OSI News Archive - February, 2005

The CANBY SWIM CLUB is hosting the 2005 Oregon Masters Swimming Association Short Course Yards Championship Friday April 1 through Sunday April 3rd, 2005. Your help is needed! Certified Starters, Stroke and Turn, and Electronic Timing Officials are needed for each day of the meet.

Friday April 1: Officials Meeting approx. 2:45 PM, starts at 3:30 PM, done by approx 8 PM.

Saturday April 2: Officials Meeting 8 AM, starts at 9 AM, done by approx 4 PM.

Masters Association Banquet 6 PM Saturday night keynoted by Olympian TOM JAGER!

Sunday April 3: Officials Meeting 8 AM, starts at 9 AM, done by approx 4 PM.

Hospitality sponsored by local Canby area restaurants. All Officials working the meet can come hear Tom Jager speak at the banquet for free! (Dinner can be purchased) Officials working Friday night and at least 1 other day will get a free OMS Championship T-Shirt.

Please contact Ken Schuh at kdschuhmeister@aol.com or 503-709-9008 to sign up!

Kevin Nagle will be conducting a Stroke and Turn Clinic at the Mount Hood Community College Aquatic Center on Thursday evening, March 31, from 7:00PM - 9:00PM for all who is interested. If you are interested to attend this clinic contact Meg Weinert at 503-667-1848.

Results for the 11-14 championships are being posted on the Corvallis Aquatic Team website at http://www.corvallisaquaticteam.org/.

Congratulations to Tori Simenec for Bearcat Swim Club and Prudence Rooker of Forest Grove Swim Club. Both girls set new OSI records. Tori lowered the 11-12 Girls 400 IM record with a time of 4:41.06. The time bettered Jordan Kings 2003 record of 4:41.98.

Prudence lowered the 8&Under girls 100 yard backstroke record with a time of 1:21.84, bettering Kelli Childs 1986 record of 1:22.88.

A reminder about parking for the 11-14 Championship meet in Corvallis Feb 24-27. On Friday, February 25th please remember that parking for the preliminary session will be very limited at the pool as the Middle School next door will be open. Please do not park in the spaces reserved for school staff. We have permission for overflow parking down the street at the Rite-Aid on Circle Blvd. Please park in spaces away from the building to allow room for customers. Also a reminder that RV's are not allowed in the parking lots adjacent to the pool. Day parking is allowed on the west and east side Garfield Park located to the southwest of the pool. No overnight RV parking is allowed. For additional information on seating and other information about the meet, please see the following pdf's.

Seating Information
Welcome Letter

Chehalem Swim Team is in need of officials to work at the March 5th and 6th Masters swim meet. The meet starts at 10 and ends at 4. Please contact Dina Aldred if you can help.

River Road has submitted corrected results for the Otter Invitational and they have been posted on the website.

We are need of one coach to fill our zone coaching staff. Due to the abundance of men currently on the staff a female coach is preferred. Interested coaches must be available from August 7th - August 14th. If you are interested please email Jim Bowe at jbowe@egreen.wednet.edu.

One of the objectives at USA Swimming is to promote the sport and raise the level of awareness. The more people learn about our sport, the more inclined they will be to join the ranks of our membership and supporters. As part of this objective, one approach is to position the sport as a youth opportunity targeted to families. This allows us to reach out to a prime age group, elementary school children. During this age, 1st thru 5th graders are starting think about swimming as a sport and joining local swim teams while kindergarteners are enrolling in learn to swim programs.

We have developed a strategy to go into elementary schools to get the attention of children and their parents. The theme will be around water safety. Through this message we are able to partner with schools across the country with an educational approach. We have created a multi-faceted platform that includes publicity, youth awareness, as well as an opportunity for club participation around the country.

USA Swimming will be celebrating water safety with the launch of a national and local campaign around April Pool?s Day. As in previous year?s, local clubs will play a huge role in the success of the local component. At the beginning of March, each club will receive an April Pool?s Day kit filled with items to help promote and grow their local events. The kit will include a campaign poster, flyer template, event ideas, press release, media alert, and more. Clubs that choose to host an April Pool?s Day event during the month of April will also benefit from a national promotion.

This year, to support the April Pool?s Day initiative, USA Swimming has built a national school promotion to generate added interest in the water safety campaign. During the month of April, five thousand (5,000) elementary schools throughout the nation will support the campaign with customized curriculum and water safety bulletin boards. In addition, elementary schools across the country will have the opportunity to enter an online contest and win prizes for their school, culminating in a full scale pool party event for the winning schools. The four (4) winning regional schools will get the Ultimate Pool Party celebration featuring an Olympic Athlete who competed in the 2004 games. At each school the athlete will explain the importance of water safety and touch on his/her experience as a swimmer. The party will conclude with an autograph signing.

This campaign will also be supported by a strong publicity effort. We anticipate media coverage for this campaign with both TV appearances on national morning shows as well as coverage in print media.

Campaign Timeline
February - March: Clubs determine date of April Pool?s Day event and logistics

Week of March 1st: Clubs receive April Pool?s Day kit

March: Clubs begin to secure media for local event

April 1st: April Pools Day Kick-off/National PR

April 1st-30th: School Promotion; Voting; Local club events

May: Grand Prize Event Fulfillment

Click here for a one-sheet outline of the goals and details of April Pool?s Day 2005. If you?d like to participate in this year?s April Pool?s Day campaign, we encourage you to start thinking about your event and the date in April you?d like to host it.

More information will be coming to you in the beginning of March.

Thanks.

Coaches/Club Presidents,
Due to an oversight, the meet information for the 11 - 14 Championships lists warm-ups starting at 5:00 p.m. and competition starting at 6:00 p.m. Based on last year, this means a number of the younger swimmers will not be leaving the venue until well after 9:00 p.m., and then returning early on Friday morning.

To help alleviate this problem, warm-ups have been moved and will now start at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, and competition will start at 5:00 p.m.

Due to the late date of this change, the Corvallis Aquatic staff will still be conducting swimming lessons up until the start of competition and have requested that parents do not enter the pool area until competition is ready to commence at 5:00 p.m. (Athletes and coaches will be permitted to enter for warm-ups).

In order to ensure that all clubs receive this notification for distribution to their parents, coaches and athletes please send me an email letting me know you have received notification of this change, and the name of the club you belong to. Any club which I do not receive at least one reply from by the end of the week, will receive a phone call early next week.

Thanks in advance for your co-operation with this change.

Mark Rieniets
Meet Referee

Bruce Ludwig has drafted a letter for all OSI officials and coaches explaining recent rule changes that will affect upcoming championship meets. Click here to read the letter.

Congratulations to Santo Condorelli who lowered the 9-10 boys 50 yard butterfly record 29.05 at the VSC Super Bowl meet. Santo's time betters the time set of 29.07 set by Lee Leatherman of VSC back in 1992.

The CAT Open results have been reposted and will be included in the times database by Sunday evening.

The OSI office has received several calls from people concerned about the pulled results for the CAT and RRSC meets. Both meets had extensive errors in them and therefore had to be pulled. Both CAT and RRSC are working to correct the errors but have not provided an estimated time of delivery for the corrections.

OSI will get the results up on the website, both in the results section and the times database as soon as they are delivered. However, we cannot guarantee that they will be available prior to the upcoming championship meets. Swimmers will not be denied the opportunity to compete at the championship meets if they qualified at one of these meets. When sending in your team's entries, please make a note of those swimmers affected by the missing results.

The Otter Invitational meet results were recently removed from the website due to errors. If you have downloaded these results, please note that a corrected version will be available soon.