USA Swimming Volunteer Officials Needed

The Durango Swim Club is looking for volunteers who would be interested in becoming officials to assist in the conduct of swimming competition. Officials not only conduct swim meets for USA Swimming, but they also assist other organizations, such as high school and recreation leagues, in conducting their meets. If you are interested, please contact us for more information and continue exploring the links on this page.

Five Reasons to Become an Official

  • You’ll be working with the greatest group of volunteers in all sports.
  • You’ll be close to the action. The bleachers aren’t comfortable anyway!
  • High satisfaction; low pay.
  • It’s a great way to meet future Olympians—unless you already have one in your home
  • Great food and hospitality, and you can’t beat the price!

Whats the Process? (click for a quck overview)

The good news is that prospective officials do not need to wait until a clinic is arranged anymore – the clinics are on-line and are asynchronous.

To become a Stroke and Turn official, you:

1.       Have a login to usaswimming.org.  DO NOT use your athlete’s login.  If you don’t have one you can create one.  To create one, you click on the “Login” menu at the top right, and then select “Create a Login” pill. 

2.       Take both the “Foundations of Officiating” and “Stroke and Turn Certification Course” courses.  Once logged into USASwimming.org,  select the “Education” pill and then select “Officials” to see the courses.

3.       Register as a non-athlete member of USA Swimming. There is a fee for this, if not sure officiating is for you, you may do one session of on-deck mentorship before registering.

4.       Let your Zone Officials Representative know that you have started – so they can put you on a mailing list of upcoming meets. You can also look at www.swimcolorado.org for meets outside your team’s schedule if interested.   See below to find your Zone Officials Representative. 

5.       Take the “Athlete Protection Training” course from the Education pill on USASwimming.org. This will be automatically tracked by the USA Swimming – however it may take 24-48 hours for it to show up.

6.       Complete a Background Check.  Select the Education pill then Membership Requirements to see the “Background Check” course.  Regardless of if you have a TS/SCI clearance, law enforcement, teacher, etc background check – you must do it again through this system.  This will be automatically tracked by the USA Swimming – however it may take 24-48 hours for it to show up. 

7.       Complete a “Concussion  Protocol” training course – see the information on USA Swimming’s website under education and “membership requirements.” Once you complete this course, please forward your completion certificate to [email protected] to get recorded. 

8.       Complete the on-deck mentorship.  You are required to observe and demonstrate knowledge of all the strokes, individual medley and relays.  Your training log can be found here.  Make sure you bring this log with you to every meet and keep it protected from water.  A couple of tips for attending training meets:

a.       Contact the Meet Referee prior to the meet to let them know that you are coming and the sessions you wish to train at.  This gives the Meet Referee a heads up so they can make sure they have good mentors available for you during your training sessions.

b.       Bring your log and a writing instrument to take notes. 

c.       The Colorado Officials uniform is a white polo over black shorts/pants with black shoes and socks.  You do not need this during training – you may where what you have.

d.        

9.       When done, you can send your completed log to your zone officials’ representative.  The state is divided into zones – See here for a diagram. (https://www.gomotionapp.com/wzcolsc/UserFiles/Image/QuickUpload/csi-geographical-zones_062012.pdf). Once you know your zone, you can find the email for your zone here: https://www.gomotionapp.com/team/wzcolsc/page/system/res/28864

10.  For your efforts, upon certification, CSI will give you a coupon for a no-charge white polo with the CSI logo on it and a CSI Officials Name Tag.

Thank you very much for your interest in becoming an official!  If you have any questions, please reach out to your Zone Officials’ Representative – who can get your questions answered.  We are all volunteers and without volunteers like you, we would not be able to have legal swim meets.