As you all know, it has been AMS' practice to issue a new USA Swimming non-athlete Official member card upon successful registration each year. The card showed that you were currently a non-athlete member as well as showing the expiration date of your Background Check and Athlete Protection Training.
As our LSC certification cards, which can be printed from the USA Swimming website, reflect the BC, APT and USA-S registration expiration dates along with the expiration dates for your certified official levels, we will no longer be issuing USA-S registration cards from the AMS Permanent Office. This will save time and money in issuing these unnecessary cards.
Many LSC's across the country have moved in this direction. Our LSC certification cards will provide the same information (and more) and will get you onto any pool deck both regionally and nationally. In addition, Deck Pass provides the USA-S, BC and APT expiration dates and is also a valid form to provide to get you on deck. See below images...
Should you have any questions, please contact Bob Mermelstein at bob.mermelstein@gmail.com.
If you've volunteered to officiate at the MLAC First Splash for either the Sunday AM and/or PM sessions, please note that the meet times have changed due to a late noticed conflict with the school district.
The Sunday AM warm ups begin at 6:30 AM with a 7:35 AM session start time. The meet session should be done no later than 11:00 AM.
The Sunday PM warm ups begin at 5:00 PM with a 6:05 PM session start time. It is expected that the meet session should be done no later than 9:00 PM.
All meets through December 2015 have now been added to our officials website (amswim-officials.org) and Volunteer Spot (http://vols.pt/q28pj3).
Our Officials website lists Officials Contact and email/phone contact information, as well as a link to the specific Volunteer Spot meet and a copy of the Meet Announcement. Or you can go directly to Volunteer Spot per the link above and sign up for as many meets/sessions as you'd like.
The Christmas Meet Invitational sign up is not being done through Volunteer Spot. It will once again be an Officials Qualifying Meet (OQM) where our officials can earn their N2 and/or N3 certifications (a great idea for officials with a year's experience). Their is a link to that google doc for both request for evaluation as well as just signing up to work sessions (even if you're not being evaluated) on our website.
For some unknown reason, Pittsburghers are notorious for signing on for things at the very last minute. While we appreciate all officials volunteering for sessions at any time, it would be nice to get an earlier indication of how well staffed our meets are earlier rather than later. Our meet hosts worry a lot about filling their meets with enough officials and knowing a bit earlier will provide them with more sleep than they'd get if they think they're understaffed. If you know you're available to work session(s), try your best to sign up as early as possible.
We appreciate your time and effort, as do the swimmers and coaches (most of the time). Looking forward to seeing you all on deck soon! Should you have any questions, please contact Bob Mermelstein, AMS Officials Chair, at bob.mermelstein@gmail.com.
As a follow up to the August 31, 2015 post about Ryan Lochte's now infamous swim in the World's 200 M Individual Medley, FINA has provided an interpretation of their rule SW9.1 (USAS Rule 101.5.2). To see the details of FINA's interpretation, click here.
The interpretation describes what constitutes backstroke during the freestyle leg of the Individual Medley. It says that if a swimmer leaves the wall on his/her back, they are performing backstroke.
Interestingly, if you look at the Frequently Asked Questions attached to the memo linked above, it describes what constitutes breaststroke during the freestyle leg of the IM. You may remember our discussions about this specific rule when a swimmer (actually two swimmers a few years apart at the JCCS Classic) came out of her turn in the 200 M IM and performed a breaststroke kick and a breaststroke pullout at the start of the freestyle leg of the race (the swimmers in both instances were not disqualified). There was a split in opinion as to what point an Official could conclude that the swimmer was swimming breaststroke (i.e. how many cycles had to be completed before one could determine that the swimmer was swimming breaststroke again). Well, the new interpretation indicates that the swimmer is swimming breaststroke if they complete a breaststroke kick and a breaststroke pullout, the fundamental elements of the breaststroke.
Should be some interesting discussions with Dan McAllen at the upcoming AMS Swimposium. If you have't signed up for the Officials Workshop/Luncheon, please take a few minutes to sign up now (click here for the registration form).
USA Swimming has just announced the release of the new Athlete Protection Training video for upcoming renewals. For most of us, our APT expires on 12/31/15. The renewal course is a new, 30-minute scenario based course.
Completion of the APT is required by 12/31/15 for all Officials with expiring APT at that date (check online or DeckPass to see when yours expires). The renewal will be good for 24 months.
To access the new training requirement, please use this link...
www.usaswimming.org/apt
You will not receive any warning email from USA Swimming so please make sure your APT is up to date prior to the end of the year. If you have any questions, please contact Bob Mermelstein at bob.mermelstein@gmail.com or 412-867-6687.
Did you happen to see Ryan Lochte's gold medal swim in the 200 IM in Kazan at the World Championships? Well, you likely won't see his technique in the freestyle portion of the IM ever again as FINA ruled it illegal...
Turns out Lochte is faster streamlining on his back so he and his coach devised a plan for him to come off of the breaststroke portion of the IM on his back and swim the first 15 meters underwater while on his back. Of course, there's no question that this is a legal technique in both the Freestyle and Backstroke individual events. But there was some question as to whether the officials at World's would decide that he was swimming backstroke during the freestyle portion of the IM, which would be illegal. He gambled and the call was not made and he won his fourth consecutive World title in the event.
