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UPCOMING EVENTS
October 12, 2014
Pumpkin Plunge
EPIC
November 15, 2014
8th Annual Nash Splash
VMAC
Thornton, CO meet info and registrationDecember 13, 2014The DAC Short Course Meters Championship Denver Athletic Club Denver, CO meet info and registrationSAVE THE DATE October 18, 2014Buff Invitational Boulder, CO March 27-29, 2015Colorado Masters State Meet VMAC Thornton, CO
2014 Nike Go the Distance
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Welcome Fall! Time again for short course swim meets, Postal events and a few new changes from USMS. See the article below about the convention wrap-up for the latest information regarding changes.
As always, we love the photos that are sent from your swimming experiences! Thanks and keep sending them!
Heide Crino
heidecrino@gmail.com
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Colorado Swimmers Ready to Tackle Alcatraz
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Bob Yost, Brad Vaughn, Judy Nelson, Tracy Fagan, Kathy Garnier, Lisa Thilker, Chris Nolte, Susan Nolte, Gregg Freund, Shelle Freund and Brian KryZZZ or SSS September 27, 2014
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| 2014 USMS SPEEDO 3000/6000 yd. National Postal
Championship Oct. 26 & Nov. 9th
|  2014 USMS Speedo 3000/6000 yd. National Postal Championships October 26th & November 9th, 7:00 am Colorado Athletic Club at Inverness Fall is definitely in the air, the leaves are changing color, Football Season has officially started and most outdoor pools have closed. In keeping with tradition, it must be time to swim the last 2 events in the USMS Speedo National ePostal Series! Yes indeed sports fans, the 2014 USMS Speedo 3000/6000 yd. ePostal National Championships have begun! The objective is to swim 3000 or 6000 yards OR meters in its entirety between September 15th and November 15th. Upon completion, you officially enter your final time and splits with the Host Team, Centeral Oregon Masters, and see how you compare to swimmers all over the Country! Whether you swim for fun, fitness or competition, you will feel accomplished! In addition, if you participate, you will receive our very own Colorado Goes Postal Swim Cap. We are very fortunate here in Colorado to have COMSA Sponsor two opportunities to participate in either or both 3000 or 6000 yd/meter swims!. Therefore, you are only responsible for paying the online entry fee when you submit your results. We are even more fortunate this year because we can swim either distance as a group, outside at Colorado Athletic Club at Inverness! (374 Inverness Pkwy, Englewood, 80112). The dates are Sundays, October 26th & November 9th, starting at 7:00 am sharp! Please arrive early. It's easy! All you need to do is e-mail nicolevanderpoel@msn.com to reserve your lane on either or both dates, bring a counter/verifier person with you to take your splits/verify finish, enter your results online and list CMS as your team! You will share a lane, side by side as no circle swimming is allowed. Clip Boards, split sheets, pencils, stop watches and entry information will be provided! Come on Colorado Swimmers, challenge yourselves and a friend to swim either or both the 2014 USMS Speedo 3000/6000 yd. or meter ePostal National Championships!! Let's show the rest of the country how Colorado Masters Swimmers GO" POSTAL at Altitude! Nicole Vanderpoel, COMSA Long Distance Pool Chair |
2014 USAS ( US Aquatics Sports) Convention Wrap Up
| United States Masters Swimming hosts a convention and meetings of the House of Delegates in the fall of each year. During the convention, the yearly budgets are approved, elections of officers may take place, organizational rules and bylaws may be amended, and the general direction of the organization is set for the coming year. The USMS Convention is held as part of the annual US Aquatic Sports convention, together with USA Swimming, USA Diving, USA Synchronized Swimming, and USA Water Polo. This September, 8 delegates from Colorado attended the convention. Here are a few highlights from the committee meetings attended:
from championship committee-
The following announcements affecting Nationals were made at convention last week:
1) Meet entry deadline will move from 35 days prior to the start of competition (typically a Wed or Thurs) to the following Monday (30-31 days prior to the start of competition). This basically means swimmers will have one extra weekend prior to the deadline.
2) All events 200 and up will be deck seeded at both 2015 Nationals. Other seeding decisions (e.g. by time, by age group, combining genders, etc.) will be determined once entries close and meet timelines are generated. But the change is to declare deck seeding for all the 200s upfront.
