PVS Officials

Minutes of PVS Officials Committee Meetings

Minutes of
PVS Officials Committee Meeting
November 19, 2008

Members present: Jack Neill, Art Davis, Bob Brofft, Jack Schaeffer, Tim Husson, Jim Garner, Boots Hall, Dick Griffith, Karl Hellmann, and Rita Page.

The meeting convened at 7:00 pm at Rita Page's Office in Alexandria, VA.

Dolan Meet: This meet has been sanctioned as a National Championship meet and will be run using radios and Chief Judges. N2 and N3 certification/evaluation will be available at this meet. Boots is arranging for evaluators.

Sectional Meet: The Sectional meet will be held in March and it too will be an N2 and N3 certification meet. RMSC will host this meet and needs a meet referee. Jamie Pfister gave Boots a list of possible South Region meet referees. Boots will arrange for the evaluators for this meet.

Clinics: Starter, Stroke & Turn, Hy-Tek and Colorado clinics have been scheduled at Takoma during the Turkey Claus meet. Donna Considine has requested a clinic at MLK. There is a need for more instructors in Maryland. Steed Edwards instructed a Stroke & Turn clinic and did an excellent job. New instructors to consider are Lionel Bejean and Donna Considine. Boots will try to schedule a S&T clinic in early January at Burke.

New Committee Members: Names of potential new committee members were discussed.

Operations Chair: Karl Hellman addressed the committee regarding the current structure and term of the committee. He will propose a By-Law change to the Board at the December meeting that the Officials Committee Chair should serve a maximum of 2 two-year terms. The Committee chair will assign the members of the committee. The by-Law change will require approval by the House of Delegates.

Starter Briefing: Briefing needs to be updated to include scenarios for dive over starts. Karl will see that more watches are ordered as part of equipment provided at meets by PVS. PVS is no longer sending “meet boxes” with administrative supplies to sites as part of the equipment rental.

Tracking System: There was a discussion of finding the best way for tracking sessions worked by our officials. Currently there are 3 systems in place; The PVS Officials Record (yellow cards) given to officials by the Certification Officer, the database developed by Jim Thompson where the meets officials are entered into the computer at the meet or sent to Jim to enter, and the Online Tracking System (OTS) developed by USA Swimming. It will not track trainees. Jim Van Erden had indicated at the April meeting that he would try to find a way to download the information for Jim Thompson to include in his database. Currently the N2/N3 qualification meets are being put into the OTS by Tim and the meet referees are suppose to enter the officials that worked the sessions. Tim Husson will check out the OTS capability for running reports so that Rita can check meets worked for recertifying officials.

There is a lot of confusion among officials as to what method they should use. They have been told they no longer need to track their sessions because it is being done on the computer either through Jim’s system or the OTS. Since neither system is reporting at 100% the committee decided that for the time being we would ask officials to track their sessions using the PVS Officials Record until we can get one of the other systems in place and with better reporting records and assuring access for either the individual official or the Certification Officer for recertification purposes. Jack Neill will write up something regarding the N2 and N3 process to make it clear and concise.

Official’s Shirts: Dick Griffith reported that the PVS officials shirts are being well received and has included the table officials (Hy-Tek and ETS) operators to the recipient list after they have worked at least a year in that capacity.

Meeting adjourned at 9:00 pm.

Next Meeting: The next 2 meetings were scheduled due to upcoming championship meets.
January 7, 2009 at 7 pm MAC is the suggested meeting place, Jim will check out and get back to us.
February 18, 2009 at 7 pm will try to find location close to the Beltway.

Respectfully submitted,
Rita Page
Committee Member