Potomac Valley Swimming
Board of Director’s Meeting
Conference Call
July 31, 2012
7:00 pm
· Attendance –Voting Member: Riley Eaton, Paris Jacobs, Bill Marlin, Bob Vincent, Manga Dalizu, Jim Thompson, Mike Rubin, Brian Pawlowicz, Miriam Lynch, Emily Menard, Scott Bryant. Non-voting members: John Ertter, Kurt Thiel and Terri Marlin
· Call to order and General Chair Comments – The meeting was called to order at 7:00 pm through conference call by the General Chair, Riley Eaton.
o The next few weeks we have Zone, Sectionals, Jr. Nationals and US Open, that will then be the end of the 2011-2012 competition season.
o As a follow up to the July 25 Washington Post Article, there are still many questions regarding the future of CUBU. Tom Ugast (Managing Director) sounds very positive and it doing his best to keep the team together. Art Davis is also working with CUBU by helping them keep their finances together and to help from an organizational standpoint, this new involvement will not keep Art Davis from any of his previous PVS duties. For now it has been determined that the club will be called CUBU until another name can be decided upon. Everyone needs to make an effort for the sake of the club and members to refer to the club as CUBU and not the former name. The organization is trying to distance themselves from the previous name and logo for many reasons as they strive to reorganize.
o All Board members were reminded that if there is anything they hear that needs to be brought to the Board’s attention, please do so and to continue to send questions, comments and concerns directly to Riley Eaton, General Chair.
o A letter was sent out this past week through FLASH mail regarding illegal recruitment. The contents of this letter were not initiated by this particular situation, but rather a different situation that the General Chair was already dealing with. All PVS members were reminded of the ethics policy and that illegal recruiting of any athlete is not acceptable.
· Action Items
o Update on USA Swimming’s current Board of Review item – Riley has been in touch with both USA Swimming and CUBU this past week, and is being kept up to date on any and all developments.
o Official’s Committee proposal – See proposal presented by the Officials Committee regarding potential Policy Changes to be made regarding Meet Management in PVS(the document from Tim will be attached). This proposal was dated July 16. They are asking for Meet Directors to be required to be responsible for maintaining a minimum number of key staffing positions, and for the possibility of penalties where they would be subject to losing the sanction in the following year if all requirements were not met.
§ Will the officials notify the CCM (SR Chair, AG Chair) of the meets where the hosts are not meeting the requirements?
§ There is a need to establish a real dialogue about this with the Meet Director/Meet Management. At the June meeting we discussed the idea of holding a more formal meeting in the future possibly in the September. [Later in the meeting the body was notified that just such a meeting is being planned to take place at the Swimposium in September.]
§ What about publishing an updated Meet Director Handbook? Several members indicated they were interested in helping with this project; Mike Rubin, Manga Dalizu and Brian Pawlowicz.
§ PVS cannot legislate in the P&P the number of people that a host club uses to manage a meet. However we can have guideline as to the overall conduct of the meet and the expectations. Timers are the single biggest problem and most difficult to staff at meets. However the PVS Admin V-C is not sure we are allowed to legislate the number of timers required to volunteer from each team or from the meet host; requiring the number of Marshals is allowed because having enough Marshals is a safety matter.
§ One concern is that PVS is blindly giving sanction to teams over and over; some of whom are consistently under staffed and the burden falls onto the Officials. It is felt there should be conditions of the sanction and that we need to be better about policing our own meets and keeping track of which meets are properly run and which clubs are not properly running meets.
§ The Officials feel that they are out of the loop when it comes to the sanctioning of the meets.
§ It shouldn’t be the Meet Refs responsibility to ensure the number of timers.
§ The General Chair, Riley Eaton, is hesitant to put something in P&P that we cannot truly enforce. Properly staffing a meet with timers is an age old problem. In PVS a culture has developed over time that needs to be changed.
§ One member suggested that participating clubs also need to take responsibility. Where each participating club is responsible for X number of timers, the meet director should post it, send it out, etc. If that club doesn’t have that enough timers on deck then you know which club/site is responsible to provide timers.
§ It was noted that at some of the starter’s training, the starters are told it is their job to recruit the timers. But then the meet host is told it is their responsibility. Meet announcements currently state that 1 timers is required for everyone 25 entries.
§ There are many people that would rather sit back and wait to see if they are needed, instead of signing up in the first place.
§ One the web page can we add something that says that explains that timers are an important part of the meet? Yes, this can be done.
§ The Officials Representative would like to withdraw the proposals and suggest a working group be set up and discuss this further. Additionally have information available at Swimposium in September for the parents in attendance. The Official’s Committee was also asked to make recommendation on specific fines/penalties that can be assessed. They will also recommend what the real needs are for meets, and try to include incentives.
· The other members of the Board want it to be stressed to the Official’s Committee that we all want this to work. It is acknowledged that this is a real problem that we need to find a solution for, but we want to actually fix it and not just provide a band aid.
o Aquatics Sports Convention Planning – Riley has sent the Executive Director, John Ertter a list of who is invited to attend the 2012 Aquatics Sports Convention in September. John Ertter indicated that he heard from all but three people. On the call, Scott Bryant indicated that he will not be able to attend; Miriam Lynch indicated that she would be attending. Then we discussed which athlete representative might be available to go. Paris Jacobs will follow up with the several of the athlete reps.
o Update on 2012 Swimposium – Terri Marlin has been working on the Swimposium schedule for Sunday September 30, 2012 at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, VA. She provided the board with an update of the planning.