3) Meet rosters (name, age, gender, club) will be published "real-time" as swimmers enter the meet as opposed to having to wait until after the entry deadline to be available. This way coaches may better track who has entered (and who has not!) instead of having to wait until the entry deadline when it is too late to find out somebody forgot to enter.
4) Swimmers may enter both distance events at 2015 Spring Nationals (subject to some NQT restrictions). The 1650 will be first and the 1000 will be second.
5) The warm-up policy on distance day has been changed to require the pool to be open until 5pm or 30 minutes after the end of the last heat, whichever is later (as opposed to 60 minutes after the last heat ends).
For San Antonio spring nationals in 2015 the entry deadline will be midnight on Monday, March 23, 2015.
Pool:
1) USMS will comply with FINA's rules on the use of a backstroke ledge: When using a backstroke ledge at the start, the toes of both feet must be in contact with the end wall or face of the touchpad. Bending the toes over the top of the touchpad is prohibited.
The 2015 Spring and Summer Nationals were confirmed: San Antonio, Texas, and Cleveland, Ohio respectively.
The 2016 Spring and Summer Nationals were announced: Greensboro, NC and Mt Hood, Oregon respectively.
details, dates and more info
2) The check-off challenge (complete one of each event at your own pace, at any time in the year) will be hosted by a team GKMS of Tennessee, and is entitled "Big Orange Check-Off Challenge". It will include both a shirt and a cap.
Open Water:
1) USMS is focusing on updating and developing safety guidelines, as well as collaborating with USA Swimming to create training sessions for event directors and officials.
2) USMS will continue to maintain a $1000 surcharge for open water events to cover insurance costs in 2015. A task force is working on ways to create a more sustainable model (eliminating that fee) for 2016 and beyond.
3) A minimum water temperature of 60 degrees Farenheit was added to the open water rules. If the water temp is predicted to be lower than 60 at the start of an event, then the safety plan has to have a beefed up thermal plan (above and beyond the standard thermal plan), which is reviewed by the USMS safety plan administrator prior to sanction approval.
Coaches
1) USMS announced the first-ever Masters Level 4 coaches (there were 10 coaches from around the country receiving this designation). A full list of over 1000 Masters certified coaches can be found on the USMS website.
2) Look for another coaches certification training class in the Denver area in 2015!
3) COMSA is encouraging all coaches to host check-off challenge workouts and special postal workouts to get more participation from these no-pressure online signup events...They are fun challenges and cost <$20 to enter!!
Awards
1) USMS' most prestigious award went to Hill Carrow of North Carolina. This award is presented to the volunteer who epitomizes the spirit of our founding father, Captain Ransom J Arthur.
2) The highly honored coach of the year award was presented to Cokie Lepinski of Swymnut Masters in California.
3) USMS swimmers inducted into the International Masters Swimming Hall of Fame: Jean Troy, David Guthrie, Tim Shead http://www.usms.org/articles/articledisplay.php?aid=3026
4) Several more awards were presented to deserving volunteers. For a full story, please visit: http://www.usms.org/articles/articledisplay.php?aid=3025
Sports Medicine and Science
1) Convention Presentation- Presentation given at the convention by Dr. Jim Miller and Alica Kendig, MS, RD and Sport Dietitian for the US Olympic Committee on the topic of Nutrition for Swimmers.
2) Educational booths at spring and summer nationals this year were related to Skin Health. Skin cancer educational information, sunscreen and lip protection samples were provided as well as complimentary skin checks by a dermatologist.
Topics for next years educational booths at the national pool championships and possibly including the open water championships were discussed.
3) Research Projects - Study involving dryland practices of masters swimmers was conducted and published in the September/October issue of swimmer magazine. Titled "Fish out of Water"
http://www.usmsswimmer.com/issue.php?i=59
Future projects includeassisting a college thesis project, study of hearing loss and longevity.
4) Sports Medicine and Science Blog - ongoing development.
The goal is to connect the knowledge of the Sports Medicine & Science Committee with other USMS members with questions related to the topics of sports medicine and science.
