PVS Officials

Minutes of PVS Officials Committee Meetings

Minutes of
PVS Officials Committee Meeting
June 16, 2009

Members present: Jim Van Erden, Tim Husson, Jim Garner, Steed Edwards, Dick Griffith, Jack Neill, Donna Considine, Elizabeth Jester, Mike Rubin, Denice Wepasnick and Boots Hall.

The meeting convened at 7:00 pm at 736 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD – Rockville Printing & Graphics (Thanks to Bob Wepasnick for hosting us!).

New Members: New committee members, Donna Considine, Steed Edwards, Elizabeth Jester and Mike Rubin were recognized. The other new committee members, Lionel Bejean and Bob Vincent were not able to attend.

Minutes: The most recent version of the minutes from the April 29 meeting posted to the website on June 13 were approved.

LC Senior Champs: The application for an Officials Qualifying Meet (OQM) has been submitted to USA Swimming. Jack agreed to be the Meet Referee. Boots, Denice, and Steed (as needed) will be the Evaluators.

LC 14&U Age Group Champs: Tim has volunteered to be the Meet Referee. He will be assisted by Donna as Asst. Meet Referee. Denice and Pam Starke-Reed will be the Administrative Referees.

Electronic Timing System (ETS) Checkout: Dick presented the latest version of his ETS Evaluation Checklist. It was approved, except for a few minor editing comments. Dick will get the final version to Tim, who will format it in the same manner as all the other evaluation checklists. The question was asked if a final check-out could occur on a Daktronics system. It was agreed to leave it to the discretion of the evaluator, who would verify that the candidate had a least a few session on a Colorado system.

Swim Suit Rules: It was agreed that for now PVS will use the guidance in the memo of 3 June 09 from Jim Sheehan [http://www.pvswim.org/official/rules/JudgingSwimSuitRule_2009-06-03.pdf]. The meet announcement for LC Senior Champs will be amended to point to the rules and guidance provided by USA Swimming [http://www.pvswim.org/0809news/2009SwimSuitRules.html].

Swimposium: The committee discussed a list of possible national officials we could get from USA Swimming to headline the Officials Track of the Swimposium (Oct 3 at Georgetown Prep). The committee came up with four names. Tim will forward the names to Paris Jacobs, the PVS Swimposium Coordinator, for action. A subcommitte consisting of Donna (chair), Tim, Steed, Elizabeth and Denice will do the planning for the Swimposium.

OTS Status: Tim presented the status of entering officials from meets into the OTS. Most of the meets since January 1, 2009 are now in the system. Tim contacted the head coach of the team that was most delinquent in this task and they are in the process of entering their meets.

Using OTS for LSC Certification: Tim presented a brief description of the system and some of its key features. Tim will start making some trials with the system by entering the certification information for the officials committee.

LSC Officials Chairs Meeting: Boots attended the meeting in Minneapolis on May 15-17 as the PVS representative. There was a hands-on session for the officials chairs on the OTS. The swimsuit rules issues were discussed. Boots is working on a test for Chief Judges. If USA Swimming doesn't pick it up, we will use it in PVS. Also mentioned was a good website for training new officials strokeandturn.com. Officials from Virginia Swimming were involved in putting it together.

Website Status: Tim pointed out new or updated items on the PVS Officials website, including the new Certification Page, the Hy-Tek Tips & Tricks Page, and the Swimsuit Rules Page.

Summer League Clinics: The summer league clinics have been well attended. There have been a good number of people signing in for initial or re-certifying USA Swimming Stroke & Turn Judges.

Recertification of Hy-Tek and ETS Operators: Tim asked whether we should implement a recertification process for these two officials positions, now that we have a more rigurous initial certification. The committee agreed on the idea. No details were worked out but it was suggested that the recertification consist of a minimum (TBD) number of sessions worked per year or the passing of another "final checkout" evaluation.

A suggestion was also made that we begin requiring these officials to register for USA Swimming so we can track them in the OTS.

Fall Clinic Schedule: Boots has already arranged for S&T, Starter, Hy-Tek and ETS clinics at the Harvest Moon Meet (Oct 10-11). Denice will try to set up a set of clinics at one of the RMSC sites for the last weeekend in Sept, and at Fairland during the October Open(Oct 16-18). Recertifications for some, or all of the officiating levels will be offered at the Swimposium. The details will be worked out by the Swimposium subcommittee.

It was suggested by Denice that we capture more information in the clinic registration process and pre-fill the clinic sign-in sheet. It will save time at the clinic and cut down on transcription errors. Tim will look at how to implement this.

Protocol Issues: Jack brought up a couple of protocol issues he has encountered at recent LC meets. (1) A number of S&T officials have told him "we don't walk stroke for backstroke in PVS". This is absolutely not true if the meet is using wall-to-wall jurisdiction. The actual answer is that it depends on the instruction from the meet referee.

(2) Jack also relayed a recent encounter between a stroke judge and a coach that escalated to an unsportsmanlike situation. A discussion of how to brief stroke judges to interact with coaches to prevent this situation. It was agreed to have the stroke judge let the referee know if they have a continuing problem with a coach interfering with their job and to let the referee handle it.

Recruting: Jack presented a draft of an officials recruiting brochure he developed. It was well received and agreed that they should be distributed to club officials chairs and available in the stands at meets.

Clinic for Club Officials Chairs: It was agreed that a clinic for club officials chairs needed to be held to instruct them on their jobs of recruiting officials and staffing meets. Since recent attempts to hold such a clinic were unsuccessful, it was agreed that the clubs' head coaches should be given notice of the clinic and asked to emphasize the importance of this meeting to their officials chairs. It was tentatively set for Sunday, September 27, at 5pm pending location of a venue. Jim VE will see if Army/Navy CC is available. A subcommittee consisting of Jim and Jack will plan the clinic.

The meeting adjourned at 9:00 pm.

The Next meeting will be on September 13, 2009 at 2:00 pm at Boot's house.

Respectfully submitted,
Tim Husson
Committee Member