FOR ALL OFFICIALS

With the launch of USA Swimming’s new SWIMS database on September 1, 2022, there will be temporary interruptions to the Officials Tracking System (OTS). Please review the information below for important updates and release dates related to OTS functionality.

USA Swimming staff and members of USA Swimming’s Officials Committee have been meeting regularly to prioritize the development of various aspects of OTS. LSC Officials chairs were invited to a meeting on August 25th to help answer pending questions. Going forward, your LSC Officials Chair will be your contact for OTS updates.

OTS Meet Tracking

OTS Meet Tracking will be the first portion of OTS to relaunch. OTS Meet Tracking will launch October 3, 2022. Meets will already be loaded into SWIMS by LSC sanction chairs. Officials, sessions, and positions worked will be input for each OTS meet. One of the benefits of SWIMS 3.0 is that sessions are already created for all meets, so it will be much simpler to set up OTS meets.

National Officials Certifications

The release date for National Officials Certification Applications, Workflow Approvals, and Officials History is still being determined.

Online Testing

The release date for an updated Online Officials Testing application is still being determined. In the interim, certification tests will be available using Google Forms. USA Swimming will provide the links to the applicable tests which will be auto graded in Google Forms. Once completed, officials will automatically receive a copy of their results. Officials will then need to forward the test results to their LSC Official's Chair for manual tracking. During the interim period, the USA Swimming Officials Committee will also utilize Google Forms to track test completions. More details on this system will be forthcoming.

LSC Officials Certifications

LSC Officials Certifications will be temporarily interrupted starting September 1. USA Swimming and the USA Swimming Officials Committee are giving LSCs the option to extend their current officials certifications for an additional year. If your LSC accepts this option, USA Swimming will automatically extend the applicable certifications and all certification expirations will be updated when LSC Officials Certifications relaunches.

If an LSC chooses not to have their Officials Certifications extended, the LSC will be responsible for manually tracking all certification updates during the OTS down time. Additionally, the LSC will be responsible for manually adding that data back into OTS when the application relaunches. USA Swimming will not import manually-tracked data into the new OTS after the application relaunches.

LSCs will be able to manually enter LSC Officials Certifications starting December 5, 2022.

Evaluations & Activities

Given the need to prioritize the above components, a release date for Evaluations and Activities is still being determined and will be communicated at a later date.

For questions, please contact your LSC Officials Chair.