Hello Indigo Park Stingray Families-

As this is the last swim season for our Meet Referee, Skip Jensen, we are seeking a volunteer to take over the role of Meet Referee beginning next year. We would like for the volunteer to have the opportunity to shadow Skip during at least one of our two home meets this year to make the transition easier. To help with your consideration, a brief description of the responsibilities of the role of Meet Referee is provided below. If you are interested or have any questions about taking on this role, please reach out directly to Skip (757-810-4553; [email protected]).

The Meet Referee is an extremely important volunteer job for our swim team. The Meet Referee is the chief official for the meet and is responsible for ensuring a safe and equitable meet for both teams. The Meet Referee coordinates all officials for the meet, conducts stroke and turn briefings, lane assignments, rotations, and assigns jurisdiction. The Meet Referee also assigns early take off judges for relays, reviews and approves all DQ slips, answers questions from other officials, the scorers’ table, and coaches. The Meet Referee also reviews and approves the final scored meet. The Meet Referee is the individual that blows the whistle during the meets to indicate changing of events and when to mount the blocks and then turns the meet over to the Starter to signal the official start of an event. The Meet Referee must be knowledgeable on all VPSU and USA Swimming rules (this is part of the mandatory 3-hour annual training, mentioned below) and is also responsible as a back-up / secondary Stroke and Turn Judge, Sweeps Judge, and False Start Judge. Wow! While that sounds like a huge responsibility (and it is), remember that the Stingrays have a whole army of volunteers with experience who are there to help! Also, by shadowing Skip this year, you will gain experience and knowledge to make the transition easier.

The Meet Referee often stays in this position for several years and typically comes from the experienced ranks of our deck support volunteers (Timers, Scorers, Clerk of Course, etc.) or our volunteer officials (Stroke and Turn, Sweeps, Starter, etc.), however, anyone that is willing to take on a significant volunteer leadership role can fill the position. The time requirement for this role would include approximately 3 hours of annual mandatory VPSU training, and ability to work each home meet from setup thru closing and cleanup, plus an hour or so the night prior to the meet to review meet heat sheets, once they are submitted by the Head Coaches, with the Head Scorer, and some small amount of time to answer any questions that come up between meets. A Meet Referee should have good organizational, communication, and leadership skills and be able to conduct critical thinking and decision making in short order (especially during meets).

I know this is a lot to digest, but, again, this is a critical volunteer position for our swim team as we cannot hold a home swim meet without a Meet Referee. Thank you for considering and see you at our next swim meet!