Planning Committee Forum: Discussion of Nationals and how to control numbers of "Relay Only Swimmers".

Age Group Planning Committee: Sat in and watched the presentation of the STARS Database. This database is supposed to eventually be capable of handling all meets and allow for the tracking of swimmers times on National level. It currently has only up to Junior National Level swimming in it.

Steering Committee: Discussion of Body Suits and to determine if there should be any action taken. Sport Sciences talked about Drug Control. The Junior Team is going to travel to Australia to compete instead of Barcelona this January. Australia is limiting the number of staff to go on the trip. Discussion on whether that would impact on how the team would swim there.

Zone Meeting: Reports were given on the Long Course Summer Zones. 2001 Summer Zone Bids were shown and voted upon. Buffalo won again to host the meet. We then broke up into the 2 regions for a sectional meeting.

Championship Evaluation Committee: Sat and watched the committee discuss on how to evaluate meets and to get better returns on the evaluation forms that are made available. There was discussion on possible incentives to get more responses. It was talked that a Symposium at Colorado Springs would be of great use for the Meet Managers for high-level meets to gain insight on how to better plan for National Level meets.

Safety Education Committee: The only thing discussed at any length at this meeting was the mission statements and goals of the committee. Please look at Safety Workshop.

Age Group Planning Workshop: Top 16 was discussed at length. US Swimming is thinking that the standards have a negative impact on swimmers because it allows for comparisons against others and that parents could drive their kids out of the sport because of pushing them too hard. 2 coaches got up and discussed on ways to make practices more interesting and to bring out new ideas. The room divided up into 4 groups and did some brainstorming in a more informal setting for about 15 mins.

Safety Workshop: Wayne Mitchelle of Disney World discussed the policies and safety record of their theme parks. His discussion ranged on how to make people more aware of safety issues to what tests they normally conduct to make sure that water park/pool areas of the park on safe. Mike Espino of the Washington National Chapter of the American Red Cross. Safety Training for Swim Coaches was discussed. ARC is not dropping the program, but has no more Instructors Manuals in print. There are still some Participant Manuals available. There was a good deal of talk on how to better meet the needs of training for swim coaches to maintain adequate competency in safety issues. STFSC may become part of Water Safety Instructor or develop it as a Distance/Online learning. Currently the ARC Baby Sitting class is in a trial of this method. There are other ways to go about and receive the certificate for Safety Training for Swim Coaches.

Coaches Caucus: A question and answer session with Dennis Pursley and five other coaches. They each gave their impressions on how the team did leading up to the Olympics and during the Games.

Zone Meeting: The final zone meeting of the convention. Kerry Ellet was voted as the Eastern Zone Representative. Final discussions about sectionals.

House of Delegates: Voting for committee positions and any legislation that was determined to need action this year. The only real piece of legislation that made it though was a fine for 'relay only swimmers' who take a deck pass, and DO NOT swim in the meet as a relay swimmer. This is put into place in an attempt to control the local teams at Nationals from putting on a large number of people who don't belong there. All votes needed a 90% to pass.

If you have any questions about any of the above meetings that I attended please direct your questions to blaschke@bellatlantic.net.

Thank you,

John Blaschke