Results of 2007 web survey: TSA Operations

Comments on your 2007 committee:

Better than my 2006 experience

Clinics - helped arrange coaches clinic site at Brier Creek

Didn't really have to do much so that was great

Efficient, well-run committee

Great season. Ran well by the TSA Committee, as always.

I enjoyed Leagues and Scheduling. It is a tough job to do. Thanks Bill for all your hard work.

I thought it went well

I took over as TSA rep halfway through and only attended two meetings, so really unable to comment

I was a new TSA Rep in 2007. The Leagues & Scheduling committee was a fast-paced learning experience.

I would like to be on the same committee if possible.

It went well. Very pleased.

L&S - The final schedule proposal to the board was late due to personal issues of the chairman, who has the master copy of the spreadsheet. My intent is not to criticize the chairman, but rather to express my concern about relying too much on one person. I suggest having a core group of committee members (maybe 3) that know the inner workings on the scheduling spreadsheet, and can step up if necessary in order to meet our deadlines.

L&S is run ably and well. Don't change it!

L&S was well run and successful in a very contentious subject area.

Leagues and Scheduling was hard this year because of changing everything at the last minute. Major changes should be made in advance so that the schedule can come out in a more timely manner.

New rep and not assigned to one. I will be a co-rep in 2008 but would be glad to be on a committee. The other rep will be the #1 contact during meets.

No problems

No problems.

Not applicable - new TSA rep in 2007

They did an excellent job. Thank you for the time and dedication committed to making the season run smoothly. I was ever so impressed with Bob's ability to stay on top of things and keep us informed.

Very briefly went through the books with the treasurer and audit committee after a meeting

Was not included initially. Communication was lacking from the Chair.

Was not on any committees because I was new and was TSA rep because no one else would step up to the plate.

We have been so lucky to have Bill Grussemeyer. The Leagues and Scheduling committee has continued to be a flexible and easy group to work with. There have been a couple of members over the last two years who have tried to use the committee to further a team agenda. By and large, this has not been allowed.

We were able to accomplish everything with one "post-meeting" meeting.

We were not asked to do anything.

Will be looking to further reduce printing expense in 2008.

Willing to help on Leagues and Scheduling

Wonderful committee - members involved in the process and worked well together

Board of Directors Meetings: your comments regarding dates, location, notifications, meeting format:

All good.

All is fine.

All meetings ran well

All were good.

Bob runs a good meeting; location is fine, seems centrally located.

Do you mean our monthly meetings? I was so impressed with the organization and timeliness of the meetings. Could not have been better handled.

Everything was fine. Would be ideal if maybe location could change up some, have some meetings in the East.

Fine

Fine.

Fine. Bob did a good job of keeping people focused on the topic at hand.

Fine. no complaints other than small conversations going on during the meeting were distracting.

Found the meetings to be very efficient and well organised.

good

Good, always moved along quickly and in line with the agenda.

I actually split TSA rep duties with my husband, [deleted]. He attended the meetings and we took turns being reps at the meet depending on his travel schedule.

I liked the new location

I think all formats are good the way they are.

I thought the meetings were more helpful this year.

Location was AWESOME. Keeping them to one hour is perfect. Notification was fine. Meeting format fine.

Meeting format was appropriate--need to eliminate extraneous dialogue

Meeting times, places, and notifications are acceptable. My complaint about the meetings themselves is that sometimes we spend too much time discussing a topic, some of which I think are petty. If there were some way to limit the discussion to different ideas instead of multiple people saying the same thing in different ways; this would save us some time and make the meetings more productive.

Meetings are planned well in advance, move quickly, and follow the agenda. Location and times are fine.

Meetings have always been kept on task and finished on time.

Meetings were good, location was central to all

Meetings were informative. Short and to the point. Good communications.

Meetings were run efficiently.

Meetings were very well run, very thorough

No comment.

No comments - fine as-is

No problem

No problems

Once I figured out how to get there, everything went smoothly.

Only attended one.

Organized and well run

Our other reps attended the meetings. They liked the format and the input they were able to give.

Parking is not very good. otherwise okay

Satisfied

The location was ok, but I thought we had more room at Glen Eden. The meetings were fine.

They were fine

Very good meetings. Facility good. Dates fine.

Well done!

We're well notified

Worked well

Clinics (coaches clinic, stroke and turn clinic, starters clinic): your comments regarding benefits, problems or areas of improvement. Also comment on dates, locations and notifications:

All went well

Ample clinics provided.....several times, locations to choose from

Ample opportunity to get to clinics before the season. No complaints.

