So I have been swimming with a masters team since august and have since then paid my usms membership fee at the end of October to be able to swim in a meet we recently had. I haven't recieved my usms card in the mail yet. In two weeks and am going back home from school for a month but need to swim in a structured program and am gonna find the masters team at home and wanted to know if I could still swim with them without my membership card, is there a way to prove my membership without it?
Parents
Former Member
It is pretty clear that membership growth is desired by the top brass in USMS. My question is a little more basic: whom are we trying to entice to join USMS?
You bring up fitness instructors. Do we want to aggressively market to (say) people who until now are in aqua-aerobics classes? What exactly are the consequences of success?
It seems to me that -- with its interest in expanding OW swimming -- USMS is very interested in enticing triathletes to cross-over into USMS. Do we want this?
(These are true questions, not a comment from me on desirability or lack thereof.)
Based on the brief interview of Rob Butcher on Gold Medal Mel, it seems that maybe Butcher is pursuing former big swimming names to get them back into competition. You've been known to do this yourself. Broadening this: are former competitive swimmers the market we should pursue most aggressively?
Or all of these things?
We set up a USMS booth at a local (big) 10k road race here in Richmond last year. We had many, many people come by and ask about USMS (it is not clear to me how many signed up). When they were asking about swimming opportunities in Richmond and I gave them all the information -- we had it all ready -- I found myself wondering if my own small workout group would become so large that it would be unmanageable. (There are now days when we have 6-7 people per lane for awhile, making anything beyond 50 repeats problematic.)
It seems to me that the answers to these questions play a pretty big role in whatever strategies we decide to use to increase brand-recognition.
Chris -
This goes directly to the point I made earlier - what is the mission? The world of elite former swimmers is relatively small when compared to the potentially huge pool of noodlers/aerobic-fitness/lap swimmers. So if increasing membership is the goal, then USMS should go after the latter group.
Your point on workout groups is a great one. As a competitor (as opposed to those members who practice but don't compete), do you want the (assumed) scarce resource of pool space taken up by those in the latter group??
It is pretty clear that membership growth is desired by the top brass in USMS. My question is a little more basic: whom are we trying to entice to join USMS?
You bring up fitness instructors. Do we want to aggressively market to (say) people who until now are in aqua-aerobics classes? What exactly are the consequences of success?
It seems to me that -- with its interest in expanding OW swimming -- USMS is very interested in enticing triathletes to cross-over into USMS. Do we want this?
(These are true questions, not a comment from me on desirability or lack thereof.)
Based on the brief interview of Rob Butcher on Gold Medal Mel, it seems that maybe Butcher is pursuing former big swimming names to get them back into competition. You've been known to do this yourself. Broadening this: are former competitive swimmers the market we should pursue most aggressively?
Or all of these things?
We set up a USMS booth at a local (big) 10k road race here in Richmond last year. We had many, many people come by and ask about USMS (it is not clear to me how many signed up). When they were asking about swimming opportunities in Richmond and I gave them all the information -- we had it all ready -- I found myself wondering if my own small workout group would become so large that it would be unmanageable. (There are now days when we have 6-7 people per lane for awhile, making anything beyond 50 repeats problematic.)
It seems to me that the answers to these questions play a pretty big role in whatever strategies we decide to use to increase brand-recognition.
Chris -
This goes directly to the point I made earlier - what is the mission? The world of elite former swimmers is relatively small when compared to the potentially huge pool of noodlers/aerobic-fitness/lap swimmers. So if increasing membership is the goal, then USMS should go after the latter group.
Your point on workout groups is a great one. As a competitor (as opposed to those members who practice but don't compete), do you want the (assumed) scarce resource of pool space taken up by those in the latter group??
