Well, that was a quick and good season. For starters, I need to thank the Nanaimo club for hosting our Regional meet a few weeks ago, and also thank Saltspring for looking after the B&C meet. These 2 events were both put together with a tremendous amount of work by both clubs and really went off without a hitch. Great job! Now that the season is over, we can reflect upon the good and the things that need improvement. Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is our meet schedule. I think that we can all agree that we need not only an extra meet or two, but we need at least one more heats and finals event. This meet would need to take place closer to Regional.s, as swimmers, coaches and parents need to become more aware of how the marshalling process works at these meets. There were a few missed races at Regional.s due to this fact. There are many ways that we can handle this need. A club could volunteer to do this on a yearly basis, or we could just make the date close to Regionals a heats and finals weekend. We could then rotate clubs through that weekend, so that not the same club runs that style meet every year. This is not a perfect solution, as clubs putting on meets at Commonwealth are at the mercy of the "High Performance Athletes" for scheduling. Perhaps in that case, we would move the heats and finals weekend a week one way or the other. The other discussion that will likely come up is that of B&C Regionals. Attendance at this meet has been low over the last few years and we need to either do something to bolster the attendance or change the date, etc. I have heard suggestions to combine it with Regionals, and have an A, B, and C final. One other suggestion is to have it before Regionals; this would require some work to our Regional Guidelines. We do need to have some meet at the end of the year for the swimmers who will not be qualifying for Provincials, as they are the largest group of swimmers that we have. So, whoever from your clubs will be attending our fall Regional meeting, bring your ideas to the table and be ready for a good discussion on this subject.
Provincials in Abbotsford this year was probably the most seamless of the five that I have attended. I thought that the venue was great; the weather was cooperative as well. It could have been warmer, but not much. The only "complaints" that I heard was that there was no warm up/cool down pool, and that the bleachers did not offer the level of viewing that was felt to be necessary. In my view, there has not been a Provincial meet that has met everyone's ideal criteria ever. Either the viewing is bad, or the temperature was too hot, or there were issues around the timing system, etc. So we will see how things pan out in Kamloops next year. It is possible that instead of double ending the meet; only one tank will be used. That would leave the other one open for warm ups and cool downs. I hope that we don't need to call in the RCMP to break up fights over seating next year like we did when it was in Kamloops before!
Speaking of Provincials, it will be our region's turn to host in 2012. It is time to start getting organized for that one. It is a long drawn out process to get the detail taken care of. The first thing that we need to do is to determine where we would have the meet. Obviously, there are only two venues that could host the meet, Commonwealth and the Nanaimo Aquatic Center. We will speak about this at our upcoming meeting.
There has been a bit of a change in the makeup of our Regional Board for next
year. We are happy to welcome Russ Der from Nanaimo, Graham Park from
Cowichan Valley, Rose Anderson from Campbell River and Ralph Kussauer from
Courtenay. Russ is taking over for Susan Mattock as Assistant Regional
Director, Graham is the new Director of Officials and Rose and Ralph are
assisting Graham as our new Assistant Directors of Officials. Also, we have a
new Regional coach for next year. Colin Mattock has stepped up to take on the
task. Thanks to Nicole Schneider for doing an outstanding job this season.
Thank you all for standing up and volunteering! Sadly, we are losing a
tremendous amount of knowledge and experience with Susan, Wayne Ralph, and
Jim Mattock leaving the Board. What can I say about the amount of time and
effort that these three have put in? Susan has been at virtually every meet
since I can remember, usually doing clerk of the course or crash desk/checking
or really, whatever she is needed for. She has been a library of information
for me and my predecessor, Norm Scott. We would have had a much bigger task
if it were not for Susan's efforts. Susan was honored at Provincials this
year with the Volunteer Recognition Award for outstanding service within the
BCSSA, an honor that was well deserved. We will miss you, Susan. Wayne and
Jim have done a wonderful job of cultivating an outstanding working
relationship with our coaches. They have also travelled a lot to put on
Stroke and Turn clinics all over the Island and Powell River. I believe that
our officials are extremely well thought of by the Province, as many of our
own were used at Abbotsford for the more difficult strokes and positions.
Well done, Wayne and Jim!
I also want to acknowledge the work of the coaches and executives at the club level. We always seem to be fortunate to have a wonderful group of coaches in our Region. We all owe a tremendous amount of gratitude for these hard working people. They are the ones that we and our swimmers depend on every day, at practices, and meets. Thank you very much for the work that you have done.
Well, that is it for now; I hope to see and /or hear from you in the off season.
Bob Carter.
