Minutes of PVS Officials Committee Meetings
Minutes of
PVS Officials Committee Meeting
April 20, 2010
Members present: Jack Neill, Boots Hall, Jim Thompson, Jim Garner, Steed Edwards, Mike Rubin, Dave DiNardo Lionel Bejean, Dick Griffith, Tim Husson, Pam Starke-Reed, and Rita Page.
The meeting convened at 7:00pm at Overlee at 6030 Lee Highway, Arlington VA. Thanks go out to Greg York for securing the space.
Minutes: Minutes of the February 17, 2010 meeting were approved.
Kudos: The Committee recognized and thanked Pam and Mike for the great job they did putting the Officials Reception together. Everyone truly enjoyed the evening. Kudos went out to Tim, Jim Thompson and Jack Neill for their hard work at Senior Champs and for working with new meet referee trainees. A very special thanks went out to Tim Husson for taking the Admin Referee position for the Sectional meet. It was a particularly challenging meet but Tim managed to bring everyone through it and trained some new Admin Referees in the process. Total evaluations for the three championship meets was 16 at Junior champs, 6 at Senior Champs and 39 during the sectional meet. The committee was gratified that these high level meets were so well staffed.
Recent News Stories: A discussion was held regarding the recent news stories about USA Swimming.
Clinic Update: Under Tim's guidance, Janice Flamand will be the instructor for the May Hy-Tek clinic. The committee discussed the clinic schedule for next season. The general consensus is that if we post the entire clinic schedule at the beginning of the season there may not be a need for quite as many after January. Steed Edwards agreed to coordinate the Maryland clinics and Mike Rubin and Rita agreed to start inquiries about locations for the Virginia clinics. We will work with the Club officials chairs to get the word out to their officials that need to recertify next season. Tim asked for the summer league clinic schedules to post on the PVS website.
Chief Judge Certification: Beginning with the 2010-11 season PVS will add the position of Chief Judge as a certified official’s position. Jim Thompson distributed a final version of the certification requirements; Steed gave a presentation of the clinic training materials and the evaluation sheet. Boots is tweaking the required test. Since USA Swimming has no online test for Chief Judge, the test will need to be hand scored. Steed Edwards will be the Maryland Testing Officer and Jim Thompson will be the Virginia Testing Officer. Jack Neill will look into putting the test on the PVS website. After studying all the materials for the Chief Judge position all agreed they were ready to go. We will evaluate this position for the first year to determine if it should be part of the requirement for referee certification. A list of evaluators will be created from current referee pool.
Summer Championship Meets: Junior & Senior Champs will be held on July 15 – 18, 2010 at UMD. Jack will apply for OQM status for all positions except for Admin Referee Senior Champs. Jack will be the meet referee for the Senior CHamps, Jim Thompson will be the Administrative Referee. Boots Hall, Denice Wepasnick, Jim Garner and Jack Neill will be the evaluators.
The committee discussed possible Meet Referees for the Junior Champs. Subsequently Scott Witkin agreed to take the position.
Age Group Champs will be July 22 – 25, 2010 at Fairland. Pam Starke-Reed will act as the meet Referee with Jack’s help. NO Administrative Referee has been assigned to date.
The Zone meet will be held August 11 – 14, 2010 at 2 locations: Montgomery Aquatic Center and Rockville.
Funds Request: Boots asked for $2,500 to defray travel expenses for out-of-towm evaluators for Officials Qualifying Meets. Dave DiNardo will put in a proposal to the PVS Board for the additional funds. Currently we have too many OQMs back to back and it is getting difficult to staff them properly.
Committee Structure: Dick Griffith gave a report on the findings of the subcommittee. It was determined that there is a need for a Vice Chair. This position would need to have similar qualifications to the Officials Chair and should be appointed by the Chair. Some qualifications that would be desired are: 1) It would be helpful to have a minimum of an N2 Referee; 2 Understands the operations of local meets and national meets; 3) Skill to handle challenges that may occur on deck; 4) possesses coaching and mentoring abilities; 5) Assist with meet staffing for OQM; 6) should serve the same term as Chair; 7) Serve a maximum of 4 years but is not automatic.
Other positions to consider would be a Club Officials Chair Coordinator to work with clubs to encourage them to appoint an officials chair, assist that chair with retention and recruitment. Training/Clinic Coordinator to work to get clinics scheduled, assign instructors and make certain the venues to hold the clinics have been scheduled. Clinic Coordinator would also review and update clinic materials. Communication Coordinator would make certain website materials are updated and newsletters were done and distributed as well as other materials necessary for officials. Certification Officer to manage official’s certification and assure that qualification standards are met. Awards Coordinator to coordinate efforts to select awards and collect nominations for Officials awards.
Other suggestions made by the subcommittee were 1) AdHoc committees can be established as needed, 2) Person can volunteer for committee of choice, and 3) each member of the Officials Committee should have a job to do. The subcommittee also felt we needed to be more “User Friendly” by responding to questions thoroughly, forwarding questions to the proper person and schedule clinics as far in advance as possible. Dick will send report to members of the officials committee prior to the next meeting.
Equipment: PVS is working on replacing some of our old equipment. Tim has taken charge of the laptops used at PVS meets and has cleaned them up, repaired them and installed any necessary programs and updates. Tim has also purchased new radios and head sets.
Shirts: Should be picked up at Junior or Senior Champ meets. There was discussion about a possible subsidy for the cost of the shirts. Pam and Lionel will help Dick with distribution in Maryland and Virginia.
Other Items: Pam Starke-Reed and Scott Robinson will attend the USA Swimming Officials workshop in May in Minnesota.
House of Delegates meeting will be held May 19, 2010.
The committee reviewed recent incidents involving athlete and timers at meets, and discussed appropriate resolutions for these situations.
Sea Devils Swimming has a new Officials Chair – Nora Burke
Tim pointed out an issue with OTS, where data can be lost. He recommended printing a meet report from OTS after information is entered and to save the hard copy to ensure accuracy in the event that data becomes corrupted and has to be re-entered. Pam subsequently heard from Bob Griffith that USA Swimming is aware of the issue and has made some changes in hopes of corrected the problem.
Tim suggested that the committee identify additional officials to be authorized to perform final Hy-tek evaluations. There is also a need for more Timing Judges. He asked that Hy-tek and ETS operators who are already USA Swimming members be included among officials whose renewal fees are paid by PVS. Committee will discuss criteria for this.
The meeting adjourned at 9:20pm
The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 7:00 pm with the location TBD. The meeting location was subsequently determined at Kings Park Library located at: 9000 Burke Lake Rd, Burke, VA 22015
Respectfully submitted by,
Rita Page
Committee Member