I have just recently decided to become dually affiliated with both the USS and USMS (i.e. I am now registered with both organizations). I did this primarily so that I could swim for our local agegroup team at meets in the 17 and over age group. The main advantage for me will be that I can now attend a much larger number of swimming events per season while not having to travel nearly as far to attend swim meets. Since most of the USS meets I will be attending are going to be in Memphis, I can now travel home after each day and return the next day without having to spend the night in a hotel....Also I will be burning a lot less gas getting to the nearby USS meets than I would traveling to USMS meets (even the ones that are the closest to where I live). If you have the same kind of situation in regards to traveling long distances to attend USMS meets and spending too much on traveling expenses, then perhaps you can benefit also from attending USS meets as well?? Also I don't think you necessarily have to be dually affiliated to attend these USS meets?.....(but I'm not really sure how that works to be honest).....I noticed that several other USMS swimmers have attended USS meets before. My first USS meet will be on October 15 and 16. I know I will probably get smoked by a lot of young fast swimmers....but I am still looking forward to the experience none-the-less. If anyone else has ever swam at a USS meet before while also registered as a masters swimmer with the USMS, please share your experience with me/us....How many of y'all are also dually affiliated?
Newmastersswimmer
p.s. I intended on posting a poll for this thread as well to see how many other USMS swimmers have ever attended a USS sanctioned meet....but I'm not sure if I submitted it correctly...so the poll may not actually accompany this posting??
After reading this thread I emailed my USA Swimming LSC and got the registration app, so maybe I will join up. Now I need to see if there are any meets I'd like to swim in. There certainly are a lot more age group meets than masters meets!
Why don't you wait and contact meet host to see if they would like a dual sanction and contact your LMSC sanction's chair to help you.
With the new ruling, you can swim USS meets as a USMS swimmer as long as it has a dual sanction.
Then you can donate the money you would have spent on the USS membership to USMS for passing the ruling. :-)
A bonus, it's tax-deductible.
Originally posted by NKMD
Dorothy,
There is a difference between recognition and sanction.
Our LMSC-Illinois has to sanction the event and we have a separate form, fee and guidelines that needs to be addressed. Just because USS sanctions the event doesn't mean we automatically sanction it too. We have to look out for our members and make sure their needs are met. We are working on the process right now. We have different result format that we use. In addition, in our LMSC we have a one page meet information form and use a consolidated entry. We will notify the potential swimmers and potential meet host when we have this updated. We are trying to get this done by our meeting on October 20th.
I already know about your meet in November, which at this time will not have the necessary paperwork completed by then. I do understand. As you know I swim a lot of USA meets. This will allow me to continue to compete, but now as a USMS member.
If you have other questions regarding this matter, please e-mail me directly.
Nadine
Thanks Nadine, I was thinking more on the lines of next year as the schedule is set this year. We would probably want to change formats of meets if we wanted to interest the Masters in Illinois and Indiana, and would probably need your help on this anyway.
Originally posted by NKMD
Why don't you wait and contact meet host to see if they would like a dual sanction and contact your LMSC sanction's chair to help you.
Wouldn't they have to already have the dual sanction in place? The meet I'm looking at is coming up in a few weeks.
Originally posted by knelson
Wouldn't they have to already have the dual sanction in place? The meet I'm looking at is coming up in a few weeks.
Nope, they have the ability to be dual sanctioned. Most of the time it would be USMS swimmers swimming in a USS meet. It would be up to the host team if they want the dual sanction. Some USS meets are set-up for State, Regional, etc. I am not sure if they want USMS members to be swimming in those meets. The reverse would be having kids swim in our Championships.
In Missouri Valley-MOVY (all of Kansas and western Missouri), we also have several masters swimmers who register with USA-S to participate in the more meets. Most are the faster swimmers, and make an impressive showing - in the long run, promoting masters swimmming along the way.
MOVY masters conducts about 5 sanctioned masters meets per year. Our USA-S LSC conducts 2-3/ month - so it is one solution with benefits masters to register with both.
Creating more masters events is the another. Two mechanism have helped our small LMSC. First, we have created a "piggyback" meet on a Saturday evening of a 3-day USA-S meet. The pool is set-up for the meet, just add officials, load your meet into the computer, and go. We had a very successfuly LCM meet this way over the summer.
A second way to create more USMS meets is to partner with high school programs as a fund-raisers for them. The school secure the pool (with or without timing system), the students are the timers and workers, and the masters come pay to swim. The masters get a faciliated meet and the schools get $400-1000 in contributions to there programs. A simple "win-win".
Good Luck to the masters swimmer who do participate in the USA-S meets !
Anthony Thompson, LMSC Chair Missouri Valley
Originally posted by mbmg3282
We now have the ability to dual sanction our meets with USA Swimming. Not only can we compete in the same meets, but we can now compete in the same events. For example, a meet could offer a 15 and over event where both masters and kids swim together. The only catch is that we would have to swim by USA Rules (i.e. no *** kick in the fly, etc.).
We can also have meets where the age groups are the standard USA age groups with Masters added in as a separate event.
For small teams (both USA and USMS), this offers the opportunity to have greater participation at meets.
Mark, where is this information at? Is it on this site, USA-S site? We thought Masters had to swim different events, different warm-ups due to insurance. Not doubting you, just want to find the information for our coach.
Dorothy,
Due in great part to the efforts of our new vice president of national operations (Leo Letendre), working with USA-Swimming it is now legal to have USMS/USA-S sanctioned meets. Without separate warm-up or separate heats.
This was approved at the aquatics convention a couple of weeks ago. The information (the adopted rule change) can be found in the legislation committee report www.usms.org/.../leg-2005-9-15-2.pdf under
L36 -Simultaneous Sanctions USA-Swimming USMS 202.1.1F(1)
Hmmm I wonder how ISI will handle this. Currently I send a meet recon file to them a week before our invitationals, and they run it to make sure all swimmers are registered. All the USMS swimmer would drop out. I will have to discuss with them how to handle this.
