May Board of Directors meeting

Remember, our final in-person Board meeting of 2011 is coming up this Tuesday (May 17) at 7:00. We will be meeting at the NC State University Club, site of our January meeting. The meeting agenda is available here, and the minutes of the April meeting can be found here. As always, only a limited number of print-outs of these documents will be available at the meeting, so please bring your own copy with you if you need to refer to it during the meeting.

The Board meeting proper should be short, which will allow us to distribute meet management materials and then adjourn directly into our annual Meet Management Clinic. Everyone is welcome to stay for this clinic, but it will be most useful for new TSA reps and for new clubs (including exhibition teams). If you are unable to attend the clinic but have questions, be sure to read the meet organization document on the TSA website and to familiarize yourself with some of the other resources on the site.

If you find it difficult to attend Tuesday’s meeting, I strongly urge you to find some other team parent to send in your place. As mentioned above, the meeting itself will last only a few minutes, and arranging for someone attend will save you the inconvenience of having to track down your team’s bag of meet materials later. Also, there are a handful of clubs that have not yet fulfilled the requirement to attend at least three Board meetings a year, so they should make doubly sure they send someone to attend: Bedford at Falls River, Black Horse Run, Oak Park and Wellington Park.

In the meantime, please make sure that your coaches and parent volunteers know about the various clinics described on the TSA Blog. Each team must send at least one coach to a Coach’s clinic. The Starter’s clinic is optional, but highly recommended for new starters. Attendance at one of the Stroke & Turn Judge’s clinics is mandatory for every judge unless they already have a separate accreditation from USA Swimming, NCAA, NCHSAA or YMCA; officials with such credentials will need to send details of their certification to strokeandturn.tsanc.org@gmail.com in order to claim the clinic exemption. Judges can also get trained and certified online at www.StrokeAndTurn.com, though this option will cost the participant $12.95.

Most teams have already started registering members, so please be sure all your swimmers are in compliance with the TSA rules, specifically the eligibility requirements described in Article 304. Be especially careful to check the eligibility of any coaches or lifeguards that may wish to compete on the team, as they must still meet all club membership requirements in order to join the club’s swim team. In particular, if your club is a homeowner’s association in which pool membership is restricted solely to residents of a particular neighborhood, non-resident staff members may NOT compete for your swim team as they are, by definition, not eligible for club membership.