Clinics were organized well and offered at various times so all could attend

Clubs should be incentivized to host clinics. Reduction in dues might be appropriate.

Coaches and Stroke/Turn clinics are invaluable. No issues.

Did not attend any clinics personally, and had no feed back from those who did.

Didn't attend any of the clinics

For returning Stroke & Turn, unless there is a rule change there should be an online refresher.

Good

I did not attend any of these but the dates seemed to work well for our parents that attended.

I don't recollect our team in particular having these at our club. The head coach is now a freshman at Carolina and my son is at his year round swim practice.

I have not had to attend, but have not received any complaints.

It would have made things easier if the coaches clinic had been scheduled before the swim season actually started. We had to cancel practice so the coaches could attend.

More Stroke and Turn Clinics. We found out about the clinics late this year.

My stroke and turn judges liked having several options for attending the clinics.

Need more Stroke and Turn opportunities for training

Nice to see additional clinics this year. It gave the teams ample clinics to get everyone qualified.

No comments - fine as-is

No major concerns here, but more offerings would be welcome.

No problems

Offer more S&T sessions if possible.

Our new s&ts did well with the clinics. D & l worked for us

Our S&T judges were very satisfied with the clinic and locations.

Satisfied

Stroke and turn clinic requirement was stressful, but there were pleny of opportunities to attend and the locations were not inconvenient. Notification was good. It's always better to find out sooner though.

Stroke and turn clinic was fine, useful.

Thank you for providing a couple of options as far as location and dates of clinics.

The many locations and dates offered for Stroke and Turn clinics were convenient.

The more of these the better, but I understand the logistical difficulties in this. The starters clinic should be mandatory.

The Stroke & Turn clinics must emphasize consistency among judges during a meet. We had a meet where their S&T judge was very strict with 17 DQ slips. Never before had we had this many. This happened last year, too.

They were fine

Variety of locations and days-of-week was good.

Very happy that a North Raleigh location was added to the stroke and turn format, which was highly attended.

We attended the S&T clinic and the coaches clinic; both were fine. However would be nice to have 2 coaches clinics, one on each side of town.

Would have liked more s&t clinics

Would like to see a stroke and turn mentoring program.

Meet materials (printed packet and online materials): your comments on content, accuracy, clarity, completeness:

All material needs met

Always consistently well done.

Anything I can do via soft copy that can be printed from a home PC works the best for me.

complete, accurate meet materials provided

Everything was very clear and accurate.

Excellent

Excellent job on distributing meet materials.

Excellent.

Fine

Good

Great

Great. Loved the idea of recycling for those of us who had leftovers.

I feel there needs to be better rules on the roster. When does a roster have to be completed? If you swim on Tues. and don't finish and come back on Wed. can you add a swimmer on Wed.? Or, does the roster stand as of the date the meet began? Also, we ran into problems where the online materials said the 2nd place person's time should be put on the runner's sheet. However, this is not in the Rules and one team would not agree to this. We were without times several events b/c the 1st place was DQ'd.

Just fine

Liked the way we saved money by only getting what we needed. Good idea

Materials online were very helpful

More robust & comprehensive website would be nice.

No problems

Online materials are very helpful

Paperwork was helpful. ALL REPS need to read the handbook.

Satisfied

Should consider moving everything but entry slips and DQ slips to self-print for 2008

The online meet information, forms and calculators are a super resource. Please keep these up.

Very clear.

Very good

Very Good

Very good, clear to understand. I do suggest that Bob or whoever is in charge next year, send the email blasts to all reps -- like he did this past summer -- to clarify questions and problems with the website and with weather issues concerning cancellations, rescheds, forfeits, only running mains, etc. That really seemed to be a HUGE issue this past summer among the reps and the various clubs. Pretty intense...for summer swim, in my opinion.

Very good.

Very helpful to us.

Very helpful. One suggestion - maybe make it clear that each team provides their own DQ slips at every meet. We swam a team (not a new team) who didn't bring anything and we were told that we were supposed to provide all materials. It was our last meet, so we didn't have much to spare.

Was great

We could have used another scorer's tablet. Other than that all was perfect.