§ Met with Washington-Lee High School and toured the facility. All classrooms, meeting rooms and the pool are all in the same building. There is ample parking nearby and each classroom/meeting room has projectors, screens and smart boards. There will be an audio-visual tech present to aid if necessary. All speakers are asked to bring their own lap top for presentations. The cost estimate came in quite a bit under the cost of the facility used for the 2009 Swimposium. While it was noted that there could be some changes to the cost depending the exact usage, we should still see a decrease in the total cost of facility rental.
§ Jim Sheehan has agreed to be the presenter for the Official’s Track. Jim is currently in London working the Olympic pool deck, so it will be great to hear what he has to say about the Games. Terri will be meeting with Mike Rubin and Pam Starke-Reed next week to discuss particulars related to the Official’s track
§ Peter Clark will also be coming to give a presentation. Which presentation he will be giving is yet to be determined.
§ We have contracted with Mutual of Omaha BREAKout Swim Clinic to do the track for the athletes. Olympians Ian Crocker and Christine Magnuson will be the presenter for this clinic. We will be limited to 80 athletes mostly due to pool availability.
§ Susan Woessner has been contacted regarding a “Safe Sport” presentation for the Parents, Coaches and Officials. We have requested that a representative from Praesidium be the presenter, but that is yet to be determined.
§ The “Save the Date” post cards have been printed and should be mailed before the end of the week to every family in PVS.
§ The board will continue to receive updates as more information is available. If there are any questions, please contact Terri Marlin.
o Action Item from Safety Chair – See full proposal from Safety Chair. Kurt Thiel brought forth two proposals for the board to consider.
§ Motion #1: That any PVS member speaking or communicating by whatever means, insulting, demeaning, provoking comments about the issue to another athlete or member of a club experiencing a major issue be subject to BOR action and sanction for Unsportsmanlike conduct.
· The PVS Board agrees with this statement and has been in contact with several clubs recently who have recently reported such problems. All clubs involved have been asked to immediately print is off and send any related information to the BoR, so we can immediately act upon it. There is a USA Swimming policy regarding unsportsmanlike conduct and PVS is prepared to act on any instances given the seriousness of this issue.
· The Board asks that all information relayed to the Board is credible and based on firsthand knowledge. The informant must be willing to file a complaint. PVS will not deal with rumors or speculation!
· After given this additional information the Safety Chair ask to withdraw his first motion, as it already covered under the Code of Conduct in USA Swimming.
§ Motion #2 - Institute a ban/moratorium for “poaching” Coaches, Lane/pool time, Event slots, and Members, and other items of worth. The moratorium would be for a period not to exceed six (6) months from the date of petition for relief by a member club or organization to the BOD. This would only be applied in the event that a member club is experiencing management difficulties or other organizational difficulties/issues and is trying to reorganize.
· The Safety Chair was informed by the Administrative Vice-Chair that USA Swimming and PVS have no jurisdiction on the organization or business operations regarding any club. As a former member of USA Swimming Club Development Committee, she indicated that there have been a number of discussions regarding this issue and has been told numerous times that USA-S and any LSC should not be involved in such issues.
· The Safety Chair asked to withdraw this second motion.
· Reports
o Executive Director – See Report Submitted
§ 210 athletes signed up for the Zone trip plus 10 coaches, with the number of athletes, John Ertter feels that the fee of $525 is appropriate and that none of the expenses are out of line. An interesting fact, 181 of the 210 athletes are new to the Zone team and didn’t participate in the Spring Zone meet; therefore 181 new warm ups had to be ordered. This is very unusual
§ Ertter has sent a letter to the Zone Team Coordinator regarding reasonable expense expatiations. Thank you.
o Athlete Representatives – no report submitted
o Administrative – no report submitted
o Inclusion/Diversity – See report submitted. In the report Miriam added the additional information regarding her nomination for a Lifetime Membership to be presented at the USA Swimming Convention.
§ Members felt that while this individual has been significant in the growth of swimming in DC and with outreach, he has not done enough for PVS as an organization. Miriam was looking at it from a Diversity standpoint and how instrumental he has been in getting Diversity/Outreach on the map.
o Webmaster – See report submitted
o Technical Committee – See report submitted
o Finance/Accounting – no report submitted
o Operations – no report submitted
o Senior Swimming – 43 athletes completed in US Olympic Trials. There are 35 application (includes those that came in as appeals), as well as 2 applications for Open water that need to be addressed. The primary group that has not submitted is University of Maryland (6), 1 from TIBU and 1 UNAT are still missing. There are one or two who’s qualifications are questionable. Can we deal with this through an e-vote, once Bill has all information compiled, additionally he can add some notes and then send it out to the board for approval.
o Age Group Swimming – see report submitted
o Coaches Representatives – see report submitted
o Officials – see report submitted
o Strategic Planning – no report submitted
o Safety Committee – A quarterly report was sent from USA Swimming that listed the incidents that were reported. The Administrator has a copy of this report if anyone is interested.
· Round Table Talking Points –
o There was a brief discussion regarding travel reimbursement policy for officials. No action was taken.
o Selection of Accounting Firm to perform the 2011-2012 Audit – The Fiscal Year ends August 31. Sarafino & Rhodes has conducted the PVS Audit for a number of years; this year we will be assigned to a new auditor within the same company. At this time we can remain with Sarafino & Rhodes or find a new company to perform the Audit. John Ertter recommends that we maintain our relationship with Sarafino & Rhodes. The Board agrees but will wait for the final blessing of the Audit Committee.
· Old Business – No old business presented.
· New Business – No new business presented.
· Adjourned at 8:44 pm by Riley Eaton