin tracking
Mixed Relays – Over the past 3-4 years since Mixed Relays have become a
legitimate event according to USAS, there has been little interest and little
data. So it was thought that if NAG were now tracked there may be more
teams/clubs/LSCs that will swim Mixed relays. Currently there are only 4 LSC offer them in their Championship meets.
o In
September 2018, they will set the Mixed Relays for records
·
PVS Scholar Athlete application is open until 15
of October.
·
Swimposium – We
will be talking about it at the Board meeting as we are slatted
for funding and to host one in 2018.
·
Old
Business – no old business to report
·
Winter
Meeting Date: Wednesday – January 10 in
Maryland (Rockville)
·
Need a
November Open host
·
Fairland
has new lights
·
Adjourn