US Aquatic Sports/USMS Convention Wrap Up

I’m sitting in O’Hare right now waiting for my first flight on my way back to California and I figured right now was as good a time as any to try and recap the blur of the last few days. I’ve basically been constantly engaged since Wednesday afternoon and inside a giant hotel. A tip for any of those that are planning on going to convention, don’t expect to leave… at all. The biggest excursion I made was across the street from the parking lot to sit on a bench and eat some pizza. Otherwise I was in the hotel at a meeting, workshop, the bar or the “auxiliary meeting room.”

The committee meetings were very interesting for me to sit in on. Even though the USMS national office is starting to take over large chunks of the day to day of Masters business, especially in marketing and communications, there is still an epic amount of work done by volunteers to keep this organization moving. I sat in on the Fitness Committee, the Coaches Committee, the Sports Medicine and Science Committee, part of the Championship Committee, and the first session of the Open Water and Long Distance Committee. I also sat in on some good coaches presentation/workshop type events, a LMSC communications workshop, and of course the House of Delegates. You might have noticed that I hit a lot of coach’s events even though I’m not a coach. A big reason for that is even though I don’t coach I have a big interest in the growth of USMS and I think a lot of it starts with the teams and the coaches. I wanted to know what they’re trying to do to grow their programs and support Masters.

Outside of all the official stuff I got to do a lot of great networking with other swimmers from all over the country. I also got to meet a lot of people for the first time in person that I know through the blog, facebook or the USMS forums which was really cool.

I’ll probably keep bringing up convention stuff on the blog for a while, but here are some of the big highlights for our crew from Southern California:

My coach Nancy Kirkpatrick Reno from Conejo Simi Aquatics won the USMS Coach of the Year award!!! I am very excited for Nancy, I’m a big fan :)

Julie Heather from SPMA won the Ransom A. Aurthur award which is the biggest award USMS gives out and it was very well deserved for all the work she does for us.

Michael Heather from SPMA was elected VP of National Operations.

Jeff Moxie from SPMA and a member of my team (Conejo Simi) was elected president of USMS!

The Mission Viejo Nadadores were one of 2 teams presented with the USMS Club of the Year (Go Mark and Ahelee!).

In non-SPMA related news, the 2011 SCY Championships were awarded to Mesa Aquatics in Arizona. The 2011 LCM Championships were awarded to Auburn in Alabama.

There is a lot of work to do in the coming year, but I think we are going to see big things from USMS in 2010!

September 21, 2009 | No Comments »

Suit Debacle – USMS Convention Edition Continued

So here’s a scan of the language for the USMS recommendation

Below are the choices we were given to vote on for implementation for Short Course Yards season. The numbers written on the side are my notes of how many votes each option recieved.


I want to point out that I made a mistake in my original Saturday night post. I meant to write shoulder to knee, not shoulder to ankle. I fixed it in the post but I’m sure somebody saw it. Sorry if I caused any confusion. Hopefully the above straightens things out for everyone!

And just to remind you guys one more time, this isn’t a rule yet. It’s highly dependent on what goes down at the FINA Masters Technical Committee this week.

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Suit Debacle – USMS Convention Edition

**UPDATE: Click here for a scan of some of what was voted on

Ok so I just got out of the final meeting of this year’s house of delegates. The last action item was, dun dun dun…. swimsuits. It finally happened. Up until this point hardly anyone mentioned it, it was like bringing up religion or politics in casual conversation… not a good idea. Once the floor opened up the comments got pretty hot for a little while.

2 major things went down here but I will forewarn you that all this may be completely meaningless depending on how things go down next week with the FINA Masters Technical Committee.

1st off, the USMS rules committee proposed suit restrictions. THIS IS A RECOMMENDATION NOT A RULE!!! The short version is men and women get the same suits, shoulder to knee in textile (the definition of which is tbd). Zippers and drawstrings are allowed. Modesty suits are still ok and taping is only allowed for medical reasons.

2nd we voted on how long to keep suits in regards to short course yards season. In case you forgot we’re the only country that bothers with SCY. The 2 choices that people were voting for were: 1. dropping the tech suits as soon as the FINA Masters swim wear rule is adopted 2. Keep tech suits for SCY until June 1st (when SCY season ends) or later if FINA adopts no standard.

The vote was much closer than I would have expected. 101 to 93 in favor of dropping the suits earlier rather than later. Boo. I still think FINA has plenty of flip flop left in it and this was probably a whole lot of fighting for nothing. We’ll see how it goes down. From what I understand we still get to ride out the rest of SCM season in techsuits.

More info will be coming out on this in the next couple of weeks, but I want to remind you all again that this still doesn’t mean anything per se. There are a lot of variables floating around, but I wanted to share what’s gone down so far.

Argue amongst yourselves, I have a banquet to get to!

September 19, 2009 | 1 Comment »

USAS Convention So Far


I got to Chicago on Wednesday and I haven’t been outside of the hotel since! Also this just in…. I need to start drinking coffee! Apparently sleeping at this convention isn’t worked into the schedule. I started at 7am yesterday, finished my meetings around 9pm and didn’t end up back in my room until 2am, yikes. Beyond that, the convention is going really well. I’ve met a ton of new people and learned more about who is behind some of the decisions USMS makes. I’ve had a lot of good conversations with other people from my region, plenty of folks from the Illinois and Wisconsin delegations (they must be drawn to my slowing reemerging Wisconsin accent :)), random strangers with Masters Convention badges in elevators and hallways and I even got to sit down with Rob Butcher (our executive director) for dinner on Wednesday. Last night I was in our meeting room at like 1 in the morning talking with the current USMS President and the head guy from Masters Diving while I enjoyed a fancy plastic cup of boxed wine, why not right? :)

During the day yesterday I sat in on the Fitness, Coaches, Championship, Sports Medicine, and Open Water/Long Distance Committees. By the way if you were curious…. 2011 SCY Nationals will be in Mesa, AZ and 2011 LCM will be in Auburn, AL.

I’m sure a lot of you are waiting with baited breath to hear what’s up with suits. So far nothing really. The coaches committee voted to recommend going along with whatever FINA says, but that’s just a committee recommendation not a decision from the house of delegates so don’t get all worked up just yet. FINA masters is meeting next week, that has potential to be a big deal for us.

I have to get back to the convention floor but I wanted to shoot a quick update out into the internetz. If you’re out here and you see me say hi!

September 18, 2009 | 4 Comments »

How Can We Make USMS Better?

A big part of why I’m out here in the Midwest this week is that I was lucky enough to get a delegate slot for South Pacific Masters to go to the US Aquatic Sports Convention. The convention is where representatives from different LMSC’s all over the country come together to come up with ideas to improve, promote and govern masters swimming.

So here’s my big question to the internet swimming public at large: How can we make USMS better? I want to know what you guys think. Leave me comments or send me an email at rob@robaquatics.com with your ideas or opinions. The convention doesn’t start until Thursday so you’ve got a little bit of time to think about it. Thanks in advance for your input!

September 13, 2009 | 3 Comments »