Minutes approved at the February BoD meeting
Potomac Valley Swimming
Board of Directors
6030 Lee Highway
Arlington, VA 22205
December 16, 2013
· Attendance – Bill Marlin, Bob Vincent, Brad Bowser, Mike Rubin, Greg York, Jim Garner, Karina Kolb, Merari Cholette, Steve Menard, Tim Husson, Manga Dalizu, Trey McKula, Murphy Freal, Brian Pawlowicz, Tom Ugast, Sumie Emory.
· Call to Order – The meeting was called to order at 7:05 pm by the General Chair, Bill Marlin
· Approval of November Minutes – Motion to approve the Minutes from the November Board Meeting, seconded and approved.
· Proof of quorum – There are 13 board members present.
· Introduction of the new PVS Athlete Reps – Welcome to our three new athlete reps. They were each given an opportunity to introduce themselves.
o Murphy Freal – She swims for MSSC and has been swimming since she was 6 years old. Her favorite event is IM, but she indicated that she is really starting to take an interest in open water swimming and is excited to be on the board and to help promote OW in PVS.
o Karina Kolb – She swims for the Potomac Marlins and is primarily a sprinter.
o Trey McKula – He swims for Sea Devil Swimming and has been primarily a breaststroker most of his career. Tray started swimming when he was 6 years old.
o All Board members welcomed them to the board and are looking forward to hearing more about their thoughts and vision for PVS from an athlete perspective.
· Approval of Chair Reports and monthly financials reports – Motion to approve the BoD reports and Financial Reports for December, seconded and approved. Treasurer Report, Athlete Report
· General Chair comments
o Open Water workshop – PVS to send 1 official – Bill has asked Tim Husson to nominate an Official to attend the USA Swimming Open Water workshop in Clearwater. He will nominate an Official. USA Swimming will then choose who will attend.
o Request for outreach meet event fees – The GC has received a request for meet fees to be subsidized for an outreach athlete. The athlete swam 7 events and was approved.
o Waiver of splash fees for Turkey Claus meet on Sunday afternoon – Machine Aquatics has requested to waive splash fees for the final session of Turkey Claus Meet on December 8, which had to be cancelled due to inclement weather. This request was granted.
o Operations – At the last November Officials committee meeting was held by internet conference, once the technical issues were worked out the meeting went well, and they were able to get all of their usual work. Tim Husson also noted that Live Results were set up for multiple meets this past week and the website saw a high number of hits due to the results being on the site.
o Strategic – nothing to note
o Age Group – Will be asking Strategic, Tim and Jim Thompson to start looking at the numbers for what the numbers are starting to look like for 14 & Under JO’s this spring.
o Safe Sport – We, as PVS, need to come to an agreement on how the Safe Sport rules and policies are going to be enforced. Right now the rules seem to be enforced at some meets, but not at others. At recent meets it was noted that there were numbers timers, officials, marshals, etc. doing the things that they are not supposed to be doing (on phone behind blocks, etc). A handbook is in the process of being developed for Marshals that will help guide the Marshals as to what the guidelines are.
o Coaches Reps – At the two champs meets they attended both went very well. Coaches seemed pleased with the competition.
o Athletes – Trey has interested in Distance clinics, Karina would like to see Olympic Athletes come to PVS to do clinics and motivate the younger kids, Murphy is getting into Open Water and would like to see more information and workshops on Open Water.
§ The athletes were reminded that all board members are at their disposal if they have questions or need more information to feel free to contact any of the board members.
§ What kind of clinics for Distance? Trey said he would like to put more emphasis on distance in general.
§ What athletes? Really any of them, that can help motivate the young swimmers in PVS>
§ What about indoor Open Water Meet held in pools? Murphy was asked if she thought the athletes would be interested in these types of meets. She seemed to think so.
o Officials - The officials were asked if any meets understaffed? All December meets seemed to be staffed well. It was noted that Dolan had a “national deck on Saturday”.
§ While Tim was at Junior Nationals he talked to many other Officials from other LSCs and realizes that here in PVS we actually do a really good job at staffing our meets. While in some cases, the meets weren’t what we would considered “ideal”; however we had enough Officials to cover the meets.
