Volunteers
The swim meets take much effort on the part of parent volunteers to make it happen. Every family will need to help during the course of the swim season to make all of our meets (home and away) a success!
For those parents willing to be stroke & turn judges, starters and referees attendance at a clinic is required. If you attended one of the clinics last year, you are only required to come in for a short refresher.
RULES & POOLSIDE CLINICS-2023
Training for Officials in 2023 Season
With most of the swim meets being virtual this season, the needs for officials will be different from normal. This year, the only full scale training will be for new Stroke and Turn officials. Also much of the training is being done through videos and written documents. The primary emphasis in meets this year should be to give our kids full opportunities to swim and assure they do not develop bad habits with regard to strokes and starts. Proper entry procedures and compliance with rules intended to level the playing field are much less important.
Recertification of Returning Officials
A document entitled “Guidance for Officiating Virtual Meets” has been prepared and is available in the Judges Info area of the League website https://mssl.swimtopia.com. All returning officials should read this. You can also print or download the current handbook from that same area. There will not be any requirement to come to an in-person refresher this year.
As always, returning officials are encouraged to do additional refreshing on their own. The sections below show the resources that are available.
Stroke and Turn Officials
Training for new Stroke and Turn officials will have three parts. The first will be video on “Being a Swimming Official” which introduces new candidates to swimming officiating. The video will be accessible through the league website website https://mssl.swimtopia.com. The second part will be a video on “Swimming Stroke Rules” also available through the league website. The final part will be an in-person session at a pool deck to observe actual swimmers demonstrating the strokes. Returning stroke and turn officials are also welcome to attend these sessions.
Referees and Starters
This year, we will not be doing full scale training for new referees. Many of the typical duties of referees will have less emphasis for virtual meets and it is very likely that some meets will not have a fully trained referee available. Also we likely will have shortages of Stroke and Turn officials and returning referees will need to help fill those roles.
One important aspect of virtual meets is to assure the swimmers follow the proper starting procedures. The whistle start procedure the League follows is used in all swimming organizations so the new swimmers should learn it properly from the beginning. Two people are needed to do the procedure properly. Normally that is the Referee and Starter but can be done by other volunteers for the upcoming virtual meets. A training video will be available in the Judges Info area on “Proper Whistle Start Procedures”. If teams do not have enough returning referees and starters, they should have some volunteers watch the video and fill in the roles at your virtual meets. The Judges Info area has a Starter handbook available to print which has the pertinent information from the League handbook condensed into a simple document.
