what does your summer team do to recruit officials?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We are impressed that some well-organized MCSL team charges families who don’t want to volunteer. Great incentive and brilliant!

Except if everyone pays instead of volunteering, it is hard to run a meet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But the fees waived idea for S&T officials fleet isn’t really fair. Reps do all the heavy lifting by planning swim team starting in the winter and organizing team, managing payroll, interviewing, hire coaching team,…. In fact, they should get fees waived too!

We are impressed that some well-organized MCSL team charges families who don’t want to volunteer. Great incentive and brilliant!

Our rep gets free pool membership and their kids are the lifeguards, swim coaches/lessons, and much more. They exclude other families and kids from doing it and then complain. Its exhausting to listen to them. The better swim team kids left this year to coach at other pools so we don't have enough coaches or ones who are year-round team who are experienced. Its a money grab and its run out several families and more are leaving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your team has year round swimmers, surely some of those parents are trained as S&T judges, etc? That's where we get ours and we usually have enough so they only work half the meet.

There are so many year-round swim parents who do not volunteer it makes me sad- some of the parents are from NCap, which of course has a pretty hefty fine if you don’t time during the year so maybe they are burnt out, who knows.

We have two refs and four S&T, which means they are all working almost every meet- is that normal?

[Anonymous]

Sadly, yes! Always the same families volunteering while the rest are busy filming and giving instant feedback to their child swimmer or serving as towel concierges. Many swim teams suffer from a lack of volunteering. C’est la vie!

[Anonymous]

DP: Our team waived has waived team fees in the past for families who get certified to do official jobs for the first time. This was successful the last time we did it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP: Our team waived has waived team fees in the past for families who get certified to do official jobs for the first time. This was successful the last time we did it.

DP
I also like this idea. Waiving a few fees wouldn’t hurt our team, but gaining officials would definitely help.

[Anonymous]

It helped to ease people into it by letting them shadow at time trials and B meets.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the suggestion. We will definitely float this idea to waive fees for families to officiate at wrap-up meeting to plan for next summer. It’s a bear to get S&T volunteers especially at the B meets.

[Anonymous]

We have a “lead official” who mentors new officials and talks individually to the parents of younger swimmers to encourage them to get trained next year.

[Anonymous]

OP here thank you so much for so many helpful ideas!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your team has year round swimmers, surely some of those parents are trained as S&T judges, etc? That's where we get ours and we usually have enough so they only work half the meet.

There are so many year-round swim parents who do not volunteer it makes me sad- some of the parents are from NCap, which of course has a pretty hefty fine if you don’t time during the year so maybe they are burnt out, who knows.

We have two refs and four S&T, which means they are all working almost every meet- is that normal?

DP - to the bolded, no, our officials aren't working every single meet (or close to it). We have probably 10 experienced S&T plus 6 new people this year; six of the experienced S&T are also starters, refs, chief judges. They're training some of the other experienced S&T in those roles.

My kids swim year-round (not with NCAP) and I timed at at least half a dozen meets. That's less tiring to me than being in the stands!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your team has year round swimmers, surely some of those parents are trained as S&T judges, etc? That's where we get ours and we usually have enough so they only work half the meet.

There are so many year-round swim parents who do not volunteer it makes me sad- some of the parents are from NCap, which of course has a pretty hefty fine if you don’t time during the year so maybe they are burnt out, who knows.

We have two refs and four S&T, which means they are all working almost every meet- is that normal?

DP - to the bolded, no, our officials aren't working every single meet (or close to it). We have probably 10 experienced S&T plus 6 new people this year; six of the experienced S&T are also starters, refs, chief judges. They're training some of the other experienced S&T in those roles.

My kids swim year-round (not with NCAP) and I timed at at least half a dozen meets. That's less tiring to me than being in the stands!

My kid swims year round with NCAP and the volunteering requirement is 3 meets over the course of a year (from summer LCM through the next SCY season) so it’s actually not that much if your kid swims at all or almost all the meets offered including QT meets (my kid did probably 12-14 meets during that time). I also volunteer a lot for the club meets because it kills time, especially if my kid is in the last event.

Our summer team overall is great with the volunteering but we do have a limited number of people that are able to be the referee, starter and/or S/T judges. There are some good ideas in this thread for boosting that!

[Anonymous]

Our Rep recruits hard. She’s great at what she does. Identifies the serious swim family lies early and starts subtly applying pressure. It took two years before she convinced DH to do stroke and turn (even though the man can hardly swim), then train as a ref and starter. Thanks to her persistence we are pretty full up on officials. I think DH was only assigned 3 meets this season.

Despite not being a swimmer himself DH is now a fully verified, respected USA swim official too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the fees waived idea for S&T officials fleet isn’t really fair. Reps do all the heavy lifting by planning swim team starting in the winter and organizing team, managing payroll, interviewing, hire coaching team,…. In fact, they should get fees waived too!

We are impressed that some well-organized MCSL team charges families who don’t want to volunteer. Great incentive and brilliant!

Our rep gets free pool membership and their kids are the lifeguards, swim coaches/lessons, and much more. They exclude other families and kids from doing it and then complain. Its exhausting to listen to them. The better swim team kids left this year to coach at other pools so we don't have enough coaches or ones who are year-round team who are experienced. Its a money grab and its run out several families and more are leaving.

Does your rep have octuplets? I have trouble believing that all the lifeguards, and swim coaches are children of the same person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But the fees waived idea for S&T officials fleet isn’t really fair. Reps do all the heavy lifting by planning swim team starting in the winter and organizing team, managing payroll, interviewing, hire coaching team,…. In fact, they should get fees waived too!

We are impressed that some well-organized MCSL team charges families who don’t want to volunteer. Great incentive and brilliant!

Our rep gets free pool membership and their kids are the lifeguards, swim coaches/lessons, and much more. They exclude other families and kids from doing it and then complain. Its exhausting to listen to them. The better swim team kids left this year to coach at other pools so we don't have enough coaches or ones who are year-round team who are experienced. Its a money grab and its run out several families and more are leaving.

Does your rep have octuplets? I have trouble believing that all the lifeguards, and swim coaches are children of the same person.

step kids maybe? or maybe swim rep adopted kids