§ Admin Officials – What happens if the meet doesn’t have an Admin Official? If there is not one, what can we do? It is a USA Swimming Rule, therefore all meets are required to have an Admin Official on deck at all sessions. If not then their sanction can be pulled.
o Senior Champs – What is the cap for outside teams for PVS Senior Champs? 15% of the entries are permitted to be from outside teams. Information for travel reimbursement will need to go out soon.
o Diversity – A committee meeting was held by conference call, the goal was to get a diverse group of people to help represent the LSC on the Committee. Greg, Riley and Kurt all participated. Riley has offered to be an advisor to the committee. There was some really good dialogues. There will be an application to help gauge the interest and why someone wants to be on the committee. They will continue to look at the Grant program, and how to make it work for PVS. They will be looking at other LSCs and how they make similar programs work.
o Finance – There was a little situation at Dolan between a coach and Officials, however this type of incident did not involve anyone from PVS. Bob wanted to comment that he appreciates the relationships between the PVS Officials and the PVS Coaches. There are many LSCs, where the Officials and Coaches do not get along well and have trouble working together.
o Update from Registration –
§ Currently we are in the same pattern as in the years past. Currently the Non-athletes are a little low, but this could be because of APT and/or those Officials waiting to be added to the list for free Officials registration.
§ For clubs having a hard time finding the Red Cross classes Greg York indicated that they can contact him for classes and certifications.
§ It was noted that as of December 7, 2013 PEAK has been transferred to Maryland Swimming
· Round Table discussion topics
o December Meet Recaps –
§ Dolan – 6 NAG were set, Swimming World TV was on site with live screening, coaches seemed happy, the Officials were great, Volunteers were good, fairly good about getting timers. UMD worked out well; however the parking situation is changing. The lot that was free until this weekend and it will now be permit only 24/7. Numbers wise 7700 splashes, 1400 athletes. Many commented that they liked the “feel” of the meet better with slightly smaller numbers from previous years.
§ Christmas Champs – For the most part the meet went well. With the Officials, they were reasonably staffed. They had about 4100 splashed, single course for 13 &O and 11-12, but the 9-10 were dual course. The Saturday night session went a little long, which caused some issues with the facilities.
· The finish touch for breaststroke rule – There was a question raised about this rule. The USA Swimming Rules Chair issued an interpretation that if any part of the hands are overlapping then it is a DQ.
§ Winter Classic – everything seemed to go smoothly. The coaches and swimmers liked that warm up started early on Saturday and Sunday. The facility has strict guidelines on the number of swimmers allowed in the warm up/cool down pool and at times there was a line to get in the pool, so the athletes liked the 10 minute breaks built in during prelims. It was noted that there may be some changes to the meet line up for next year to elevate some minor timeline issues.
· Old Business
o LEAP 1 update – All submissions have been done and we are approved by USA Swimming. We will start working on LEAP 2 status.
· New Business
o Sanctioning intra-squad meets – Art Davis has sent out a request for allowing Intra-Squad meets and have them sanctioned so that the times count and can be added to SWIMS. As of USA Swimming rules this is allowed; and PVS used to allow them, but stopped because in the past this rule was abused and teams were using these “inter-squad” meets to get swimmers qualified for National level meets. Now that the qualification process for National meets has changed, this may not be a problem anymore.
o There is an initiative by USA Swimming to increase the number of Dual meets, so that these meets can be short, less than 2 hours, and families are not impacted greatly with the amount of time spent at the pool for competitions.
o These intra-squad meets would have to follow all of the same sanction requirements as all other meets. They would be handled similar to dual and tri meets in PVS.
o For some of the larger teams this is becoming more and more important, as it is harder and harder to fit in the Open meets.
o What do the Officials think? If your club wants to run a meet, you club has to have the Officials, then it should be fine.
o The athletes like the idea.
o Brad and Manga are asked to take this to the CCM in January to see what the option of the coaches are. Then report back to the Board.
· Motion to adjourn, seconded and approved.
· Monday, January 13, 2014