Abbreviations of Swim Officials

-

If you have taken the step to become a swim official (refer to my other blog post here), you will most likely start your journey as an Stroke & Turn Apprentice.

You may come across various 2-letter abbreviation of different officials in swim meets & they will also appear in the USA Swimming Officials Tracking System (OTS) after you have officiated.  Refer to the below table.  You will notice that if you are an Apprentice for something, the abbreviation will always start with a "X".

For example, let's say you have worked 2x sessions as an Apprentice Stroke & Turn Official at a recent swim meet.  After the meet, the Meet Referee will update OTS by entering the number of sessions you have worked.  Once that is done, you can log-in to check your OTS and see:
- the name of the meet
- the number of sessions that you worked (in this example, 2)
- which position you have worked (in this example, since you were an Apprentice Stroke & Turn Official, it will appear as "XJ")

Until next time, keep on cheering for your swimmers! 🏊🏊🏊






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swim Meets (2): Fly-over starts? Chase starts?

-
Image
Before a swim meet, I would highly recommend that you read the Meet announcement document in advance so you can understand some of the basic logistics of how it will be run.  It's not a bad idea to go through it with your swimmer as well so they too are aware of it, instead of trying to figure it out on the day of the swim meet.  The coaching staff of your swim club may probably send out a memo with some of the key points to note about the meet, but don't always rely on that to be the case.  Assume you will need to figure it out yourself. The first picture below is the Texas A&M Student Recreation Center set-up as a LCM pool.  The one below that is the same venue, but set-up as 2x SCY pools during Short Course season.  Do you see the white strip of barrier in the middle that is separating the pool into 2 separate SCY pools?  That is called a " bulkhead " or sometimes called the "turn-end" and this enables the conversion of a LCM pool into 2x SCY pools. &
Read more

Swim Clubs in the USA

-
Image
One of the main reasons why I chose our current swim club where both of my sons have been swimming for the past 6 years was for the simple reason that it was only 5 minutes away from our home 😄.  At the time, I did not know that it was one of many swim clubs that belonged to USA Swimming. You can find your local USA Swimming Clubs from here: https://www.usaswimming.org/find-a-team Each USA Swimming Club belongs to what is called a " LSC " ( L ocal S wimming C ommittee) & each LSC has a 2-letter acronym.  For example, my boys' swim club belongs to the LSC "Gulf Swimming" (GU).  Within Gulf Swimming, there are approximately 60 swim clubs. A group of "LSC"s in turn belongs to one of four " Zone "s (Western, Central, Eastern, Southern). Each "Zone" covers multiple States within the vicinity. So my local swim club that is part of the Gulf Swimming LSC is actually one of 15 LSCs that belongs to the "Southern Zone" that cove
Read more

Thinking of swimming in college?

-
Image
As your child continues with their swimming journey into high school, it may become a natural thought process to start exploring the possibility of continuing to swim in college as well.    Some swimmers (and parents) may think of swimming as a platform to get into their dream college and incorrectly assume it can lead to a full-ride athletic scholarship.    So, can swimming really help a student-athlete to be admitted to their dream college?    Possibly, yes – it could indeed be a factor that could help the student’s case for college admission, but it should not be relied upon as the “only” factor.    As for a full-ride athletic scholarship in swimming, I would say the answer would be a “no” in most cases. <Royalty free image from Pexels > Full-ride athletic scholarships are generally offered to what is called a “headcount” sport.  A “headcount” sport generally produces a lot of revenue for the university and examples include sports such as men’s basketball & Division 1 F
Read more