It is our goal to arrange assignments so that each family only has to do one assignment per day. Assignments are given for each family and not necessarily for each swimmer. If a family has two swimmers registered in the meet, in the same session, generally they still will only get one assignment. They may be asked to do two assignments if needed. However, families participating in both sessions will most likely need to "fill" a chair in both sessions.

We, like other teams, are assigned timing chairs based on the number of swimmers we have registered for the meet. The host team is responsible for assigning teams their chairs. Days before the meet starts, the host team is given the number of swimmers registered for the meet from each team. They then divide up the chairs accordingly. Teams with many swimmers will have more chairs than teams with fewer swimmers. Most of the time, the host team will look at the registered swimmers in each session when making the assignments. Once the host team assigns us our requirement of chairs, it is our responsibility to fill those chairs for the entire meet.

A problem here is when families register for the meet but do not actually show up to participate. By doing this, you are increasing the likelihood of more timing chairs for our team without contributing to the families to do so. Please take this into account when registering your swimmer and deciding not to attend.

In all honesty, there is rarely a problem in passing on the responsibility from the team to the families. With this team especially, most of you understand what is required and do what is needed. Occasionally, families fail to understand the importance of their participation in helping the team out, which means the responsibility is passed onto the other families already fulfilling their requirement. This understandably causes tension among the families. This can be avoided simply by realizing that you need to do your part.

When registering your swimmer, realize what your responsibility is, and take care of it. A couple of excuses used for not timing have been:

- "I don’t know what to do." Well, from my point of view, brushing your teeth properly is more complicated than running a stopwatch. Not knowing what to do is understandable if you have never done it, simply ask and someone can teach you in 5 seconds. However, allowing this fear of the unknown to keep you from fulfilling your responsibility is unacceptable.

- "I am the only parent here for my swimmer or/and I have to watch the siblings." Well, that is not true. We coaches are there. One of our goals is to help the swimmers become independently responsible for their participation in the meet. If your timing, we will be there for your swimmer to help if needed, but will also teach them to take some responsibility for themselves. Also, we have some amazing parents on this team. Many of which already help each other to help the swimmers. Inability to get help is simply an inability to ask.

As far as bringing the younger siblings along to the meet. That is fine, however, before you register for the meet, understand what your responsibility is going to be and make arrangements. Remember, each family is responsibly for "filling" their assignment, not for necessarily actually doing the timing. If you can make arrangement with someone else to time for you, that great, as long as you filled your assignment.

- "My parents aren’t here, I was dropped off." Generally this is the case with the older swimmers. With older swimmers, they themselves must fulfill their families requirement. Special arrangement may be needed to make this possible but it will be done.

- "I came with another family." Well, this bothers me from a personally point of view when parents are not there for their swimmers. Occasionally, I understand hat there are circumstances in which this is the case. As mentioned above, each family is responsible to fulfill their requirement. If your swimmer attends a meet with another family, that family will be responsible for both their own, and your timing requirements. Keep this in mind both if you plan on sending your swimmer with another family and/or if agree on taking a swimmer for another family. Special arrangements may be made to avoid timing twice but this is not something that I want to encourage and support. I expect parents to be there for their swimmers, it’s that simple.

As mentioned earlier, we do not have a problem with this on this team. There have been some isolated cases but I hope this will help inform and remedy these in the future. Currently the team does not have a policy to deal with families who do not fulfill their requirement because it has never been a problem. I do not expect anything to change. Let’s try and remember what our goals are for the swimmers participating in the meets and what they have been doing to have a successful meet. Once we do that, taking on our responsibility for timing seems so easy and insignificant. It is the least we can do. So let’s just understand what we need to do and do it.

Thank you, Coach Devon