Technical Planning Committee

Minutes of November 20, 2003 Meeting

Meeting convened at 11:30 on Thursday, November 20. Meeting was held via telephone conference call. Attending the meeting: Nick Cavataro, Omar Cruz, Ellen Johnston, Jon Levine, and Dave Reilly.

Meeting began reviewing the October 22 meeting, examining agenda items for the 2003 – 2004 year.

Second item of business was discussion of Age Group Chairman Barry Silver’s request that Technical Planning make a recommendation to the AGC regarding the order of events for SC Age Group State Championships, specifically the inclusion of the 12/U distance events now embraced by Zones. After discussion, including what is the Zone format, use of myriad lane configurations at Wesleyan, time line influence, participation numbers…, Jon Levine was appointed to put together an order of events based on discussions and past meet history. This report is to be emailed to committee members for review, prior to being submitted to Chairman Silver for the AGC 12/1 meeting.

Third order of business was discussion of the efficacy of the Zone Swimming Championship program. The major agenda item for Technical Planning at this time is to conduct a study of CT Swimming’s participation in the Zone Program. The intent of this study is to hopefully discover the positives and negatives of this participation, and to arrive by fact finding, recommendations for the CT Swimming Community. After discussion primarily concerning where to go and how to get there, the following areas of discovery were distributed to committee members for research: Ellen Johnston and Dave Reilly – financial impacts; Omar Cruz – performance: historical record of the developmental influence of Zone participation, and real time performance; Nick Cavataro – commitment/lack of commitment to Zones by other Eastern LSC and their reasons for such; Jon Levine – which eligible CT Swimmers are participating in Zones and which are not, and why. The committee agreed that there is a major distinction between the conduct of SC and LC Zones, and upon review of findings, a look at how each Zone meet influences such findings will be in order.

Last order of business was New Business. The committee discussed briefly the 03 LC State Championship and generally agreed that the meet changes met well the need to better control the overall daily time line of the meet. It was recognized that as with all meets, there is room for tweaking, and that this should be looked at a later meeting.

Meeting was adjourned at 12:45 PM.

Next meeting is scheduled for 12/18, Noon via telephone. Confirm exact time, conference # and code with Nick a day or two prior to 12/18.

Minutes submitted, November 25, 2003

Dave Reilly