Meets: your comments on efficiency, sportsmanship, facilities expectations:

All good

All meets were well-run, the clubs we competed against were friendly and courteous

All were ok

Efficiency varies tremendously between clubs. I felt [opponent name deleted] did not offer us near equal space when we had equal number of swimmers. I would like to see more of a standard on timing of lanes. We always time all kids in our lanes whether they are our team or the other and provide the other team with their times. We made the mistake of assuming the other team was doing this for us and did not end up with a lot of times. I would love to see more consistency with this.

Fine

Good

Good year to test all. We had very good cooperation home & away in tough weather year

Had some over-zealous clubs/parents. Overall, the season went well (except maybe for the weather).

Has the possibility of running meets on Saturday Morning ever been considered. Less bad weather in the mornings, no late nights, no rushing out of work in a frenzy to get across town during rush hour. ROFL! just read the rest of the survey!

I forgot to ask about a complaint we had regarding placement of coach chairs at poolside not being the same distance from end. How exact does this need to be? Chats between st&turn judges seemed to go just fine, but then comments regarding 13/14 breast boy 'really trying' sent mood down a diff path...What to do?

I was disappointed in how some clubs held their meets or acted as our guests, but that is life. Lack of consideration in parking for guests or putting up signs that said our club stunk, not just Go XYZ! are just two examples. We try to teach our kids from these experiences.

Kudos to the Zebulon CC for working with us on the postponement of our meet. Their TSA rep was great.

Last meet was five lanes and that caught us off-guard. I had never come into this situation before - now I will know to look in the future. The information was there for me, just after 3 years of six lane pools, I did not even think to check.

Meets went well, weather was a problem but nothing we could do about that

Meets were very well run, given the weather this year. We were made to feel very welcome at away meets.

Most all meets were a challenge this year due to the stormy weather. All TSA Reps I worked with this year were easy to work with when making decisions on meet functions.

Need to reinforce mission of summer swimming - fun, good sportsmanship and promoting swimming in general. Need to emphasize this is NOT year round swimming and good sportsmanship needs to come before competitiveness. Meets in general were very efficient given the weather problems .

No comments - fine as-is

Reinforce the chain of command during meets. Only TSA reps should be approached during meets re: questions and concerns. S&T judges should monitor only THEIR lane.

Satisfied

Some concerns with sportsmanship with some of the upper teams: winning isn't everything. Also, some pushback on sticking to weather delay rules was experienced.

Some teams, pools and meets were run better than others but that is unilateral. Some clubs are older thus the pool and facility is older and perhaps not maintained as well as it could/should. Some clubs have teams with many older swimmers and parents that are very experienced and/or are in the year-round swim world so of course those teams run their meets much more efficiently and those reps are much more experienced. That being said, some teams are much more intense and competitive and intolerant of newer teams or teams with younger swimmers and parents new to swimming and/or none or few in the year-round world. In my opinion, summer swim, especially for the bigger clubs with lots of 6U's, etc, it's about having fun first, competition secondary to that. I saw a lot of the intense, cut-throat competitive attitude associated with the year-round, which is where this mentality belongs, and not here during summer swim. So many 6U's and 7-8's cried their eyes out because they couldn't swim week after week because of the weather and the decision to run mains only, then running out of time to run heats. These are little kids. Yes, it's nice to win your division...but when reps and coaches play "games" because they want to "beat" a particular team and these decisions are made...how does the coach -- or the rep who didn't have the final say in the matter, look at the crying children and their parents? Some of these clubs and their reps really need to "chill" out and maybe re-think summer swim. Or maybe I just had the wrong mindset...however, again, since I was new, I did also on occasion benefit from the nicer, more experienced and generous reps that were patient and willing to share their expertise knowledge with me and "guide" me through my first official meet as TSA Rep. So, there's always a silver lining!!

The continually bad weather on Tuesday nights brought up some issues I think we need to address. Several of the teams we swam this year had kids in year round schools. As a result these teams did not want to wait around very long to see if the weather would get better. They did not want their kids out later than normal because of school the next day. So as TSA rep I felt under a lot of pressure to agree to postpone the meet rather than wait out the bad weather and try to swim that night. Additionally, the starting date for the dual meets caused some problems for kids in year round schools. Apparently end of grade tests were being given the week of the first meet for some of the tracks so again, weather delays caused a great deal of concern for those parents whose kids had testing the next day. More pressure to postpone the meet rather than wait and see if the weather cleared up. In any case I think we need to look more closely at the school calendar next year and testing dates before deciding when to swim the first meet.