Enter FINA. FINA's rationale is that backstroke is defined by a swimmer traveling lying on his/her back. So, in underwater kicking on his back, Lochte, according to FINA, was technically swimming backstroke for the first 15 meters of his freestyle portion of the IM; a violation of the IM rules which require 4 distinct strokes.
Shouldn't be long before USA Swimming adopts a similar interpretation. Stay tuned.
Would you have considered his swimming underwater on his back for 15 meters as backstroke?
As we all know, the AMS Swimposium is on Saturday, September 19, 2015 at Mt. Lebanon High School. There will be two Officials sessions with a lunch in between.
The session for Stroke & Turn and Chief Judge Officials will be from 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM. The session for Referees, Starters and Administrative Officials will be from 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM. Our discussion will be led by Dan McAllen, currently the USA Swimming VP of Program Operations and former USA Swimming Chair of the Rules & Regulations Committee. It should be a very interesting discussion. Dan is a very good speaker and a great guy.
From 12:30 - 1:30 PM there will be an Officials lunch. This will be a great opportunity to spend some down time for your fellow AMS Officials. The early attendees are encouraged to stay for lunch and the later attendees are encouraged to come early for lunch.
While this meeting is not mandatory, you are strongly encouraged to attend. The balance of the Swimposium agenda has some interesting parts to it for swimmers, parents, meet directors, etc.
Please RSVP by clicking here. I know it's a Pittsburgh thing to wait until the last minute to commit, but early acknowledgement of your plan to attend would be greatly appreciated.
You are welcome to attend either or both sessions for Officials. Also, please let us know your plans for the lunch. This will be a very rewarding day so we hope to see you there. See you soon!
The 2015-2016 SC season is right in front of us (well, don't get too uppity, you still have time to rest). Our season kicks off, as it always does, with First Splash, hosted by four teams spread over three weekends. And then the mayhem continues for months to come!
Once again, we'll be using Volunteer Spot for our AMS Officials sign ups. Currently, all meets leading up (but not including) the Christmas meet are ready for sign up. The rest of the season will be posted soon. Here's the link to our group page...
http://vols.pt/q28pj3
Sign up early and often. Please sign up at your highest level of certification. So, if you're a Referee, sign up as Referee. If you don't want to be the Referee for the sessions you sign up for, leave that as a comment.
It's important for our meet hosts to know where their deck stands as early as possible so they know where they need to focus. It's a Pittsburgh thing to be fashionably late (or even woefully late). If possible, we'd like to try and break that mold this year to give our meet hosts time to breathe deeply without having to freak out because they have too few officials signed up as their meets approach.
As always, see ya on deck!
AMS will once again be co-sponsoring (with USA Swimming) a Swimposium on September 19, 2015 at Mt. Lebanon High School.
As part of the AMS Swimposium, we will have a mandatory officials meeting with guest speaker Dan McAllen, currently USA Swimming's Program Operations Vice President and immediate past Chair of the USA Swimming Rules & Regulations Committee.
The tentative plan is that Dan will speak to our Stroke & Turn, Chief Judges and Administrative Officials in the morning and our Referees and Starters in the afternoon. We will host a lunch in between. AMS Officials are welcome to attend both sessions, if desired.
Details will be available soon and a sign up sheet will also be available once the particulars are ironed out.
We look forward to seeing you all soon as we prepare to kick off the 2015-2016 Short Course season. Should you have any questions, please contact Bob Mermelstein at bob.mermelstein@gmail.com or 412-867-6687.
As per the 4/30/15 blog post, it's time to think about recertification of your various AMS Officials positions. Below is a re-post explaining what tests are necessary to recertify by the end of this calendar year...
Every three years, AMS Officials must recertify for the officials positions that they hold. Our current certifications expire at December 31, 2015. The new online tests, based upon the 2015 Rule Book, will be available on the USA Swimming website after May 1, 2015.
If an official certified/recertified for a particular position(s) during 2015, their certification will be automatically renewed to December 31, 2018. Any certification/recertification completed prior to 2015 requires recertification during 2015 in order to extend the expiration to 12/31/18.
In order to recertify, officials at these highest levels of certification must complete the following online tests before 12/31/15...
Referee - A Referee must take the Referee, Starter, and Administrative Official recertification tests. This will also recertify them at the Chief Judge and Stroke & Turn levels. In lieu of the Admin Official test, the Referee can alternatively take the Administrative Referee test.
Starter - A Starter must take the Starter, Timing Judge and Stroke & Turn/Timer tests. In lieu of the Stroke & Turn/Timer test, the Starter can take the Referee recertification test to recertify for both Chief Judge and Stroke & Turn.
Chief Judge - A Chief Judge must take the Referee recertification test. This will also recertify them at the Stroke & Turn level.
Administrative Official - An Admin Official must take the Admin Official recertification test.
Stroke & Turn - A Stroke & Turn official must take the Stroke & Turn/Timer test.
As indicated above, you have until 12/31/2015 to complete the required tests in order to extend your certifications for three years. Should you have any questions, please contact Bob Mermelstein at bob.mermelstein@gmail.com.
Happy online testing!!
