Location
In 1981 USA Swimming moved to
its present day location at the United States Olympic Training
Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. At the time of the 1981 move,
it had four staff members.
In 1997, work was completed on
the official USA Swimming Headquarters at the training center. This
now serves as the official home of USA Swimming for the forseable
future.
Organizational
Structure
There are several parts and
levels that make up USA Swimming. There is the National Governing
Body (national) level, the Zone (regional) level, and the Local
Swimming Committee (local/state) level.
The National Governing
Body
The National Governing Body
(NGB) of United States Swimming is an extension of the United
States Olympic Committee. While all of the separate swim teams,
LSC's, and Zones do not officially make up the NGB, they are all
members and are subject to the laws of the NGB.
The NGB is made up of both staff
members of USA Swimming and volunteer members of the board. The
office of the President is the head of the board and is responsible
for the overall direction of USA Swimming. The chief executive is
the head of the staff located at the national headquarters in
Colorado Springs. The chief executive is responsible for the
day-to-day operations of the organization at the national level.
The NGB is responsible for
nearly all aspects of USA Swimming, and swimming in the United
States in general. Its most important responsibility is to set the
rules for the sport in the United States. These rules are guided by
the international governing body for aquatic sports (FINA). FINA
makes the rules that are to be followed at all international level
meet. USA Swimming follows accordingly to make the rules of USA
Swimming match the rules of FINA, however it does not have to. In
theory, an NGB could make its rules whatever it wanted and have all
national level meets and below follow those rules, but it would not
have juristiction over international level meets held within the
borders of the United States, and such a meet would have to follow
FINA rules.
The Zone
The Zone is a relatively minor
part of the organization. The zone does not make very many policy
or procedural decisions that affect the members of USA Swimming.
Its primary task is to operate Zone and Sectional meets and
facilitate conversation between Local Swimming Committees (LSCs) in
the same national region. It is also a way for the LSCs to create a
bigger regional voice.
Within USA Swimming, their are 4
Zones: Eastern, Southern, Central and Western.
Zone Meets and Sectional Meets
are further explained in the Meets section.
The Local Swimming
Committee
The Local Swimming Committee
(LSC) is the local level of USA Swimming. Each LSC is a separate
entity, with each being an individual member of USA Swimming,
although all act on behalf of USA Swimming on the local level. The
LSC is the organization responsible for nearly all aspects of the
operations of amateur swimming.
The LSC gives USA Swimming
sanctions to swimming meets in their area. A sanction from the LSC
allows the meet to be run under USA Swimming rules. The LSC is
responsible for enforcing these rules at the meet. The LSC does
this by training officials for the meet. These officials are
typically parents' of swimmers and volunteers. The technical
swimming rules for USA Swimming are the same for all LSCs as
mandated by USA Swimming. This allows an official in one LSC to
officiate in another LSC without having to learn a new set of
rules. This is able to be done because while each LSC may have its
own set of rules they are not different regarding the actual
strokes.
An LSC is typically responsible
for an entire state. However, the size of the LSCs is supposed to
be roughly the same and allow for easier travel between meets. This
result is that while borders do normally follow state borders, this
is not a rule. There exist many instances where one or two counties
in one state will be in the LSC of another state or more than one
state will combine into a single LSC. For example, California, with
its large number of swimmers and expansive geography, has 5 LSC's,
including the country's largest in terms of number of swimmers,
Southern California Swimming which also includes the southern
portion of Nevada. There are currently 59 LSCs in the country.
Meets
There are several different
types and levels of meets, all but the very top level directed by
individual clubs and the Local Swimming Committee. The following is
a list of the types of meets, listed from lowest and most common
level to highest and least common level.
Dual Meet
A dual meet is a meet where each
individual event is scored based on how individual swimmers on a
team swim. It is generally limited to 2 teams, but different
variations can have more. In a dual meet, there is almost always a
limit to the number of events that a certain person can swim and to
the number of swimmers that a certain team can enter. Generally,
there is only 1 heat in each event and each team alternates lanes
so that each team swims in half the pool, regardless of how fast
each swimmer is. While this style of meet is generally uncommon for
individual USA Swimming clubs, it is by far the most common of high
school swimming, YMCA swimming, college (NCAA) swimming, and summer
league swimming. Meets of this variety are almost always a low
level meet because entry time standards are almost never applied to
enter the meet. It can, however, be rather high level when both
teams involved are very fast and have exclusively high level
swimmers, as is the case with college swimming.
