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Welcome to the CoStA Officials page.
For our children to swim in licensed galas the organisers require qualified officials to run the event. The officials can come from the host club but they also come from participating clubs such as CoStA.
The ASA have introduced over the past year new rules that mean that for swimmers to get qualification times for county, regional and national galas they need to achieve these times at suitable licensed galas. These licensed gala can include Open meets but also Club Championships.
So, as a club we need to ensure that we have a pool of officials from which we can draw from to both support our own internal licensed club championships but also open meets that our children swim in.
Officials include a variety of positions including Timekeeper, Chief timekeeper, Judge 1 (starts and turns), Judge 2 (Stroke), Starter and Referee. Each one of these performs a critical role in ensuring the gala runs well but also that it is a fair event for all the swimmers.
Becoming an official does mean volunteering some of your time to the galas, but there are benefits which include being pool side when your child is swimming and it helps the time pass a bit quicker when you have a job to do.
Pathway to qualification
- Timekeeping qualification – this can be done at the club where a special timekeeping course is organised (run by the Herts ASA) or as part of Judge Level 1 training.
- Judge Level 1 (Turn Judge). There are two classroom sessions to learn everything you need to know about starts and turns, relay-hand over etc.
- Judge Level 2 (Stroke). There are two classroom sessions to learn everything you need to know about the 4 strokes.
- Judge 2 (S) – is the starter qualification. A level 4 meet (our club championships) can run with a Judge 2 (S) acting as the referee.
- Referee – is the top qualification.
From 2012 all timekeepers at County championships will need to be Judge level 1 qualified so that they can both take times and judge starts and turns so we would encourage any of our timekeepers who wish to get more involved to talk to our Officials Manager about how they can do that.
After the classroom sessions you will need to undertake a number of practical sessions at galas where you are mentored until passing the qualification.
For more details on the officials’ process do look the Herts ASA - Officials page on the the Herts ASA website has a page for Officials.
Do contact me if you would like to become an official or just want to find out a bit more about this area of volunteering.
A list of our current qualified officials and a schedule of training dates is available in the Club Documents - Officials Docs section of the website.
Andrew Ellis
CoStA Officials Manager
You can contact Andrew at officials@costaasc.org