During the summer of 1966
there were a number of teams swimming in the Sacramento area
without league affiliation. Some of these teams were newly
formed, while others had been in existence for a number of
years. After a
successful Championship meet involving three of these teams that
summer, representatives from the College Green, El Dorado Hills,
Foothill, Park Terrace, and Parkway teams met to discuss the
formation of a new Sacramento area league. In the Spring of 1967, a set of
Bylaws was drawn up, meet procedures set, and on April 17, 1967 the
Suburban Swimming and Diving League was officially formed. Of the five founding teams,
three (CG, EDH, and PT) remain in the Suburban Swim League; two of
these teams College Green and El Dorado Hills, have been members of
the league continuously since its inception in 1967.
The first Championship Meet
was held at College Greens on the second weekend in August,
1967. The League
received considerable assistance from the Rosemont Swim Team (in
the Sacramento League) and the Sacramento YMCA Swim Team (in the
Capitol League). Don
Cumley, the Rosemont Coach was the Meet Referee. Much of the success of this first
Championship Meet was due to the efforts of the Meet Director,
Gloria Zielke of College Greens.
Over the next dozen years,
the SSL went through a number of changes. New teams joined the league, some
of the original teams left (temporarily for FF and PT). Some time in the mid-seventies,
‘Diving’ was dropped from the league name; there were
never any official diving competitions held although the Foothill
Flyers did have a diving team for a couple years in the
sixties. Hosting
Championships was rotated among the teams in the league until
1979. They were
usually held in six lane pools, the normal configuration for most
facilities.
Through most of the
seventies, ‘Place Judges’ were assigned to determine
the winner of races because the mechanical watches available at
that time were only readable and accurate to tenths of a
second. When
electronic watches, accurate to hundredths of a second became
readily available, time became the sole criteria for placement and
Place Judges were no longer needed (but the need for attentive
timers became even more important).
With the addition of the
Highlanders in 1973, the league had grown to nine teams (two teams,
Elk Grove and Rio Linda, swam as a single team in dual meets and
separately at Championships). That year, due to the large
number of teams (and only six lane pools to swim in), the league
tried swimming in two divisions, with separate divisional
Championships. It was
not very popular with a number of teams so the divisional structure
was dropped the following year. In 1974, Park Terrace took a
leave of absence that lasted eight years.
In 1979, the Championship
meet was held at Sierra College for the first time. The facilities at the College: a
10 lane pool and 6 lane warm-up pool, permanent spectator seating
with space to add additional seating, expansive grounds for team
areas, and an air-conditioned office for the use of the league reps
was a big improvement over previous sites. Most importantly, 10 lanes meant
that there were 10 finalists so 10 kids in each age group received
medals for their effort. That year, there were only five
teams in the SSL, each team was able to enter two relays (the
’A’ and ‘B’ relays swam at the same
time).
In 1980, the Carmichael
Beavers joined the SSL, in 1981, Amador dropped, and in 1982 Park
Terrace returned. The
league remained very stable between 1982 and 1987 with six teams
(CB, CG, EDH, FF, HD, and PT). Each team swam 10 league meets
during the season, meeting each other team twice (home and
away). The meets were
shorter in length; two or three were swum Wednesday evenings.
Loomis Basin and Folsom
joined the league in 1988. To accommodate the additional
spectators at the College, the Loomis team parents brought in
bleachers (and then took home the hardware; LBD won Championships
for the next three years). There were over 1000 swimmers
entered in 1988; as a result the meet was expanded to three days,
with the IM qualifying heats being swum on Friday evening.
A number of significant
changes took place in 1989; the freestyle events (in both Dual
meets and Championships) were split into two distances; a swimmer
was only allowed to swim in one of the two in a single meet. The rationale was that all
Dual meets always had second heats in freestyle; why not make these
second heats into scored events. Also, the 15-18 age group was
split into 15-16 and 17-18 groups to provide for more equitable
competition and thus encourage the 15 year old swimmers to stick
around a bit longer.
The 15-18 group was retained only for the relay events. The result was an increase in the
number of events from 73 to 95; with most of the extra time added
on Saturday. Except
for changes to the numbering sequence, the order of events has
remained the same since 1989.
1989 was also the first
year that a computerized scoring system was used. Seeding had previously been done
by hand by sorting the lane slips and then typing the program. The new system provided all
seeding, printed listings for the program and the official’s
use, and handled all scoring. Times were taken in the normal
manner (three watches and a recorder), and were manually input to
the system.
In 1991, the Colorado
timing system (three buttons and a backup/recorder) was first
used. Times were much
improved over previous years as the main source of error with
manual timing is with the start. However, the timers were not very
happy, they no longer had watches, and had no idea of the official
time. This problem was
solved in 1992 with the addition of a display board at the end of
the pool. The first
year it was used, we had a ten lane display board; subsequently, we
have had a single line display that cycles through each
swimmer’s time in their order of finish. This display has been a crowd
pleaser ever since.
In 1993, we welcomed a new
team, the Sierra Sharks. Sierra was the result of a split
of the El Dorado Hills team along with a number of new swimmers
from the Shingle Springs area. With nine teams swimming, there
were over 1100 entrants at Championships that year. The Carmichael Beavers left the
SSL in 1994 (they are now in the Nor-Cal League), and the Foothill
Flyers left the SSL in 2001. In 2002, we welcomed the
Broadstone Barracudas to the Suburban Swim League. The Highlander Dolphins left the
SSL in 2004.
With participation
continuing to increase, flyover starts were introduced in 2005 and
were an immediate success, shortening the length of swim trials
significantly on Saturday and Sunday. In 2006, the League purchased a
new league record board for permanent display at Sierra College as
well as a Sierra College record board to mark our 28th year at
Sierra College and our 40th Annual Championship meet. With team’s ranging in size
from 150 to 350 swimmers, the League introduced the
President’s award in 2006 to recognize the team with the best
points per splash ratio.
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