Annual Meeting
Annual Meeting 2025
Don't forget to sign up for our Annual Meeting being held on September 13, 2025 from 9:30am – Noon. The meeting will be held at Lauralton Hall, 200 High Street, Milford, CT. From 9:30-10:00, we will gather for coffee and breakfast snacks. Then we will move into the meeting.
At our meeting, we are happy to report, that we will be returning to the tradition of recognizing our 5, 10, and 15 years of service officials. Thank you to all who got in touch and let us know about edits that needed to be made on the posted list. As it has been a few years since we were able to make this happen, there are many of you who have reached those milestones and we look forward to celebrating you. We also have a few more recognitions to be given out, but those will be a surprise.
Once we have completed our local agenda, we are thrilled to tell you that we have two guests coming to speak to us about their experiences on decks from their local LSC’s up to international competitions. Our guests are Dana Covington, who currently serves as the chair of the National Officials Committee and Lisa Vetterlein, who served as the Starter at the Olympics in Paris. These two women have a wealth of knowledge that they are excited to share with us. During the last 30 minutes, we will ask them to field questions regarding the path to officiating at higher level meets, for those of you who are interested. If you have a question for them on that topic, please send it to the Co-chairs at officials@ctswim.org so we can organize the questions and try to get them all answered.
We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the meeting. It will be great to see old friends and new, alike. If you plan to attend, please fill out this short two question google form so we can plan the appropriate amount of food.
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Bios for our Guest Speakers can be found below:
Lisa Vetterlein has been officiating longer than her kids swam, and they swam through college! She took her first training clinic back in the In-Person days, in 2004 and the test was on a floppy disc and had to be graded by hand.
After officiating locally for several years, Lisa attended her first national meet in the summer of 2011. There were so many swimmers there trying to get their qualifying times for the 2012 Olympic Trials that they had to use two 50 meter pools for the preliminary sessions.
Since that time, Lisa has worked at meets all around the country, including Olympic Trials in 2016, 2021 and 2024, and frequently serves as a mentor in the Officials National Mentoring program. In 2024, Lisa was invited to be a starter at the Paris Olympic, and, of course, she said yes!
In 2008, Dana Covington began officiating the same way most of us did, to help her kids’ team. That was when officials had to attend training in classes that were offered only at special times of the year.
The first National meet Dana attended was in the summer of 2013 in Knoxville, TN. Her mom joined her as a travel partner. She says the only thing she remembers about that meet was that they used BIG fans to help circulate air. This was very different for a "California girl". She also saw an LSC athlete at the meet. It was his first National meet, too. He later conveyed how calming it was to see a familiar official there.
Dana has served at many more meets since that first exposure to a national deck including Olympic Trials in 2016 as a Stroke & Turn Official, 2021 as a CJ and 2024 as the Head Deck Referee. In 2022, Dana was named to the AQUA List and she recently returned from World Championships in Singapore. Dana also devotes a vast amount of time off deck as she serves as the Chair of the National Officials Committee.