Swimming is a volunteer intensive sport as swim meets require a lot of hands to run smoothly and efficiently.
Every family is responsible each season to volunteer at meets a minimum of two times. If you have more than one child on the team, you must sign-up two times plus one for each additional child. This spreads the burden of volunteering out among all of the families. Framingham Swim team is known for its efficient meet management and friendly and welcoming parent volunteers.
Experienced swim parents know the only way to survive the heat of the summer meets is by volunteering on deck! The deck is cooler than the stands, and the time flies by!
Training and shadowing are provided at the beginning of the season for all deck jobs.
Parent Volunteer Positions
This group of parents provides the overall management of the team including helping with communication, registration, volunteer coordination, meet management and fundraising. Comprised of parents with swimmers on both summer and winter teams, this group recruits all other support from parents that is needed throughout the season.
The Starter is the person from the home team who starts each race and is largely responsible for helping to move the meet along. The Starter works with the other officials, timers, coaches and swimmers to make sure everyone is ready for the start of each race. For our home meets in the winter we like to have one starter and one parent to work the start watch.
This is a winter only position. The Bullpen is where the swimmers are organized by event lane and heat. Volunteers in the bullpen separate swimmers by gender and age group into their events and heats and then ensure that the swimmers are waiting in the correct order and lane
During the summer these volunteers make sure that the younger swimmers advance through the chairs and to the blocks in the correct order
Add content
Put all equipment away that we used for the meet, go through the stands and the pool area picking up any trash or lost and found items.
The Stroke and Turn Judge will make sure that the swimmers adhere to the rules of swimming. Each team must supply a Stroke and Turn Judge at every meet. This position requires training at the Stroke and Turn Clinic.
Scorers work with our Meet Management Software to record swimmers times and keep score.
3 People are assigned to the finish end of each lane for timing and recording of the times. Stopwatches are used and times are recorded at the end of each race. The winter league requires that the home team have two times and the visiting team have one time for each lane.
There are generally two back up timers starting watches with every race. If a timer’s watch fails to start, the timer raises his/her hand and the backup timer replaces the malfunctioning watch with the running watch.
The setup crew will need to arrive at least 30 minutes before the swimmer’s check in to help set up the home meets (get table and chairs and other equipment needed for the meet.)
Sets up, sell and clean up the food concession stand. This is our biggest fundraiser every year and we rely on the income from the snack bar to help pay for our end of the season awards night.