New Mexico Swimming Board of Directors Meeting
April 22, 2006
The meeting was called to order at 8:00 A.M.
ATTENDING: Craig Leasure, Tex Doherty, Rob Jones, Gary Riley, Rusty Bernstein, Janet Lyon-Huffman, Dale Berg, Bob Putman, John Gadbois, Floyd Senoski, Natialie Riley, Debra Khrum, Amanda Huffman, Lou Metzger, Vince Metzger, Douwe Yntema, Linda Gilbert, Beverly Leasure, and Michelle Senoski.
The minutes of October. Linda Gilbert wanted it noted that the minutes did not reflect what she said at the last meeting but it was ok to leave.
GENERAL CHAIRMAN: (Craig): We will need many volunteers for Zones 2007 meet; this includes officials, and computer help. For each session, you need 2 teams of volunteers. Alaska had had bid and won Zones 2006, but had to back out afterward, which caused huge problems. We don’t want that to happen here; get you teams to have plenty of volunteers to help with Zones.
Convention will be the 2nd week of September. All board members need to try and go.
Floyd Senoski mentioned that clubs need to be wary of who they give information to about their swimmers and how much information. He gave an example of what happened in Gallup when teams don’t check. Lou Metzler also told about a strange person hanging around watching kids swim at one of the meets. We need to be watchful and cautious.
ADMINISTRATIVE VICE CHAIRMAN (Tex): Tex has been working with Vince and Jack (Metzger) on the web site. All information needs to go through Tex. He will check with Debbie before going on web site. On the “Schedule” and “Results” pages, coaches need to send this information directly to Vince and Jack. Making changes is taking too long on our old server. Vince and Jack have a preferred server and will be switching our web site over to it.
SENIOR VICE CHAIRMAN (Doug): Doug’s report contains the qualifying times for the Seniors USA Team Trials, the Junior National Championships, and the USA Swimming Calendar of events and meetings.
COACH REPRESENTATIVE (Doug): Crystal Wilson (assistant LCAT coach) will be new team representative. Reminder: At Long Course we will vote for Coach of the Year. Nothing else to report
SECRETARY (Michelle): nothing to report
AGE GROUP VICE-CHAIRMAN (Rusty): We have already picked and posted on our web site the New Mexico All Stars. Those swim kids are allowed to go to zones plus up to 26 kids that do not have qualifying times, may also go. We have 160 swims that are allotted to us at the Zone meet. The Zones meet is in Fresno, California, Aug. 8th to 12th. We already have the hotel booked and depending on the amount of kids that go we have a charter bus. We will depart Sunday, Aug. 6th and may plan a “get-together” swim practice before we leave that day.
I was also looking into having a coach’s clinic after convention in September, with a banquet at night. Craig suggested this could be joined with the Swimposium.
We will look into this later.
FINANCE VICE CHARIMAN (Gary): The athletes are under budget. Everything is good, and no one is over-spending.
TREASURER(Rob Jones): No unusual accounting events that need to be discussed since last year. Douwe Yntema submitted a reimbursement for competing in the Senior Nationals and Rob recommended we reimburse him the full amount of $1208.95.
John recommended that all forms (reimbursements etc.) be on web site and submitted electronically. Rob submitted his treasurer’s report with comparisons from previous year expenses.
TECHNICAL PLANNING (Janet): Janet received a lot a positive feedback on the 50’s at the Short Course State Meet. Note: morning session relays should be seniors first then the 13-14 year olds. She recommends we functionally seed the 400/500 freestyle. DO NOT change current time standards: “A” time for 13-14 yr. olds and “AA” times for seniors on the 50 events. She also recommends that their be a change for the entry limit for 11-12 year olds from 8 events to 6 events, and adding time trials between sessions to the State meet format would give athletes who just barely miss qualifying times another opportunity to qualify.
Motion was made to add time trial to 1 day at the State Meet.
The board recommendation for time trials: that a committee be formed to work out details on what day, who would work (officials) and what time would qualify as “the missed opportunity”.
SENIOR ATHLETE REPRESENTATIVE(Amanda): Douwe and Amanda noticed more participation at the athlete meeting during state. Everyone liked the birthday recognition at State. This State Meet our theme will be “Hook” (Pan or pirates). Our head official will wear a “hook hat” and other officials will be pirates. A new Junior Athlete Rep. will be elected at Long Course State and Douwe will be the Senior Athlete Rep.
We are still interested in putting on an athlete social; possibly in July.
One concern expressed by the athlete reps was that during the State meet an athlete’s coach had put him in too many events. The athlete got to pick the race in which he wanted to drop out of (this was after he had looked at the heat sheet). This is not fair to the other swimmers.
