PHOENIX, Arizona, July 12. COMING off a successful Masters nationals in Omaha, Neb., USMS Executive Director Rob Butcher joins today's edition of The Morning Swim Show to talk about the process of getting the Olympic Trials venue.
In an effort to increase the exposure of Masters swimming, Butcher wants to continue to have Masters nationals follow major USA Swimming meets, and he talks about the work he is doing to make that happen. He also talks about the upcoming Pan American Masters championships and how this large meet could only increase the scope of Masters swimming. Be sure to visit SwimmingWorld.TV for more video interviews.
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Tiffany Elias: This is the Morning Swim Show for Thursday, July 12, 2012. I am your host Tiffany Elias and as many of you know the U.S swimming Trials were held in Omaha just over a week ago, and last week U.S Masterss have the opportunity to hold nationals at the very same facility. Today in the FINIS Monitor is Rob Butcher, the Executive Director of USMS. Rob, thanks for joining us today.
Rob Butcher: Yeah good morning Tiffany. Thanks for having us.
Tiffany Elias: All right well you have had a really busy couple of weeks. How are you feeling coming off of Masterss Nationals?
Rob Butcher: We are on a high right now. We did follow the Olympic Trials. We had 1,276 entries for the Marriot Summer Nationals in Omaha. The Trials concluded on Monday. We had Tuesday and Wednesday to turn the facility over. On Wednesday we did a clinic with Rowdy and Misty opened it up for warm up and Thursday we started racing and raced all the way through Sunday night.
Tiffany Elias: So now this was a really big deal for Masterss to hold their meet in the same facility as Trials. How did you go about locking down that same pool out in Omaha?
Rob Butcher: Well it probably started in 1992 and I am sort of saying that in jest, but that is when I attended my first Olympic Trials I have been at everyone since, and you know Tiffany when I went in 2004 and we migrated from Indianapolis to Long Beach I was there on the very early front end when U.S.A. Swimming decided they were going to move outside of a venue. And so it has just been in the back of my mind and– so I was hired about 2 weeks before the 2008 Olympic Trials. Now I was on the ground there the entire time and got a chance to go behind the scenes with Chuck and Mike and Harold Cliff and all the guys there at U.S.A. Swimming and what else on the ground in the 08 Trials. I just got approached. I was meeting a lot of Masters swimmers who wanted an opportunity to swim in this venue as well and so we walked away from there and said, “If we can make it happen we will certainly do everything possible.”So when U.S.A. Swimming decided they were going back in 2012 to Omaha and their dates were locked and we started looking at all the available options whether we went after the swim vocational and before the Trials we went after the Trials and it just turned out that going after the Trials was the best opportunity for USMS so we partnered with U.S.A. Swimming, we did some special ticket packages for Masters swimmers. We couldn't have done any of this without Myrtha Pools agreeing to keep the pools in place for next week. Omega timing system that we kept up, the Omaha Sports Commission, U.S.A. Swimming working with us in order to extend their lease. So there were probably five or six really big moving parts for us in order to make this happen, and our thought on this Tiffany was it would be great to do a Masterss nationals inside of the Trials venue but what we want to do is raise the profile on Masterss swimming and our purpose is really pretty simple, we just want to encourage more adults to swim. And so if we can get our name out there, Masterss swimming, and we can make it more at the top of minds that was our thought process going into it. We were able to secure some new sponsorship with Marriot and Garmin and a couple of others that are outside the swimming space. It helped us support this opportunity and so we are able to pull it off — 1,276 entries that is the second biggest long course meet in the history of USMS.
Tiffany Elias: Well, I would have to think that holding Masterss Nationals in the same place as Trials would have to boost those numbers. Did you see a drastic increase in memberships and number of people signing up for the meet just because it was in Omaha?
Rob Butcher: In Nebraska in particular is considered a very small LMSC for us. A couple of years ago they had less than I think probably 50 or 60 members and this go around–they were up to 166 that actually registered for the mee,t so there is a big pop within the Nebraska area. The key for them is going to be to maintain this momentum going forward getting pool space, getting to get coaches in place that can support those efforts that are there so about 10% of our meet came from the local Nebraska LMSC. 90% came from throughout the area, what we did notice though is we actually live streamed the entire meet and we had more than 20,000 views over the weekend with an average view of about 30-plus minutes watching, so there was a big interest outside of just those that were there that wanted to watch our nationals and I mean I think that reaffirms to us at the interest is here. We have made our interest known that as U.S.A. Swimming is looking for their 2016 Trials, whether they go back to Omaha or somewhere else that USMS and our summer nationals would like to be part of that. Certainly, a lot of logistical pieces to work out with some financials, but you know if they can I think we definitely want to replicate this experience in 2016.