The pools that have less than 6 lanes are tough. The meets take forever. I was surprised that a few of the teams didn't provide the visiting team with much space. They cleared off their side of the deck, but left everything where it was for the visiting team.

The swimmers of many of our key parents are aging out. We are faced with training a basically new group. Additional meet management seminars would be extremely helpful for our team.

The weather was a huge factor this year which caused some pretty high emotions. Facilities- should not limit people from being on deck- sitting out in a parking lot until it is your turn to swim does not foster a team atmosphere- if the team can't adequately host a team then they should not have home meets.

This was the FIRST year - in my twelve years of TSA - that we encountered issues with a country club selling alcohol and allowing consumption during a meet. The TSA rep pled ignorance, but the information is on the announcer's sheet. Also, this rule was pointed out, but sales didn't stop while we were there. Weather was our biggest issue this year, totally outside of governance!

Too many thunderstorms

TSA should do something to provide better weather next year!

Unfortunately we had an issue with an unsportsmanlike TSA Rep. Was very disappointing and discouraging.

Very good. (Make the thunder stop)

We had a problem with [opponent club name deleted]. They came with an attitude that they did not want to swim our team. When it rained, they went home and refused to come back the following night. They chose to forfeit. They also did not stay the full 45 minutes and had they done so, we could have swum our meet that night. This kept our kids from swimming a meet, the coaches could not get times on the kids, and we lost money on concessions.

We had one club that had some parents get involved with our judges in a very unsportsmanlike manner two years in a row. I think we need to enforce a zero tolerance policy for this behavior and incorporate an announcer script at the beginning of the meet for any concerns to be directed to their teams TSA rep.

We have emphasized good sportsmanship and it was noticed and commented on. Makes a big difference.

We have not had any issues to speak of for the last couple of seasons.

We run a very fast meet. Sometimes the visiting team's timers complained about not having enough time to record their times...I would always prefer that complaint than for going too slowly. However, our starter would usually slow down a bit to accommodate.

We were glad not be at facilities with 4 lanes.

We were greeted by welcome signs at visitor doors, nice emails from reps prior to the meet. Very fun, friendly season! We swam great teams and had no issues!

With the exception of weather delays, all went well.

With weather this year, should be some clause for having a Tuesday "rain makeup" night after 6 scheduled dual meets to help facilitate running a complete meet.

Worst summer ever in terms of weather. We had 1 meet shortened, 2 that had to be run on Wed, with 1 ending in a tie. No problems working with other reps to get in meets.

Website: your comments on www.tsanc.org:

A great tool

During the season, would like to see current events, i.e. sched/directions, out front and center.

Excellent

Excellent! Navigation, ease of use.

Fine

Good

Good - easy to follow.

Good web site; easy to navigate.

Good, nice improvements with the names of swimmers as pull downs

Great site, full of very useful information. Logging in results seemed easier this year as well.

Great!

I found it to be very helpful. I printed informational forms, laminated them, and put them in the swim team bin for reference at meets.

I loved logging meet info. Much easier to do!

In the past it has been somewhat difficult to navigate, but there have been some improvements. It is comprehensive.

Information okay. Why wasn't the Cary City meet posted on the front page like the Wave and MOR meets?

It is improving and useful.

It would be great if the visiting team's roster was available when we do meet results.

Satisfied

See comment under meet materials. The website is not well laid out.

The new stie seems to be working great! Usability and performance seem improved.

The website is so easy to use! Not that great looking, but ease of use is more important.

The website is well-designed

The website seems to be well run and kept up to date.

The website was great.

Very easy to input data on meets.....pull down menus really sped things up.

Very good

Very good website

Very helpful

Very informative and user friendly

Very informative.

Very nice

Very user friendly. LOVE having all of the swimmer's names and ages in the program for reporting puroses.

Website was good.

Website was problematic at times. There is no way to account for a forfeit --- and that did occur, at least at [club name]. The weather was pure storm, the other rep did not want to reschedule until after 7pm. But his team and his coaches all left due to the thunder and lightning, although we have plenty of cover. Once again, we were forced to wait because BOTH reps have to be in agreement, although we were the home team. We did not want to run mains only due to our younger children (who don't qualify for mains) crying and their parents complaining (rightfully so) that they come to practice every single day, they paid to be on the team like everyone else yet for weeks now they can't swim. This rep forced us all to wait, we wanted to reschedule immediately. They lost to us last year, thought they could beat us this year. His team literally left our club and the coach said no other night would do, the kids had other sports the rest of the week. He called it a forfeit. He was the more experienced rep - I was new. I tried to put it on the web, no go. Also, I asked Bob to send an email blast (or thought of it anyway and suggest it for next year) telling the simple fact that ONLY the home team's rep can access the website to enter scores. I kept telling my team, but they didn't seem to understand me. I believe a team this big needs to see it in writing and the head coach or the rep has no problem forwarding such an email informing the team distribution list of such "inside" information for the greater good and understanding.