Other
"State of USMS" and "Learn to Swim" (Swimming Saves Lives) program information is posted on Rob Butcher's blog, at http://forums.usms.org/blog.php?9783-Rob-Butcher
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COMSATRACKER
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 The Colorado (COMSA) LMSC of USMS had been tracking open water swimmers the "old fashioned" way with pen and paper as long as they can remember. The processes involved volunteer members having to print and deliver paper logs weekly during the summer months to "The Pond" (a non-motorized lake within Chatfield State Park in Littleton, CO) to have them available for volunteer monitors during open water swim. This process not only took valuable amounts of members' time but the process also consumed a lot of paper. On top of that, the papers could fly away, get wet and illegible or simply lost all together. And, once the summer open water season comes to an end, a COMSA member would have to sift through all the records and enter them into the computer to get the sum of the total swimmer "splashes," a long and tedious process for the member assisting with this task.
This summer COMSA contracted to Josh Duffy, a USMS member and 2014 Electrical Engineering graduate at The Colorado School of Mines and Michael Pierce a graduate student in Engineering and Technology Management also at "Mines" to build out a mobile and desktop web application (app) for tracking open water swimming. Josh and Michael are co-owners of "Affektive Software," a software firm based in Lakewood, Colorado. "COMSATRACKER 1.0" successfully debuted May 1, 2014, in time for the summer open water season.
The app was built to be cross-platform so it would work on any mobile device. COMSA board members accessed the app with a variety of devices such as Android Phones, Apple Tablets, and Desktop computers (both Mac + PC). This insured that any member with a smartphone would have access to the app at The Pond.
COMSA and Affektive Software collaborated on the design and flow of the app. After the "Login" page, the app features a "Check In" page that will search for Colorado members in the USMS database and allows a volunteer to check in a swimmer by searching for their last name. If the swimmer is not found the volunteer has the option of refreshing the database; especially handy if the member just registered on their phone in the parking lot or for searching for an "Out Of State" swimmer in the national USMS database. COMSA also collected phone numbers for all the members in the pond to be able to contact them if they were not checked out of the pond at the end of the swimming session. The monitor could easily click the phone number link next to the swimmer's name to ensure that the swimmer had left the pond safely.
The "Check-Out" page allows volunteers to check out swimmers with a single click of a button. Given the situation of many swimmers being on the "Check Out" page the volunteer can either search by last name, sort the list alphabetically or scroll down until the specific swimmer is found.
COMSA also requested an "Analytics" page. On this page, COMSA administrators can select a start date and end date and query all the total swimmers during that period. There is also the ability to export the records to be viewed and manipulated (for reporting purposes) in spreadsheet format. This feature will prove especially handy at the end of season when COMSA has to report to Colorado State Parks a summary of the "splashes" at The Pond.
Here are what some of the volunteers are saying:
"It's definitely quicker to look up each person as they check in... No more paper shuffling. And much quicker to check people out as the checkout list only includes swimmers who are checked in."
"I think the best thing about the new system is the paperless aspect. It's great to know that we've saved a few trees."
As of September 2014, COMSA has had 500 logins by volunteer monitors and tracked over 5,000 open water swimmers via the app. Monitors on-site at The Pond seemed especially eager to learn how to use the app and then to use it. Josh and Michael also created a downloadable one-page tutorial, which proved very effective.
In lieu of the "old-fashioned" paper process, the app is streamlining record keeping for COMSA. For more information check out http://www.openwatertracker.com or contact Josh Duffy directly at josh.m.duffy@gmail.com.
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What's Happening at U.S.M.S.
| | As members of COMSA, you are also members of U. S. Masters Swimming. Check that website for information on Fitness Events, Coaching tips, Competitions nation wide, and many other areas of interest to swimmers everywhere .... U. S. Masters Swimming |
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CMS Apparel
|  Colorado Masters apparel is now available through the Swim Team Store website. Long and short sleeve tee shirts and hoodies are available in black or white. Shorts and swim suits are in black only. Colors are all shown in black, the white choice is available once item is clicked on. All items have the Colorado Masters Swimming logo from this year as seen above. Purchase your apparel now and have items shipped directly to you. http://www.thelifeguardstore.com/lgsteams/productcart/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=2980&idAffiliate=677 username: colorado password: masters
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