POTOMAC VALLEY SWIMMING
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING
MEETING NOTES

7:00 PM -- TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2006
River Falls Community Center
River Falls, MD

Attendance: Board Members: Jim Garner, Dan Jacobs, Frani Hess, John Hirschmann, Don Riedlinger, Bill Stephens, Jim Van Erden, Ron Whalen, Greg York; Non-voting Board members: Janet Auger, John Ertter, Boots Hall, Linda Klopfenstein; Incoming Board Members: Art Davis, Mark Faherty; Guests: Paris Jacobs.

Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at approximately 7:00 pm by Jim Garner, General Chair.

Agenda: Jim provided the Board with a proposed Agenda.

Approval of Minutes: A motion was made and seconded to approve the minutes of the June 14, 2006 meeting. The motion passed with one abstention, Don Riedlinger.

General Chairman Items: The General Chair, Jim Garner, informed the Board that two of the three clubs have paid the fines issued for entering athletes into Senior Champs with unprovable times. The third club’s mailing address needs to be confirmed as attempts to reach them have been unsuccessful.

At Garner’s request, Linda provided information on the upcoming 2006 United States Aquatic Convention. She stated that PVS would be sending 15-16 delegates and that both Ward Foley and Arvydas Barzdukas were being treated as part of our delegation. Mark Faherty (as an incoming Board member – Junior Coaches rep) stated that he would be using his continuing education grant to attend. Linda asked the Board’s opinion on revisiting last month’s decision regarding meals expense reimbursement due to the fact that the hotel reservations were on the concierge floor providing for a full breakfast and snacks later in the day. The Board agreed to amend the meals reimbursement to exclude dinner on the days when the PVS and USA-S banquets were held. Additionally, the Board clarified that its reimbursement policy includes the cost of parking at the departing airport and limousine transportation to and from the airport to the hotel.

The Board then turned to the matter of SDS’s appeal to reinstate the sanction of its Spring Sprint Invitational Meet. At Garner’s request, Hirschmann read SDS’s letter of appeal to the Board. The letter containing the appeal was not sent to the Board until July 1 – after the Board had made its initial decision at its June meeting. The letter did not explain why no prior arrangements had been made to have either a certified PVS Referee or Starter present at the meet. After limited discussion, a motion was made, seconded and unanimously approved to not rescind the sanction revocation. Ron Whalen, Operations Chair, wished the minutes to reflect his opposition to allowing sanctions for meets that did not meet the minimum requirement of having two certified officials on deck.

Treasurer’s Report/Finance Division: Financial results for the period ending June 30, 2006, had been provided to the Board prior to the meeting. PVS’s current assets on hand as of June 30, 2006 were $653,142. The Board raised no questions regarding these reports.

Outreach Athlete Membership: Riedlinger circulated the proposed revision to the Outreach Athlete Membership section of Policy and Procedures. No modifications to the draft were offered. The Board approved the revised Outreach Reimbursement template and requested that the “Request for Reimbursement of PVS Meet Entry Fees for Outreach Athletes” form be posted on the website.

Senior Division: Riedlinger reported that he and Bill Marlin had been investigating the potential of bringing back the SC Junior Championship meet. He explained to the Board that he believed that there might have been some significant confusion at last month’s meeting that he wished to clarify. The meet, if resurrected in its prior form from prior SC seasons, would not be similar to that run during long course season —meaning that it would not be held between the preliminary and final sessions of Senior Champs. As a result, another option that is being considered is to schedule the meet later into the season—maybe overlapping it with Zones to provide the athletes a preliminary/final season-ending opportunity. It was noted it would also have implications for club sponsored meets already scheduled during this timeframe.

Reporting on the just concluded PVS LC Senior Championship meet, Riedlinger pointed out the excellent support provided by the University of Maryland Aquatics staff. He went on to explain how he had run times recon of the meet entry files against the SWIMS database. From an initial 122 times discrepancies, the list was culled to only 12. Only one swimmer was eventually withdrawn from the meet. The objective in reviewing entry times for this particular meet was to assure swimmers entered into events were eligible to swim that event either as a prime event or a bonus event—not to assure they entered with their fastest time. In some situations, swimmers needed to adjust or reduce their entries if an entry time was not valid – including which events would be swum as bonus events. In summarizing the success of the meet, Riedlinger informed the Board that it had produced 20 Olympic Trials cuts, 17 additional Nationals cuts, 99 Junior Championship cuts and at least 2 new PVS Open records.

