PVS Officials

Minutes of PVS Officials Committee Meetings

Minutes of
PVS Officials Committee Meeting
November 10, 2009

Members present: Jack Neill, Boots Hall, Donna Considine, Dick Griffith, Jim Thompson, Tim Husson, Lionel Bejean, Jim Garner, Steed Edwards, Dave DiNardo, Mike Rubin, Elizabeth Jester, Denice Wepasnick, Bob Brofft and Rita Page.

The meeting convened at 7:05pm at Rockville Printing and Graphics. Thanks go out to Bob Wepasnick for lending his office space.

Minutes: Minutes of the September 13, 2009 meeting were approved.

Congratulations: to Tim Husson as the November PVS recipient of the Maxwell Award; to Donna Considine and Committee for making the Swimposium such a great success; and to Steed Edwards on receiving his 20 year USA Swimming pin. Tim's Maxwell Award will be presented during the Tom Dolan Meet. A Spring Officials reception will be discussed and a location will be determined at the next Committee meeting.

Clinics and Instructors: As of this meeting PVS held 13 clinics yielding 267 Attendees. Summer clinic sign in sheets indicate 129 new S&T Judges. Apparently recruiting techniques are working.

It was agreed that there should be 2 Instructors assigned to every clinic from this point forward. There is a need to begin training some more instructors particularly in the area of Hy-tek and Colorado. Boots plans to hold a Spring Instructors meeting to discuss clinic material, certification procedures and uniformity in instruction. It was also suggested that we invite coaches to clinics not only so they can see what our jobs is but also to add input from their perspective.

Hy-Tek and Colorado Operators seem more conscientious since the requirements for certification have changed and an evaluation is required for both positions.

Any clinics that are scheduled should be reported to Tim so he can put them on the website ASAP for all to have the opportunity to attend. This includes the special requests from clubs.

Butterfly Interpretation: Jack passed out copies of a letter from Jim Sheehan & Bruce Stratton of USA Swimming which is contradictory to the language we have used in our briefing using “some portion of the arm” as opposed to "the entire arm" must break the surface of the water during the recovery. Jack will update the briefing and send out an email to all referees to change the wording to "if wrists and elbows break the surface" the stroke is legal. The notice to referees will include the parts of the letter from Jim Sheehan.

Officials Qualifying Meets: The Tom Dolan meet has been approved as an Officials Qualifying Meet. There are more evaluators needed to cover N3 final evaluations. Sectionals will be hosted by Potomac Valley Swimming and we are looking for a Meet Referee who is authorized to do N3 evaluations, preferably someone who has not previously evaluated many PVS officials.

New Referee Candidates: 22 starters were invited to become referees. Jack contacted candidates invited by the Committee and most accepted. New candidates are Bentley Anderson, Steve Bajorek, Leigh Broadhurst, Glenn Byrd, Vince Cleary, Ed Dona, Tom Early, Doug Flamand, Mac Frampton, John Fraser, Gerry Fritz, Eric Gentsch, Lynne, Gerlach, Steve Green, Amy Hsu, Morgan Hurley, Kurt Ilgenfritz, Ray Mittan, Mark Owens, Barbara Ship, Dan Young, and Steve Youngblood. The committee felt that a referee should be a timing judge at least once during their training. Since the certification procedures have changed for Hy-tek and Colorado it was decided to extend the period for Referee certification to 24 months.

State of PVS Officiating: Along with larger numbers of officials joining the ranks Jack reported that at all of the November Open venues there were more than adequate numbers of officials at every session. There was a comment from an official from another LSC who was watching the trainees working with the experienced judges and was very impressed with the way they worked together. It was suggested that trainees should be encouraged to raise their hands when working a meet as a trainee to develop the habit. Their calls need to be confirmed by the S&T they are working with before it is written up. It was decided that when there is a Starter and Referee trainee at a meet they should not work together but rather split the meet and have the trainees work with a certified official.

There was a situation at a meet where a false start was handled badly. We need to stress the proper way to address these issues at our clinics.

Timing Judges are still not being assigned at meets and times are being adjusted in database.

Chief Judge Certification: Jim Thompson and his committee worked hard and presented a proposal of requirements for N1 Chief Judge certification. The proposal suggested several career paths to becoming a Chief Judge. A checklist for chief judge evaluation was presented by Steed Edwards that included requirements for N1 and N2 certification. It was suggested by Bob Brofft that the items pertinent to N1 be separated from those for N2. The committee agreed that a officials should be a Starter and Chief Judge certified before becoming a Referee and should be a S&T Judge for 2 years before becoming a Chief Judge. Chief Judge certification would require working 3 sessions as a Chief Judge and being evaluated using the check list that will be revised. Jim and his committee will revise the material to cover the items discussed and we will phase this change into the certification process.

Safety Chair Vacancy: Jack handed out copies of the Safety Chair job description. The Officials Committee has ben asked for recommendations. Committee members agreed to continue to look for someone to recommend for the position since they will work closely with the officials.

False Starts: There was a discussion regarding the practice supported by PVS to “save” a swimmer that may false start. The concern of some members was that starters were standing the field in order to prevent a false start when they felt a swimmer should be charged instead. The committee agreed that by standing the field a starter prevents other swimmers from false starting but that any swimmer that was going to false start will in most cases fall into the water at the time of the stand command. Whether the swimmer was attempting to false start or merely lost their balance on the stand command is something that the starter and referee would have to continue to call using their best judgment.

Miscellaneous: Jack passed out a sheet describing the duties of the 3 different referees (meet referee, deck referee and administrative referee) for review. All agreed it describes the various duties well and should be made available to referees.

There was a discussion of the use of USA Swimming DQ slips versus the PVS slip. While the USA slip is used nationally the blank style PVS slip allows room to write the rule that was violated an elaborate on particular aspects of the violation. Conclusion was to continue to use our current slip.

Jack would like to take a look at restructuring the committee. A Vice-Chair is needed.

The OTS on the USA Swimming website is working. All meets from January 2009 forward have been entered. All other nearby LSC’s are now entering meets in the system as well.

The meeting adjourned at 10:00pm.

The next meeting will be held on January 20, 2010 at a location to be determined.

Respectfully submitted by,
Rita Page
Committee Member