Splash!

As a sidenote, even though we are in Tennessee where my daughter has the opportunity to swim both USA and High School at the same time, this year she chose to not swim High School. She puts in up to 27 hours a week in USA Swimming workouts and did not attend enough "mandatory" high school workouts last year to earn her varsity letter, despite being on two third place relays and scoring individual place points at the State meet. The extra time and lack of recognition by the High School coach made her decide to give it a rest this year. So, the lesson is, even if it's not screwed up by beaurocrats, there's still the opportunity for others to do so.

Posting topics like these are of great interest I think to most of us. USMS has a huge interest in helping swimming of all ages, especially since we think of it as such a great sport and know it is in need of support. I was shocked reading these stories about such restrictions. Having to make a choice of competing for one's school or for a club like USA Swimming seems wrong. I think if a kid can handle doing both and keep up good grades, they should be allowed to go for it. To me it makes common sense. Leo - Good luck in your fight!!!

It's been a long time but there was not such a rule in Oklahoma when I was growing up. There was in Kansas and I think in at least part of Texas. I remember thinking how lucky I was to not have to deal with making the choice.

Ditto word for word DCarson's reply. The one sport my daughter truly loves is swimming, even tolerating a 65 mile drive each way to practice. She would like to swim on a high school team next year, but not if it means quitting her USS team. Fortunately, Arkansas does not have such a restriction and she will not have to make that choice. I believe that the more opportunities swimmers have to compete, the better they become in competition. Membership on a high school team has its own benefits, but it is not a year round sport. USS membership is. Cheers! Candace

I always thought that these rules were around to largely prevent "ringers" in high school programs. I went to high school in Masschusetts, and the policiy from the MIAA (the Mass. high school sports governing association) was that, basically, you could not miss a high school practice and go to a non-HS practice, and could not miss a high school competition and go to a non-HS competition. However, you could miss a HS practice to go to a non-HS competition. High school swimming is a team sport, and I think it's important that it be a team sport. You're not part of the team if you're never there for workouts, and only show up for meets. If you do that, then you're just a ringer for the high school team. You're just someone who's showing up to score points. You're not part of the team. In Mass., there was a standard exception policy -- you had to petition for permission. So every year, I would have my HS principal write a letter to the MIAA board officially asking for an exception for a couple of USS meets that conflicted with HS meets, and every year my petitions were accepted without problem. IMHO, if you want to be on a high school swim team, then be on the high school swim team. If you don't want to be on the high school swim team, then don't. -Rick

Rick, To directly reply to your statement, I agree with in for the most part. The school has the right to require you to do things. They don't have the right to prevent you from doing things when you are not under their supervision. The problem we have with the Missouri and many other state's rules are that they prohibit swimmers from maintaining their training in what is truely a year round conditioning cycle. In Missouri, for example, my daughter can't go to the Benko clinic we are hosting unless her coach comes along. If the high school can't or doesn't want to rent pool time over spring break, she can't practice with her USA-S team. We don't want her to skip HS practice, we are just looking for ways to do what she would like to do outside of school. Leo

Well if anyone is interested, we had our appeal before the Missouri Appellate court on Wednesday. The average time before a ruling is handed down is one month. It was interesting and from watching the cases before ours, it was apparent that the appeal process is more or less open season for the judges on the lawyers. They get into their argument about 2 minutes before one of the judges interrupts and starts firing pointed questions. Our lawyer went first and it took a while to get what we are looking for straight. We want our daughter to practice with the school team but to also be able to practice with the USA-S team when she has time, especially when she does not have HS practice on the same day. We finally got around to our legal attack, that is, that the rules have no reasonable basis because they treat seemingly identical situations different. The rules differentiate between students who want to do the same sport both in school and out-of-school and student who want to do different sports in the same situation. Luckily, we had in the trial record the case of an athlete, Kristen Foulk, who is a star volleyball and basketball player and who graduated from the same school my daughter attends. She went on to Stanford, played both sports there and I believe made the Olympic Volleyball team. She is now in the WNBA. We had demonstrated that the rules allowed her to practice one sport with the high school team and then practice with the out-of-school team until the sun came up the next day under the current rules. With that background, this biased observer believes that the court gave the lawyer for the state a pretty hard time when they asked for a rational basis for the rule. The judges tried for about 10 (of the allotted 15) minutes to get it out of the lawyer but he kept on giving really poor answers or giving the court a history lesson. In the first case, he tried to claim that the rule prevented conflicts between the in and out-of-school coaches. The judge simply asked why there would be any different between those situations for which the lawyer had no answer. At one point one of the judges interrupted and said that “you have spent the last two minutes telling us that you have always done it this way, please tell us your rational basis”. Later, a second judge interrupted and asked, with apologies to the first judge, for permission to rephrase the original question and asked for the state’s best rational basis. At this point, the lawyer reiterated the list that had already been belabored and really didn’t offer a good answer. There was some confusion about some technicalities and I hope that they don’t get in the way. At least we were able to get the court to accept our assertion that the rules must be drawn from a rational basis and implemented fairly. We will have to wait to see how strong the basis needs to be.

Rick, It's unrealistic to think of swimming as a "team" sport in the same sense as football or basketball. It falls under the same category as track and field, wrestling, golf or any number of other high school sports in that they are largely made up of individual performers (with the exception of relays) who are a team in name only. The Tennessee State Meet was this past weekend and the finalists were all "ringers", as you call them. No matter how you cut it, no non-USA swimmer is going to swim a 4:22 500 free as the men's winner did. And without all of our USA swimmers in the State Meet, where are they going to find enough qualified officials to run it? Maybe is't unfortunate that non-USA swimmers have no chance to place, and rarely ever see their USA swimming counterparts, but most schools requirements to earn a varsity letter are based more on participation in practic and achieving State qualifying times which are not very difficult. My daughter chose not to swim High School this year. The points she could have scored would have been helpful so I wonder if the non-USA swimmers would have welcomed a little help from another "ringer" to boost the team's chances.

Leo: I see no gray area here...YOU ARE 100 % RIGHT! It is black and white clear! I respect you standing up against this nonsense. Good luck...and keep up the good fight. Kindest regards, Tom Ellison

Leo, Good luck!! This is long over due! I have an interest in this case because my son, now only 12, will have to choose unless the law changes. We're watching the results closley and hoping they will come up with a way that is fair for the athlete as well as the HS. As you know, these athletes already give up so much of their free and social time, to prevent them from being around friends and peers just because they don't want to fall behind on training. Also the quality of most HS coaches is questionable at best. This means that the athlete learns bad habits that can take years to correct. For the sake of the schools, the swimmers and their parents, I wish you the best in this case.