How does masters swimming in the US work?

So what happens here as there seems to be so many different swimming "bodies"? There are two swimming NGBs (National Governing Bodies) in the United States. USA Swimming has kids up through Olympians as members, with a few adults as well. USMS is open to anyone age 18 and older. If sometime in the future I wanted to enter a meet do I need to register with USMS? Yes, if it's a Masters meet sanctioned by USMS. Am I allowed to, not being a US citizen? Yes. We have quite a few members who are not US citizens. And how does this interact with the summer swimming teams? It doesn't. Your membership in USMS shouldn't have any effect on any other membership you may have. Many of our members are also members of USA Swimming. Some of them even belong to Masters organizations in other countries. I will likely register with TAAF to swim this summer (due to an unfortunate deal with my 6 year old) so would being part of USMS mean that I'm considered "year round" and render me ineligible for the summer meets in the future? No. Again, a membership in USMS won't have an effect on any other membership you hold. Many USMS members train on their own. Part of the membership includes SWIMMER magazine, which has a lot of good articles on stroke technique and training tips. I'd encourage you to join even if you're not planning to swim in any Masters meets right away. If you need help figuring out how to register, contact me at the USMS national office at: AnnaLea (at) usms (dot) org.

Thanks for the explanation - I was getting rather confused reading various regulations on different websites! I'll go and check out the USMS site a bit more now :)

TAAF did have rules for USAS swimmers swimming in TAAF meets. I am not sure if it applies to the older age groups or for USMS swimmers. Best to check with them. They wanted to keep the playing field level for their summer-only swimmers. TAAF's niche is to provide a fun swim team experience for recreational swimmers, not for those serious enough to swim year-round.

Thanks Nancy - I will check with TAAF if I decide to join USMS and want to swim again next summer (Although R will be swimming 8u as a 7 yr old by then, not in the new 6u age, so should be less likely to make the A meet times.........then again the bet was originally based on 8u breaststroke.....) So for this year I'll hold off on the USMS membership and by the end of July I might have figured out the TAAF rules. Or decided I really am too old to swim 18+ and join USMS anyway.

TAAF did have rules for USAS swimmers swimming in TAAF meets. I am not sure if it applies to the older age groups or for USMS swimmers. Best to check with them. They wanted to keep the playing field level for their summer-only swimmers. TAAF's niche is to provide a fun swim team experience for recreational swimmers, not for those serious enough to swim year-round. Slightly OT as it relates to age group, but R would love to swim year round, and I would be happy for her to, but on a 3 x week basis rather than 5 or 6 times. Our "local" team in the neighbouring ISD is 5 x per week and starts at 4pm but R doesn't finish school until 3.45pm which is another frustrating problem.....even if we really wanted to do year round age group we couldn't. Anyway - our summer team did a fall program which worked well, just a shame we can't have something year round say 3 x per week at a sensible time. Are there clubs like this out there but we just live in an area where its all or nothing? Sorry, vent over :bolt:

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