Need Help With Newly formed college club team

Sounds like a good problem to have - I wish we had 150 swimmers with competitive backgrounds looking for opportunities to compete ! USMS is divided Zones made up of LMSCs (local masters swim committees). Boston is in the New England LMSC. They would be your best source of information. Each LMSC has a discussion thread page, and some have websites (New England does, and you can link from USMS site under Swimming Links, LMSC). Good Luck with your program, sounds exciting ! Anthony Thompson, LMSC Chair of Missouri Valley Kansas City area swimmer

I think that puts you in New England LMSC Here's the information: www.usms.org/.../lmscinfoform.php First thing you ought to do is contact the 'registrar' of the LMSC and tell them what you just told us here. they have more info here as well: www.swimnem.org/.../about.html Your local LMSC is in charge of helping it's local clubs get on their feet. Good Luck :)

I would think your Athletic Director would have contacts, or would know who to contact to get contacts, for dual meets with other colleges that have club-level teams. (You probably don't want to be swimming against schools with full-blown NCAA programs right away!) There must be -- maybe 100? -- colleges in the New England area? OK, maybe not that many, but if there is another area of the country with a higher college/university density than New England, I would be surprised! I'll bet that a whole bunch of other colleges in that area would love to know you are looking for meets! I'll bet that once you find even ONE such school to compete against, they'll be able to hook you up with their circle of contacts, and each of those will have their circle, etc. I went to Holy Cross in Worcester in the late 70s. At the time we were purely a club team. Didn't even have a pool on campus, and we worked out alternately at a dungeon-hole pool at the Worcester Boys Club, and at Clark University (if I recall correctly.) Now they have a pool, and swim against the likes of UNH, UConn, Vermont, Army, and other Patriot League and ECAC teams. Maybe you can contact their coach: Barry Parenteau for contacts or ideas. Probably could find the same for all sorts of New England colleges.

You need to ask this same question at the USA swimming forum. There may be other college teams that are USS clubs not usms clubs.

The best thing you can do is to start emailing schools around you that have club teams. Go to their websites and see if they have a contact. That's basically what Miami of Ohio did to us, and we've swam them 4 times now. Miami has swam us, Indiana, James Madison, and they went all the way down to Tulane during Mardi Gras ans swam them. The sky's the limit. Of course, you're always welcome at Ohio State.

I went to CSU Chico right at the time they cut the swim program! We formed a club team for workouts. Unfortunately no one was ever organized enough to put together swim meets. So good for you :) That's great. My husband went to Southern Connecticut so I know there's a huge college swimming population back there. I would contact Tim Wise at Southern. He's really nice and has taken over a solid program (Division 2). He's got Ben Michaelson there. My husband said to check Bernal's Gators too. Good luck, and if you're looking for a long road trip, we swim against college teams occasionally in Walnut Creek! Karen

Contact me so that we can discuss at: seltzer@metasoft.com For this those reading this post note that Northeatern eliminated it's men's swim team due to Title IX concerns some years ago but still fields a very good women's team.

Thank you all for your help with this, I have made some developments and the team is beginning to take shape. We are still dealing with some bumps in the road, but we are persistent. I will keep you updated, and hopefully other colleges in the area might do the same as ours! Mark