City of Glasgow Swim Team

COGST Call for volunteers!

Swimming Technical Officials (STOs) are required at all Meets to ensure accreditation. If a Meet is not accredited, times achieved will only count as training times and are not eligible for certain competitions.

At, only, the second Meet of the new season an announcement had to be made requesting additional STOs in the gallery to come forward to help or the first session of the Meet would not have accreditation.

Thankfully, parents did come forward and offered their help, but all too often it is the same faces we are relying on to assist poolside, and while we certainly appreciate their assistance, it would be fairer if the load was more evenly distributed.

Unfortunately, due to a failure of the electronics combined with a lack of STOs poolside the second session of this Meet was not accredited and children did swim times which, if accredited, could have been used at Scottish National Championships.

The requirement in the event of an electronic failure is three timekeepers per lane, so please do not be put off volunteering because it looks as though there are enough already, this is very rarely the case.

Read on to find out what we can all do to help ensure Meets are accredited..

The more STOs the Club has, the better. Appreciating it may look daunting from the sidelines it is in fact very easy. If you do have a child competing at any level then we respectfully request a parent/guardian becomes a timekeeper. This is especially important for National Development, National Age and National Squad swimmers. However, it is important all meets are accredited.

If you would like to see what is involved and how easy it is, why not come along to one of our time trials and offer to help, this will allow you to see, first hand, what a timekeeper does.

Please consider offering your services, swimmers rely on us to ensure their hard work does not go unrewarded.

If you are a STO please offer your services at least every third Meet your child attends.

The more swimmers we enter into competitions the more officials we must provide. If we do not have enough volunteers to cover STO positions, we may have to consider looking at our present entry system to ensure fairness prevails.

At all West District Meets we are fined £50 per person, per session, we are short of the required amount of STOs we should be providing. Therefore, it is possible we could be fined £400 for one West District Meet!!!!

By offering assistance every single swimmer benefits.

If you are interested in assisting us please contact myself in the first instance.

Christine Jackson

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