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USA
Swimming
USA Swimming is the national
governing body for competitive swimming in the United States. It is
charged with selecting the United States Olympic Swimming team and
any other teams which officially represent the United States, as
well as the overall organization and operation of the sport within
the country, in accordance with the Amateur Sports Act. The
national headquarters is located at the U.S. Olympic Training
Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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
meets. 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 jurisdiction 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, there 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, there are several states (e.g.
California, Texas, Pennsylvania, among others) that have multiple
LSCs within their boundaries. The size of the LSCs is supposed to
be roughly the same and allow for easier travel between meets. The
result is that while borders tend to 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 LSCs,
including the country's largest in terms of number of swimmers,
Southern California Swimming which also includes the southern
portion of Nevada. One of the smallest LSCs, in terms of geographic
area is Potomac Valley Swimming, with swimmers in Washington, D.C.
and surrounding counties. There are currently 59 LSCs in the
country; mapped here.
The LSCs are divided into Zones as follows:
Western Zone Central Zone
Southern Zone Eastern Zone
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, Double Dual,
Triangular, Quadrangular, etc.
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 (NFHS) 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.
[edit]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.
LSC 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 an invitational meet
open only to 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 a few of the smaller 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.[citation needed] Age groups are 8 and under,
9-10, 11-12, 13-14, 15 and over, also known as seniors.
Zone/Sectional
Championship
As stated before, there are four zones and 59 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
invitational 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). After Zone meets for age group
swimmers some may qualify for Junior Nationals.
National Championship/US
Open
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. 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 have traditionally been of
a significantly lower level of competition than the Summer
Championships. This is because the Spring Championships are so
close to NCAA Championships and the fact that Spring Championships
are rarely used as a selection meet for national teams.
In many other sports, the
National Championship of the sport is known as the "US Open" and
while swimming did have a very high national level meet by that
name each year, it was just a high level meet and not a national
championship meet. This specific meet was ended in 2006 and was
replaced with a reformulated Spring/Winter National Championship.
Since there is no "US Open" meet of the old format, the National
Championships (specifically Summer '08) have begun to be called the
"US Open" to bring it in line with the nomenclature of other
sports.
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). However, for 2008, the winners of the Olympic
Trials will indeed officially be a National Champion with the
trials meet taking the place of the National Championship meet for
2008. It is unclear if this will continue for future 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, typically at a national
championship meet.
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