I've seen a few vidoes of meets on youtube, or links posted here.
I've started noticing that there are rarely turning officials and the timers do nothing but stop the back up time at the finish.
how do you judge if something touched the wall on their freestyle turn, or two hand touch in *** and fly, or that they had their arm in motion on the backstroke rollover turn? or even how do you see if the underwater pullout in *** was according to the rules?
my other thought was, if someone breaks a record is it fair that no one was their to control every aspect of the race.
I've yet to be in a meet in sweden for masters or for the teens or even for the 7-11 kids that was not filled with a trained turning official at each end of each lane. who watch both technic and the turn from the flag to the flag.
we have a 7 lane pool and we have 14 turn officials, two lane officials walking up and down the pool, a back up timer official and a starter. when we have bigger meets we even have to have a turning official leader one for each end of the pool so the lane officials do not have to communicate with the turning judges and can watch more of the swimming.
recently we've started using walkie talkies so the starter can write up dq slips to save time for the lane officials and turning judges.
But officials are all volunteers so you make do with what you get
over here too. But our team pays for members to go to training in hopes to get more parents involved. Then every two years you have to go to a refresher course and if FINA changes it's rules then there is another class to attend to be made aware of the changes.
we even make all of our 16yr olds go through the training to be a S&T official so when we have our "7-11" meet we can use them. or if they are hurt and can not swim they can still help the team.
It serves several purposes. we get more officials, and parents get a better understanding of what coaches are asking their kids to do and our swimmers get a better understanding of what offiicials are looking at.
for championship meets we have to hire in higher level officials.
districts/regionals --> our district has one lady that goes around, she doesn't get paid to be there, but the home team pays for her travel, food and housing.
nationals --> if your district doesn't have enough you ask nieghboring districts or the national office. in some cases you get officials calling asking if you need help, because they want a chance to work a national meet.
But officials are all volunteers so you make do with what you get
over here too. But our team pays for members to go to training in hopes to get more parents involved. Then every two years you have to go to a refresher course and if FINA changes it's rules then there is another class to attend to be made aware of the changes.
we even make all of our 16yr olds go through the training to be a S&T official so when we have our "7-11" meet we can use them. or if they are hurt and can not swim they can still help the team.
It serves several purposes. we get more officials, and parents get a better understanding of what coaches are asking their kids to do and our swimmers get a better understanding of what offiicials are looking at.
for championship meets we have to hire in higher level officials.
districts/regionals --> our district has one lady that goes around, she doesn't get paid to be there, but the home team pays for her travel, food and housing.
nationals --> if your district doesn't have enough you ask nieghboring districts or the national office. in some cases you get officials calling asking if you need help, because they want a chance to work a national meet.