Recommendation from Amanda to board: if you over enter races in a swim meet, then you will drop the last event and have this stated in meet entry information.
Motion was made and accepted: any added events that are added past the amount on the designated for swimming at the meet, the last event will be the one that is dropped.
Motion was made and denied: Allow athletes to deck enter at State.
COMPUTER CHAIRMAN (Dale): Report contained team performance summary for the 2006 NMS Short Course Championships.
Meet information: Needs to be standardized and everyone keep to the same standards, and information on meet info. NM Swimming has both rules and regulations and by-laws. These combined with the USA Swimming Rules and Regulations prescribe how many things in the organization are to be done. There are procedures for changes. Rule changes, changes in the way the championship meets are run and changes to championship qualification times cannot be made at the whim of a meet director or a couple of board members. Changes in the championship QTs must be accepted by the full House of Delegates. A QT cannot just be changed because two board members agree that it is inconsistent with other QTs. Proposed rule changes may be approved by simple majority vote of the House of Delegates at the Spring House meeting if the proposed change is submitted to the Board of Directors at least 30 days prior to the House meeting. The Board must meet to discuss the proposed rule changes and give their recommendations at least 14 days prior to the House meeting. In the absence of this advance notice, any proposed changes to the rules require a 75% majority vote for approval.
A committee (Lou Metzger, Rob Jones, Dale Berg, and Janet Lyon Huffman) appointed by Craig will get standardized template language for meet information. This will be sanctioned and then get it approved by and in the bounds of the House of Delegates.
In addition, according to section 604.8.4 of the NMS By-Laws, the nomination committee, which is to be elected yearly, is to publish the names of nominees at least 20 days prior to the House of Delegates meeting at which elections will be held. Nominations from the floor are not usually known or published in advance of the meeting. Elections that do not follow these procedures could well be overturned, if challenged.
OFFICIAL CHAIRMAN (Lou): The numbers of officials are up. Special thanks to Rob Jones who has trained more new S&T officials in the last year than the rest of the trainers combined. There is a new National Certification process for officials. There are now degrees of National Certification with much stricter requirements than simply applying. Those who are already nationally certified have been grandfathered in as a level N2. I have an updated official’s information list ready to post on the website. Applications for officiating Western Zones in Fresno are available on the web or through me.
RECORDS/ TOP 16 COORDINATOR (John): All records are being updated. If you see anything missing – email John.
REGISTRATION/SANCTIONS CHAIR (Debra): At this time we have 1309 athletes.
We have 2 more clubs working on club status. USA Swimming now has the ability
to report how many seasonal athletes remain on after seasonal swimming. Reminder:
Safety Marshals need to be non-athlete members.
SAFETY/ADAPTIVE COORDINATOR (Bob Putman): 2 incidents happened in the Short Course Season: 1) a swimmer fell off the block, and 2) a fall off the bleachers. Neither caused harm.
HIGH SCHOOL COORDINATOR (Linda) Linda mentioned today’s election is illegal.
There was a High School Meeting last night – She wasn’t invited to it and didn’t attend.
WEBMASTERS (Vince and Jack): We are changing the web server but no one will notice because there will be overlap. PLEASE SUBMIT stuff to VINCE. Updates have been added to the web. Some items are still incomplete. Athletes page is still empty and needs information
OLD BUSINESS: none
NEW BUSINESS:
**Natalie met with city of Farmington officials to get approval to use money as she sees fit without going to the board for everything.
Farmington will host coaches/officials reception Wednesday night.
** Parents are getting out of line at meets. We need to get some “Parent Education” teaching tools before Zones.
** Athlete Rep is needed to sit on Board of Review
** When sending in meet entries, whether you have Hy-tek or not you need to e-mail verifications plus bring in or send in hard copies. Also the “Last Chance” meet is the last meet. Turn in entries Saturday night by 5:00 pm, before the State Meet.
Motion made and passed to change meet information to a single entry deadline by Saturday at midnight the weekend before the State Meet.
** New meet schedule is waiting for the high school interactions.
** Rusty would like us to consider getting relay pads. This would give us an extra device that would help in the possible false start. (early take-off). They are $750.00 a piece for the device plus harness (3 button) could total over $6000. Janet, Jeff and Rusty will look into more information on this device and report back in the Fall.
** Rusty also would like to look into a better way to select All Star Team. He would like to form a committee to make some proposed changes for the fall.
Motion was made and seconded to adjourn the meeting at 10:54.
Respectively submitted,
Michelle Senoski