10 January 2013
Dear Club Secretary Firstly I would like to thank you all for your cooperation in assisting Swim Ireland in improving the standard of the National Competitions that have taken place over the past twelve months. There was a huge amount of work involved in this, the support from our clubs was vital and I hope that your swimmers have benefited from the improvements. The purpose of this letter is to give you a general overview to some of the changes and new introductions that are going to take place at National Competitions over the next season.
Swimmers should wear their own club kit during National Competitions, particularly for victory ceremonies. Swimmers should be proud to wear their club kit and refrain from wearing other commercial or international type kit. The wearing of footwear is compulsory for medal presentations. As you will be aware, the Qualifying Times for the competitions have been updated to reflect the increase in standards across all of our events. These times have not been changed in a number of years and it was felt that to continue to improve the standards of the competitions, these times needed to be changed. Thank you to the National Performance Committee for their work (particularly to Brian Sweeney and Pat Donovan). Short Course times for relevant meets will be released as soon as the work is completed. It is intended that these times will not change significantly over the next four year cycle. The Meet Licensing Programme is currently being piloted in the Munster Region and National roll out will commence when the results of this pilot scheme have been analysed. The Swim Ireland Competition Handbook 2013/2014 will issue in September 2013 when all the summer meets have taken place. It is planned that the handbook will be issued to clubs by email and published on the website but further discussion will take place on whether a printed copy will be issued also. The handbook for the remainder of the 2012/2013 season will be published online in the coming weeks Entry fees have been at the same level since April 2004. With the improvements in running /organising the galas the costs have risen also, in particular in the last 3-4 years. In order to maintain the improvement and meet the added costs we are obliged to increase the entry fees slightly, from €7 to €8 for individual events and from €28 to €32 for relay events. I would like to draw your attention to the timeline that we will endeavour to adhere to for all competitions going forward:
6-7 weeks prior to competition – competition information sent to clubs and published on website 3-4 weeks prior to competition – closing date for receipt of entries. Entries will be checked against the National Database and any queries etc. sent back to clubs 2 weeks prior to competition – accreditations printed, programme sent to print, officials roster compiled 10-14 days prior to competition – officials’ roster and other relevant information sent to clubs
On behalf of all at Swim Ireland, I would like to thank all of the volunteers who helped out at competitions over the past twelve months. These volunteers are vital to the running of the events and we hope to see them returning to volunteer in the future. A reminder that officials are asked to wear all whites if possible and if not, a white t-shirt and navy/black bottoms and appropriate footwear. Should any of your club volunteers wish to undertake training in the various roles, there are a number of people you can contact to receive further information on how to go about this. Each Region has an Officials Co-ordinator (names listed below) who is charged with rolling out Regional officials courses. You can also contact me or a member of the Swim Ireland Education Team. Finally, should you have any comments/feedback on any of the information contained in this letter, or arising from any of the competitions, this can be forwarded to me as the Swim Ireland office lead for National Competitions at the details below or to Geoff Massey, Technical Director at td@swimireland.ie. As a result of the changes within the Swim Ireland office around competition, there has been a change in the function of the National Competitions Committee. This committee now operate primarily an advisory role to myself and Geoff and will be responsible for the issuing of Meet Licenses once this programme is launched. I look forward to another fantastic year of competitions and hope to see many of you in Limerick for the first event of 2013. Kind Regards
Niamh McDonnell Development Officer & Competition Co-ordinator devofficer1@swimireland.ie 01-6251142
Regional Officials Co-ordinators: Connacht – Patricia Cleary Leinster – Mary Griffin Munster – Mary Phelan Ulster – Wally Clarke Contact details for these co-ordinators can be obtained from your Regional Management Committee or from the Swim Ireland Office.