TIPS FOR NEW SWIM PARENTS

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 Of...

Most swim clubs rely heavily on their parent volunteers to host swim meets & many clubs enforce or mandate that the parents volunteer a set number of hours per year, since without the help of such volunteers, swim clubs will not be able to operate.  Our club would send an email that the sign-up for volunteers will be posted at a certain time – but by the time I clicked on the sign-up link, I would find that most of the volunteer spots have already been signed-up, so I found it somewhat challenging to fulfil my volunteer hours.  Then someone suggested that I should apply to become an official, since officials are always needed in any swim meets and I could also get my required volunteer hours by officiating at swim meets.  Hence, I started my journey as a swim official in parallel to being a swim parent. There are three different types of swim officials: a.       Stroke & Turn (ST or S&T) They are the most common “hands-on-deck”...