Returning to the topic of times recon, Hirschmann explained that the new capability now being provided by the USA Swimming SWIMS data base had also been used for Junior Champs to verify swimmers’ long course times and to filter out both those swimmers whose times exceeded the no faster than times or did not have a LCM time in the event they entered, which was also a requirement of the meet.. There were also situations discovered where the entry times were blatantly false.

Times recon was also applied to Age Group Champs. Some situations where swimmers did not have the qualifying time were identified and those entries were removed. Other entry times were adjusted so that the swimmer would be seeded with his fastest eligible time.

It was noted that having to contact coaches about entry time discrepancies created an additional burden on the meet manager (or in the case of Senior Champs – the Senior Chair) and that hopefully coaches will police their entries once they realize that the times are being verified.

Concluding discussion of championship meets, Stephens offered to make the first draft of the checklist for managing a meet. This could be both used to communicate to teams PVS’s performance expectations when a club hosts a PVS sponsored meet, as well as providing an objective basis for evaluating a team’s performance including whether they should retain their “right” to retain first preference for hosting the meet in subsequent years. Klopfenstein added that at a minimum the meet manager’s manual should be updated, but, more preferably, a meet manager’s workshop should be reinstated. It was noted this manual and associated training had been maintained through 1999 and then dropped.

Age Group Division: Reporting on the status of the LC Zone Team, Paris stated that registrations had grown from 14 on Friday to 117 by the conclusion of the 14/U Championship Meet. Transportation, room accommodations and meals have been arranged for the team. An email was being sent out to parents notifying them of the availability of limited bus space should they wish to join the athletes. At Aardvark’s request, she rescheduled the mandatory Team Meeting from July 30th to August 6th to allow them extra time to complete the outfitting orders. Noting that she had collected $56,300 in registration fees, Paris provided a very preliminary estimate that the PVS subsidy to the team to be approximately $15,800. She also agreed that no athlete would be allowed on the bus without having made full payment of the registration fee. In concluding her report on the upcoming LC Zone meet, Paris expressed her need for pre-meet assistance for next year’s SC Zone meet. She requested the Board to find someone that she could train, noting that the preliminary planning of booking the hotel and transportation had already been completed. It was noted this would be appropriately a responsibility of the incoming Age Group Chairman.

It was also agreed that since PVS expects to only need seats for about 125 people, while the 3 busses it has now rented seat a total of 157, Paris could make the remaining seats available to parents with first preference being given to parents who are helping out as chaperones. It was agreed a fair charge would be the total bus rental bill divided by the number of seats. This was later calculated to be about $65/seat for a roundtrip.

Mark Faherty, Head LC Zone Coach, reported on the selection process for the LC Assistant Coaches. He explained that John Cyganiewicz and Blair Piddington had both been SC Assistant coaches and had agreed to return for LC. New to the staff this year would be Petra Martin and Yuri Suguiyama. Since PVS had agreed to send 4 assistant coaches, it was determined that no election was needed. All were declared elected. Noting Faherty’s expressed difficulties in finding willing coaches, Riedlinger voiced his concern of the zone coach selection deadline. He suggested that perhaps the deadline should be moved to an earlier date. At the Zone Team Manager’s request, the Board agreed to reimburse Petra Martin’s one-way airfare to Buffalo since her professional schedule precluded her leaving in time to ride the bus to the meet. There is a requirement to have coaches or team managers on the trip of each gender. At the time, it appeared Petra would be the only female available to accompany our swimmers.

The next item discussed was the matter of an unpaid receivable for one SC Zone athlete with Ertter and Paris providing background on their collection attempts. The Board instructed John Ertter, PVS Controller, to send an additional follow-up letter to said athlete’s parents requesting payment (or proof of payment) and informing them that failure to resolve the matter would result in PVS withholding his PVS registration for 2007.