Well done

Wonderful source of information and very user friendly. I was so nervous about entering times the first time but found it to be very easy.

Would like for it to be updated more timely.

Other comments:

1. Having 6 & unders swim first proved to speed meets up and make parents happy. There were absolutely no negatives experienced in the meets when 6 & unders swam first. 2. Limiting number of events per swimmer is the best way to shorten meets. 3 events including heat is enough.

All above: good-excellent

As always, it is a distinct pleasure to attend the TSA meetings in January, to see old friends and swimming folks and to get started on the year's season! We're a great organization.

Certainly a learning process, and certainly some clubs and reps more hospitable than others!

Hold meets on Saturday mornings due to rain in the afternoons and year round school calendar. Would like to have July 4th week skipped for a meet and add a week on the end of the season.

I thought the info emails during the season were helpful.

I would like the S&T judging to be more consistent and where there are major differences, we need a process to adjust during the meet, or ask for a new S&T judge to be on deck. Again, we had one meet with 17 DQ slips. our average was 3-4. We lost the meet by 17 points. The loss really isn’t the issue. The morale of our swimmers and parents was destroyed because of the strict S&T judge. I would like a process in place where, in a situation like this, in the middle of the meet, we can request a judge change. I am not the only team who had this problem.

No comment

Regarding schedule of meets, the JCC cannot participate on Friday nights or Saturdays. We can work with any other day, including Sundays.

Saturday morning meets due to year-round school and weather delays! We had delays at 4 out of 5 meets this year. Having families spend two night per week at swim meets is too much to ask when young children have school the next day. Weather is usually not a factor in the a.m.!

Since we did not get to swim 2 of our meets this summer, some of my team members came up with the idea of having a TSA make-up night at the end of the season in case teams needed to make up a meet.

The L&S committee receives several special requests each year from clubs pertaining to scheduling. The nature of these requests varies, but I want to comment on one category of request. Some clubs indicate they do NOT want to swim specific clubs for reasons of sportsmanship, facilities, safety, etc. If there is not already a process in place to communicate these requests to the Officers and the grievance committee, I think this would be a great way to share feedback on clubs where there may be issues.

The week of July 4th was a problem for us (more than 2/3 of team away) as this is the only common week for vacation in the summer for year round schools and older siblings on a traditional calendar and could be the only week off during the summer for some families

There is one team in our division whose S&T judges call the meets too strictly. It happened in 2006 as well as last year. It appeared to me that they were trying to DQ their way to wins. We have very few year-round swimmers. For most of our swimmers, the only exposure to organized swimming is a month or two each summer. The very strict S&T judging takes all the fun out of the meets for everyone. Other TSA Reps in our division have expressed displeasure as well.

There should be input by impacted TSA reps on invitational city meets operations and dates

TSA needs to get more money from the outside sponsors of the invitational meets--money toward scholarships or to bring dues down.

We have a four-lane pool. However our seasoned parent volunteers run the meets extremely fast. Some TSA Reps continually complain and make inappropriate comments about having to swim at our pool.

We may prefer meets to be held Saturday AM. Spring evening weather is not cooperative, plus we are in YR schools now.

We need to find a better way to handle weather issues. There needs to be a cut off time for waiting out storms. No meets July 4th week. Hold meets on Saturday mornings. Our team is 70% year-round!

Would like the weather make up policy clarified since it happened so much this season. Some teams didn't want to make up the meet at all. Is that ok or should they have to forfeit? I noticed that some teams just entered their scores at whatever point in the meet on Tuesday night they were when it thundered. I thought you HAD to get completely through breast if it was Tuesday and through back if it was a make up day. Also, I think there should be a penalty for the teams/coaches that recruit swimmers who do not live in the neighborhood. I know what the rule says and I also know it's up to the HOA to determine who can be a member of the pool, but one particular team recruits year round swimmers to "coach" every year, even though their family has a membership at another pool and the rest of their children swim for their neighborhood team. I know this is happening because my son (along with several other year round swimmers) has been approached several times.