Tiffany Elias: So you think that you guys will try to piggyback U.S.A. Swimming almost in the future events to help keep that interest pretty high
?Rob Butcher: I think the Trials we have set a nice bar that we can look to achieve that again in 2016 whether we can do it for some of their Grand Prix events or other events. We would have to do a little bit more I think cooperation on those sites to see if that is feasible or not and see where those locations might be and you know if something it could be worked out.
Tiffany Elias: Now I was at Trials, the U.S. Trials, and that facility was just amazing. How was the feeling on the pool that compared to other national meets that you have held around the country?
Rob Butcher: For us, it was electirc. We kept the announcers in place. We kept the video services in place, a JumboTron in place, the boards that you saw in the warm up pool was in place. The entire warm up pool stayed in place. The competition pool stayed in place so I think we try to the best of our capability within Masterss swimming to replicate that experience as much as possible and I think as you know Jeff was there. He can tell you the energy was pretty high and there were some fantastic swims at our event too.
Tiffany Elias: Well, speaking of Jeff he is one of the few swimmers that Masterss had also competing in the Trials, so you guys must have been really proud of those Masterss swimmers that we are able to compete in Trials and then stick around for that following nationals meet.
Rob Butcher: Jeff and others are great ambassadors for us who embrace the spirit of what Masterss Swimming is all about, and then for them to be able to come to Masterss nationals and stick around and swim in our event. I know there is a lot of picture taking. There was a lot of high 5's, there was a lot of smiles and that is just again just part of the Masters spirit.
Tiffany Elias: Did it take more people to run this meet than normal or was there any extra preparation that you guys needed just because the facility was what it was compared to running it you know out in Auburn or North Carolina or somewhere like that?
Rob Butcher: A typical nationals will take somewhere around on the low end maybe 200 upwards at 300 plus volunteers in order to run. One thing that was unique here is we use the OMEGA timing system which was the video camera backup so we had in essence a clean deck with no timers so that reduced some of the need from the local LMSC, but Erin Sullivan and her group out there really stepped up. Area of registration, awards working in the hospitality village they made sure there is a first class experience for all the folks that were coming in.
Tiffany Elias: All right so what does the future of USMS look like for the next couple of years?
Rob Butcher: You know our future is really bright. We are on the doorstep of about 60,000 members. Just a few years ago when the organization made a transition from basically being all volunteer operated now volunteer governed, it was at around 40,000 members and that was just about 4 years ago so our membership numbers are going up. We think our visibility outside the swimming space is going up. We have more partnerships that we are putting in place as we look to the next year. In 2013 we are hosting for the first time on American soil the Masters Pan-American Championships is going to be in Sarasota. We have been given counsel that they think that we could end up somewhere around 3500 participants for that over 10 day event so I think for Masters Swimming everything seems to be heading in the right direction.
Tiffany Elias: Now the Pan-American Masters you have mentioned almost up to 25,000 swimmers, what is that going to require on the USMS or how are you able to coordinate an event that large when it is in some cases triple quadruple the amount that some of your meets are.
Rob Butcher: Yeah, it is actually 2,500 to 3,000.
Tiffany Elias: 2,500.
Rob Butcher: Yeah.
Tiffany Elias: Excuse me not 25,000.
Rob Butcher: That is still bigger, it is also that is twice the size of what our normal championships are, so the schedule has already been laid out. There are no more than 3 events per day. Some of the big challenges I have is actually with a language barrier so finding enough of the folks that are bilingual. They can speak Spanish and Portuguese and cater to folks from South America. Our hotel site is already up our Pan-American website is already up, so information is already out there. All of this information has been sent to all the countries within the UANA delegation inviting them to come and be part of it and we are seeing a lot of interest. The most recent Pan-American Masters were held in Brazil and they had over 2,000 swimmers just last year for that. So we think that the trend of the Pan-American Masters growing is going to continue in 2013.
Tiffany Elias: Well that is all really exciting stuff. Rob, congratulations on another successful nationals meet and thanks for taking the time to join us. I know you are not even home yet from your trip so we really appreciate it.
Rob Butcher: We appreciate all you guys support too. Thanks Tiffany.
Tiffany Elias: All right. Thanks Rob. All right well that is going to conclude today's Morning Swim Show. Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter so you can keep up with the latest stories and for more information go to USMS website so you can learn how to become a Masters swimmer if you are interested as well. I am your host Tiffany Elias and thanks again for joining us. We will see you for tomorrow's show.
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