Administrative Division: Stephens informed the Board that DCJets would soon be making a presentation to USA-S and they have indicated they will be opening a training site within PVS territory. Additionally, two YMCA teams had recently expressed interest in joining PVS, but have yet to submit formal applications. Supplemental information was provided on the matter of the University of Maryland name change to Terrapin Aquatic Club and the probable need for both UMD and TAC to exist as separate clubs prospectively.

Coaches’ Representative: Dan Jacobs reported on the recently completed Coaches’ Representative election stating that Mark Faherty had been elected as the Junior Coaches Representative to the PVS Board of Directors for the term of September 1, 2006 to August 31, 2008. After congratulating him and welcoming him, he expressed how he was looking forward to working together with him.

Jacobs informed the Board of two concerns that had been expressed to him by coaches regarding the recent championship meets: (1) the impact of the large number of NOVA swimmers at the Senior Champs meet – including its impact on who made finals and (2) the change during the course of the meet regarding the assignment of warm-up lanes at 14/Under Champs.

Athletes’ Representative: Dan Jacobs reported on the recently completed Athletes’ Representative election stating that Austin Auger had been elected as the Junior Athletes’ Representative to the PVS Board of Directors for the term of September 1, 2006 to August 31, 2008.

Operations Division: The matter of “over the top starts” was deferred pending the Officials’ Committee’s recommendation. (Their meeting scheduled for the prior day had been postponed.) It was also indicated that the Board would want to know the position of the PVS Safety Chairman before taking action on this matter. Hess, as the Athlete Representative, to the Board offered that swimmers had expressed to her their preference for them as it allows more time for swimmers to recover after a race before being asked to leave the pool.

Boots Hall reported that she would be reclaiming the responsibility of arranging the Fall Officials Clinics (concentrating on the Virginia side) with the assistance of Denise Wepasnick handling Maryland clinics. She stated that clinics have already been scheduled at the Harvest Moon Meet (October 7-8) and at Burke Swim Club on October 1st. She explained that, at the recently completed championship meets, she had approached coaches to explain how if they provided the meeting space, she would run a clinic. They were encouraged to post the dates of clinics on the PVS website as soon as they are determined.

She also stated the hope that the Board will enforce its recently approved PVS Officials Requirement when the first assessment is done in May 2007. She also stated her hope that it be expanded in the future to include session participation requirements. It was noted the Board (as it discussed in June) would likely be able to do so once it felt participation could be reliably tracked. Noting that meeting space is not always provided at no cost, the Board granted her request for permission to pay room rental fees, if needed, to hold Officials’ clinics.

The Board next addressed University of Maryland’s request to sanction a quad meet between UMD, CUBU, NBAC and RMSC to be held on October 7, 2006 at the University of Maryland. Hirschmann explained that while he had yet to formally receive the request, he had been in discussion with Dave Durden and that he indicated that each team would be sending approximately 20 athletes. The Board granted approval for the sanction.

Acknowledging that Board approval was not required since it would be a tri-meet on a weekend without PVS sponsored meets, Hirschmann stated that he wished to inform the Board of RMSC’s planned tri-meet (HOYAS, MACH, RMSC) scheduled for October 6-8, 2006. The scheduling of this meet should help make the size of the PVS October Open meets much more manageable. Hirschmann also reminded the Board that one PGS&LC site of the November Open remained unbid. Board input was sought on clubs that might be willing to step forward to host the meet.

In preparation of transitioning the arranging of the rental of pools for PVS sponsored meets to the Administrative Assistant, Hirschmann briefed the Board on the status of PVS’ relationship with the various pools and jurisdictions that control them.

Other Business: Prior to the conclusion of the meeting, Garner requested and was granted permission from the Board to purchase an ad in a MCSL publication. John Ertter then stated that he had two items he wished to bring to the Board’s attention: (1) his request that the Board consider an increase from the current maximum of $125 per session hospitality funding for PVS meets and (2) the matter of the unpaid club registration fees by a club. The club has been invoiced as requested. The Board deferred discussion on the first item until its September meeting.

Next Board Meeting: After discussion, it was agreed that its next Board meeting will be held at McLean Community Center on Wednesday, September 27th at 6:30 PM.  This date will allow the Board to review recommendations from the Competition Committee meeting on September 24th.

Adjournment: The Meeting was adjourned at approximately 9:50 PM.

Respectfully submitted,
Janet Auger
PVS Administrative Assistant