SRST CRITICAL UPDATES MUST READ
SRST Family,
This is a three part news bulletin:
1) Schedule updates effective Dec. 2013 and beyond: CLICK HERE
2) Needed, SRST Officials: READ THE FLYER, CLICK HERE
3) My support of Krissy Davis, our Officials Director + Important Philosophy to help frame volunteering and support of the team....READ BELOW:
SRST Family,
Our Officials Director, Krissy Davis has been working hard in her volunteer position and has secured us training for new parents....SEE ATTACHED FLYER.
Krissy has a section on the team website in Boosters/SRST Teams....check it out.
We really need more parents to help as officials, so if you have been thinking of a way to contribute this is an awesome opportunity to meet a need.
Thank you Krissy!!!
A little philosophy to help set the stage for volunteering...
This is going to be a super short summary of how USA Swim Teams/Clubs are run.
1) Board of Directors owned/operated, Non-Profit: Parents run the day-to-day operations of the team including staffing, paying taxes, budgeting, scheduling, pool contracts, volunteer coordination, fundraising, strategic planning, communications, websites, and a host of other duties and responsibilities that make a team run. All of this has to be managed with a parent volunteer group that is in constant change.
2) Coach owned and operated with a separate supporting Booster Organization: This is the structure of our team. Obviously my opinion is biased, but I could list a ton of reasons why this structure is far superior to the above. I'll give you just a few quick bullet points that illustrate positive aspects of a coach-owned team.
- Cohesive/collaborative staff. This is inherent in a system where politics are removed. In many clubs the Head Age Group Coach will undermine the Head Coach to gain political favor with the parent group, eventually resulting in the Head Coach being fired and the Head Age Group Coach advancing. This happens more often than you can imagine and it's never positive for the whole of the organization. In the Coach owned team, it is clear that the best way to advance is to do a great job and contribute to the team and support fellow coaches. This results in a very nice environment for the kids and parents and coaches.
- No internal team politics. In a board run team, the parents have a group of 4-8 board members they can approach with their personal agendas. Communication is rarely straight forward and often people will position themselves on the board to better push their personal agenda/beliefs vs. serve the membership to best impact the overall health and long term success of the team. This political structure is removed when the Coach owns the team. Parents communicate directly and all communication is "above board" and in the open for all to see and understand. This results in an extremely fair, calm and positive environment for all.
- Full-time commitment to daily operation and finances. In board run teams, we see parents with varying degrees of financial knowledge and commitment managing the books, paying the bills and interpreting the trends. Transition from volunteer to volunteer is never easy. Often we see board-run teams in varying degrees of financial trouble...especially with taxes and the IRS. In a coach owned team you have a person who is fully committed to running the team AND the business. The question of course is, "does this coach have the business knowledge and expertise to perform the task successfully"? While there are many challenges and we are not close to being "comfortable" I have successfully paid down a massive amount of debt and have run in the black. By staying in close communication with several entities (owed large sums of money totaling nearly 50K), I have managed to keep the pool lights on and the reputation solid in Pacific Northwest Swimming for the families of SRST. This was not the prior trend.
As stated, there are tons of additional points that could be made, but hopefully these three bullets are just enough to give you a general idea of how our team is different than the average team (a vast majority are parent owned non-profits).
False assumptions...
Parents are not needed in a coach-owned team. Nope. Not true…not even close. Parents are critical and needed to fill key roles. Without parents, we have no swim meets and zero funds being raised to support the team. Even in a coach-owned team the Booster Organization contributes finances for "coaching services" and as a result the monthly training fees required to run the business are maintained at a competitive market rate. Without Booster contributions the fees required by the business would be about 30% higher.
So…how can you help? There are many needs, but why not consider becoming an official!
What does the future hold?
Many discussions need to take place between SRST and the supporting Boosters, but my vision is that SRST is a strong contributor to hosting meets for Pacific Northwest Swimming at the new Aquatic Center in Snohomish. Not to do so would be to fail to recognize how fortunate/blessed we are and to take the Snohomish Aquatic Center for granted; this isn’t going to happen.
We will run high quality swim meets and be an example for all in the state to model. We will have the best officials, a top notch computer crew and excellence in hospitality. We will become a well-oiled machine that serves our swimmers, the community of Snohomish County and our entire association (Pacific Northwest Swimming).
Thank you for considering becoming an official. Thank you for supporting the team. We have an awesome parent group already and some real superstar volunteers. We wouldn’t be the same without YOU…WE ARE A TEAM!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING! – Coach Ben and Staff