Invitational Meet
An invitational meet is a meet
with many more teams and swimmers than a dual meet. The term
"Invitational" comes from the fact that for a team to attend this
type of meet, a team had to be invited to attend from the host
team, but now is a general catch-all term for this style of meet
(although there are still occasional invitation-only meets.) Meets
of this variety generally have hundreds of swimmers, many teams,
and many different events. Within the definition of an invitational
meet, there are dozens of different styles of scoring and placing
but the standard method is described here. All levels of swimming
use invitational style meets at least once during their season
(usually as a championship meet of all the clubs in a league), but
the clubs of USA Swimming use this meet almost exclusively since
there are very few leagues in USA Swimming and it acts as one giant
league itself. Most meets of this style have no limits as to the
number of swimmers that a team can enter, and only limit the number
of times a swimmer can swim in order to make the flow of the meet
manageable. Meets of this style can be at any level of swimming
since all of the higher level meets use this style of meet with
just more restrictive rules applied. Meets of this style usually do
not have entry time standards, but can have them to either reduce
the size of the meet, or raise the competition level.
Local Swimming Committee
Championships
Each Local Swimming Committee
(LSC) is mandated to have a season ending championships twice a
year for both Age Group (younger) and Senior (no age requirement)
swimmers. Most LSC's split these up into two separate meets. The
meet style is universally an invitational meet open only to the USA
Swimming club teams within the LSC. Almost universally, entry time
standards are applied so that only the top level swimmer of the LSC
can attend. Only very small LSCs do not have a time standard. Each
LSC sets their own time standards (due to LSC size differences), so
the competition level of the meet is not exactly the same across
the country. Normally, this style meet is a prelim/final format so
that out of the many people that qualify for the meet, only a small
percentage of the swimmers in each event qualify to come back and
swim for the actual championship later on that night or the next
day.
Zone/Sectional
Championship
As stated before, there are four
zones and 60 LSCs in the country. While the LSC championship is a
high level meet, the Zone/Sectional Championships are even higher.
These meets are also of the invitaitonal format, but the entry time
standards are even higher so that only the fastest swimmers of
Zones qualify. Zone and Sectional meets are of the same competition
level, but serve different purposes. Zone meets are for age group
swimmers and Sectional meets are for Senior swimmers. While the
intention is to have one champion for the whole Zone, this is
generally not possible because to have a meet of that high of a
competition level, there would be very little difference between
this level and the next level, so the entry times can only be made
so fast. Thus, there are sometimes too many swimmers qualifying for
this meet to have only a single meet in a Zone. Currently, the
Central States Zone is the only one that has more than one Zone
Championship meet (Age Group swimmers), and all four zones have
multiple Sectional Championships (Senior swimmers). The Zone meet
is the highest level meet available for Age Group swimmers. There
is no national championship in US Swimming available on an age
group basis in a meet format.
National
Championship
The National Championship is
exactly what the name implies. There is only 1 National
Championship meet at the conclusion of each season across the
country. In many other sports, this championship is known as the
"US Open" and while swimming did have a very high national level
meet by that name each year, it was not a national championship
meet. The National Championships are also of the invitational meet
format and offer extremely high level competition. Only a very
small percentage of people who ever swim will make it to this high
a level of competition. This meet is generally used to determine
the US National Team for various international level meets each
year, but is not used to determine the US Olympic Team. Currently,
there are 2 National Championships each year, but the Spring
Championships are of a significantly lower level than the Summer
Championships. This is because the Spring Championships are so
close to NCAA Championships and the fact that Spring Championships
are never used as a selection meet for national teams.
There has been a recent change
in the National Championships structure. The 2006 "US Open" was the
last, to be replaced by the Short Course National Championships in
2007. So 2007 will have 3 National Championships, in April, August,
and December. Beginning in 2008, there will no longer be a long
course Spring National Championships.
US Olympic Trials
The Olympic Trials are held once
every 4 years. Since this meet offers such a coveted prize (a spot
on the US Olympic Team) it never fails to attract the absolute
fastest in the sport of swimming in the United States. Because of
this, the entry time standards are even faster than the National
Championships. However, even though this is a faster meet and would
actually offer a truer indication of who is the fastest swimmer in
the United States, the winner of each event in this meet is not
officially considered a National Champion and this meet is NOT held
in place of the National Championships every 4 years (although the
Nationals are generally not held when the Olympic Trials occur, or
other selection trials). Unlike all other US Swimming meets, United
States citizenship is required to attend this meet. The Olympic
Trials are also under unique requirements made by the USOC.
Trials meets are also held for
the World Championships, Pan American Games and World University
Games
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