Club affiliation

Here's my view about club affiliation as we show it on the web.

1) The information on club/team that comes to us thru Top Ten is very untrustworthy and Pieter does not keep it in his work files.

2) The value of "club" is for local promotional purposes, or for local pride, and for informational purposes for the rest of us who want to know about a club, or for national promotional purposes. It doesn't have any legal or administrative significance. The listing on the web has no bearing on the 2 month rule for changing affiliation, or even on whose relay you can swim on.

3) While I haven't received a Registrar file since July, there's no reason once we have the process smoothed out why I shouldn't receive it quarterly, or whatever we want.

4) It seems to me to be very important that we have as solid a link between competition information and Registration as possible. Names are not much help. Names/ages are a little better, but still faulty. The solution that Pieter, Esther, and I feel has possibilities is the permanent swimmer id which we've implemented

(reasonably) confidently and without duplication for 9365 USMS swimmers,
tentatively pending learning birthday for 868 All-Americans no longer registered,
for a total of 10233 people we are tracking.

We routinely apply it to all 34,000 USMS people, but we only control against duplication for those who compete. Using this swimmer id, we transfer from the Registar file to competition files SEX, LNAME, FNAME, MI, CITY, STATE, ZIP, LMSC & CLUB_ABBR. This, we feel, puts us in a good position to produce information in a way that swimmers will like and that has potential promotional value for USMS. This also gives us a check on certain very critical information like age and gender.

5) This process, including linking the Registration files and the competition files so they are not inconsistent, is difficult enough, that I don't allow any inconsistency between the latest registration file and the competition files except gender. If we know the Registration file is wrong on gender, we are willing for the competition files to differ.

6) History follows the swimmer. Everything you've ever done (in our archives) is associated with you and therefore follows you to your new club & LMSC. Given how unreliable our current methods for posting club are, I don't think we can do it any other way.

Conclusion) I think the process is working reasonably well given that the swimmer id does not exist in either the Registration process or in the Competition process. It is, however, time consuming and error prone. The next step for improvement will be when USMS chooses to make the swimmer id the basis both for controlling registration and competitive entries.

by Carl House, 2/29/00, text below is by Nancy Ridout, 2/29/00

It is not necessary to officially transfer to an unattached status unless you wish that to be your official status for the foreseeable future and wish to have that be listed in the official USMS records. Not transfering to Unat is basically a convenience to swimmers wishing to change club affiliation, i.e., who within a short time will be representing a new club; they can just list themselves as unattached for meets that take place during the 60-day waiting period. If, however, you wish to be officially listed as unattached and plan to remain unattached for a period of time, you do need to notify the registrar and transfer to that status. Whatever your affiliation is at your initial yearly registration will remain your official affiliation until a transfer is received and processed.

Nancy