Coaches Meeting: Talked about the current personnel changes in Colorado Springs, introduced some of the new people and talked about their responsibilities. Coaches talked about their opinions on the sectional meet and whether the meet should be opened or closed.
Age Group Planning Committee: Sat in on the meeting which introduced us to the new STAR data base used by USA swimming. The goal of this data base is to eventually have every meet and every swim stored in a data base for anyone and everyone to see.
Age Group Time Standards Committee: Sat in on the meeting which reviewed last years time standards and which ones need to be changed. The longer swims for the 11-12's need more swims to help justify whether the time standards are too easy or hard.
Top 16, Age Group Time Standards, Age Group Records: A report of the 1999-2000 Top-16, Age-Group time standards for the next four year cycle and the 1999-2000 Age-Group records that were broken...The Motivational Time Standards are to be based on the old Junior National Time Standards since there was no uniform number to go by for each event.
Zone Meeting: Zone reports were given for the Eastern Zone...bids were taken for the 2000 long course zones (Buffalo, NY and Baltimore, MD were the only two bids) Buffalo, NY won the vote to host the 2000 long course zone meet. We divided into our two sections and finalized our plans for the spring sectional meet.
All Age-Group Committee Reports: Reports by the committee on Age-Group Planning and finding alternative forms of competition for young athletes...Reports on camps being offered....Club development and the first version of the Club Toolbox, which is available to every club in the country...Top-16 short course is posted and long course will be up soon...Motivational times for 2001-2004...and Age-Group records (11 short course and 16 long course).
Club Development Open Forum: Open discussion on coaches leaving clubs to start new clubs and loyalty...each LSC should have a club development liaison person....Sue Anderson is our Eastern Zone contact person for USA swimming and she talked about what she does and can do for any club or LSC.
Age-Group Planning Workshop: Should we get rid of the Top-16 program offered by USA swimming was a topic tossed around quite a bit in this meeting...what different coaches do around the country to meet the needs of age-group athletes...the room was divided up into four groups, each group talked about things they did in practice and then each group presented their discussions.
PVS Review: Everyone met and discussed where they had been and what was happening in their meetings.
Effecting Change in Your Club/LSC: Rose Snyder from USA Swimming gave a great talk on this topic..The top three attributes people look for in leaders...leadership styles...keys to effecting positive change...leadership building cycle...we then had a small group activity broken down by teams in your local LSC and we talked about what we liked and disliked and how we would change the negatives.
Age Group Planning Committee: Another heated discussion on the top-16 program offered by USA swimming and if it should remain a program...the committee feels that the top-16 program should be dropped...they feel in their findings it rewards early developers, they also feel that swimmers drop out of the sport and that fast 10-unders never "make it" the overwhelming majority of the room feels that the program should not be dropped and that it is good for many different reasons.
PVS Review: Another review of the meetings we had attended and what was happening at the convention.
Coaches Caucus: An open forum question / answer session with Dennis Pursley, Richard Quick and four Olympic coaches...A brief story of the Olympic Games by each of them and then questions by the audience.
Zone Meeting: Final meeting of the Eastern Zone at the convention...Kerry Ellett was voted as the Eastern Zone Representative...all other board positions were voted for at this meeting.
House of Delegates: Voting results for swimmer of the year, coach of the year, etc....14 of the 48 Olympic athletes were in attendance and gave a brief story on some of their personal highlights of the Olympic Games.
PVS Review: Discussion by the members on the topics to be voted on and our position on them.
House of Delegates: Some final voting...summary of reports...and the voting on all the topics up for review...This being an election year any topic brought in front of the body needed a 90% to pass...Hot Topics were Sectionals (result : leave as is until after first year) , Top-16 program (result : keep it as a program) , Extra swimmers at Nationals that are relay alternates (result : fine if you do not swim)
See you next year in Dearborn, Michigan for the 2001 convention!
Submitted by
Bob Walker