| Teams,
We hope this e mail finds you and your families doing well and healthy and at home. We wanted to touch base again to give you an update on the coming swim season. We are getting a better picture of our chances for a swim season in 2020, and we are hopeful we will have a season. We hope this info will help you answer the many questions you are getting from your families.
We plan on setting up a couple of Zoom meetings the first week of May to get direct feedback from teams about the info on the upcoming season. We will send out a separate e mail with dates, times and sign up details early next week. Hopefully this update will give you some insight and answers.
2020 Season Dates
We have talked to more than half of the teams and the overwhelming message we have gotten is that teams want to have a season. Teams have expressed a willingness to swim later in the summer and swim meets in a different format to make this a reality. We are thankful for your patience and flexibility in keeping the hope of a swim season alive. We feel very strongly, as do many teams, that our summer swim season will be exactly what families and children need after being cooped up for weeks on end. ASA and our teams are the perfect opportunity to reconnect with our friends and neighbors and a great way for our kids to get active again. This will be a chance for many families that may have not been on a swim team to give our sport a try.
Our last e mail mapped out several steps that had to happen to be able to swim this summer. Recent developments have brought those steps into better focus. As I type this e mail, pool management companies continue pulling covers off pools and doing the work needed to ready pools for the summer. Lifeguard training is ongoing via distance learning, so the hope is that pools will be ready to open in June. The 3-phase process the President laid out last week provides a road map to getting in the water. Phase 2 involves allowing groups of up to 50 people to gather, which happens to be similar to the size of most team practice sessions. I think it is realistic to expect reaching phase 2 by mid or late June. This will allow teams to begin practice. This would lead us to believe a first meet date of the first week of July is possible. An early July start would allow us to finish up before August, when hopefully kids will be headed back to school. This is an estimate at this point and by no means final, it is based on expectations of when we can safely gather in larger groups. The number and format of our meets will be an x factor of sorts.
Once we are allowed to resume practices, teams will need to take specific measures to ensure the safety of their swimmers and families. Teams must follow specific guidelines provided by state and local health experts. This will likely include limits on how many people can be present for practices, meaning swimmers, coaches and parents. It may be likely that parents will not be allowed to be on the deck for practices to stay in line with social distancing measures. Other steps will likely include daily temperature checks for anyone who will be at practice, as well as not allowing anyone who exhibits any symptoms of COVID19 (fever, chills, coughing, shortness of breath, sore throat, muscle aches, etc...) and that those individuals should be isolated until safe. Facilities should plan on providing extra hand sanitizing stations or sanitary wipes to minimize the possibility for secondary contact infection. Other measures may include limiting the use of common training items like kickboards, pull buoys or other items normally shared by swimmers. We should have a good idea of what specific measures need to be taken to ensure everyone's safety by the time we are ready to get back in the water, it will be up to the teams to stick to these guidelines. Your pool management company will be helpful in making these things happen, as they are already working closely with state and local health officials to make your pools as safe as possible.
A delayed start to the season will impact the availability for some of your families, I think we all agree that an altered swim season is far better than no swim season. We understand this may have an impact on team sizes and the viability of some teams. This altered season, may not allow the normal ramp up time and weeks of practice prior to the season you are accustomed to. However, we all need to be flexible and open to different options in order to make this season a reality. The league remains open to relaxing membership restrictions for teams, to allow swimmers options to swim for other teams if their team is not in operation this summer. Again, these are all just hypothetical at this point, but I think are very valid suggestions to make this crazy situation as user friendly as possible. This are just a few of the outside of the box alternatives, in order to make this season a reality. If you have others, please feel free to share them with us.
Virtual Meets
Our goal is to have in person meets, however, we are not sure we will be at Phase 3 of the process to allow for a group as large as an in person swim meet requires to happen. That leads to the idea of virtual meets. Virtual meets would allow teams swim their events at their own pool and merge those results in Meet Manager. We have mapped out a process to do this that would be easy to undertake. We plan on having 5 meets, however, if we don't start in early July, that may need to be reduced to four or three meets. It seems that swimming into August will be a big challenge for most teams
Virtual meets will provide a lot of positives. First, this allows teams to maintain social distancing guidelines spelled out by health officials to keep everyone safe. Second, teams will have a great deal of flexibility to swim their events on their own schedule during the week. It would not be necessary for teams to swim at the same time to complete a virtual meet. The only requirement would be completing events by a set date/time like Friday at 1 pm. For example, a team could swim their 8 and under events on Monday, 9-10 events on Tuesday, etc... Third, virtual meets require far fewer volunteers. The main need for a virtual meet would be timers and possibly some helpers to get kids lined up behind the blocks for their events. As a possible cost savings, coaches could possibly handle starting and officiating duties, as most do for their time trials and practice meets. As with all plans, there are some challenges as well. The biggest challenge is that we would have to match teams with metric pools against each other, there is not a very clean way of merging results of a team with yards pool with teams with a metric pool. If we can find a way to have in person meet safely, we will certainly do so, but we need to plan for the safest option possible.
2020 Schedule
The first step to completing a schedule for 2020 will be knowing which teams will be in operation this summer. We will be setting up a Google form in the next week or so to allow teams to let us know their status for the season. The form will provide an opportunity for you to provide further info like an estimate of how many swimmers you think you will have, confirmation of your pool being meters or yards, and any specific scheduling needs in the event we are able to resume in person meets. While we know that teams may still be on the fence regarding their status for the season, teams will have the flexibility to change that status if needed. If you state that you won't have a team for 2020, you will have the opportunity to still swim if your circumstances change. Once we have a full handle on dates and teams for the upcoming season, we will get a schedule to you ASAP. The goal will be to provide teams a schedule at least a month before the first meet.
2020 ASA Championship
While we are not ruling out a championship meet at the end of the season, the odds of gathering a group that large are not looking very likely. Additionally, it may be a challenge to get the Georgia Tech pool in late July. We will keep teams posted as more information becomes available.
Registration and Late Fees
Finally, on the topic of registration fees for the season. We know that your families might be hesitant to sign up now, with the uncertainty of our situation. To that end, we are putting a hold on all late fees for the season until further notice. We sent details earlier this month about updating your registration system. Please be sure to follow up with your registration provider to make sure those late fees won't be applied.
Upcoming Meetings
As mentioned earlier in this e mail we will arrange for Zoom meetings in early May to discuss specifics of the upcoming season. Rules and Hy Tek Meetings will be set up for later May/early June, once we have a full handle on the 2020 season. We will e mail info on dates and times, as well as how to sign up for the meeting.
What Can We Do Now
We encourage your all to remain patient and positive in this uncertain time. We know it is hard to wait with the weather getting warmer and the summer approaching, but we are confident we will have a season. We thank you all for your continued support of the league and the sport we all love. We hope to see you all on a pool deck soon.
Take care and stay healthy,
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