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March 16, 2005 Dear Head Coach: The new USA Swimming web site now offers three features that we hope you and your club will utilize:

1. The Club Portal is a free “mini website” for your club. Even if you have a club website, the Club Portal is another avenue of communication for both your current members and, more importantly, potential new members searching for a club on the USA Swimming website. If you club already has a website this section is not meant to displace it, but rather augment it for people searching for clubs and/or pools the USA swimming website.

2. The Club Profile is an information gathering tool for USA Swimming. The more we know about our clubs, the better we can service them, but we need your help in gathering information. Please take the time to fill out the questionnaire.

3. The Facilities Inventory will help USA Swimming with the ambitious goal of gathering basic information on every pool in the United States. By entering your facility information people will also be able to find your practice and meet facilities with the new mapping feature found in the updated “Club Search”.

One of the ways that a user on the USA Swimming website will access your club portal is through the new club search feature. Here is a sample picture of what the new club search feature will look like:

Enclosed you will find detailed instructions on how to set up and update your Club Portal (page 2), update your Club Profile (page 6), and enter your Facility Information (page 12) through the club profile. In each of the three areas please follow the instructions step by step.

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CLUB PORTAL Each club is automatically assigned a free club portal. You will be able to post basic information about your club such as:

• General contact information, including a link to your current club website Announcements

• Practice Schedules • Upcoming Meets • Meet Results • Facilities

Your CLUB PORTAL Home Page will look like this:

People will be able to access your club portal by:

Using the Club Search feature Going directly to your new club address:

http://www.usaswimming.org/(2 letter LSC code)/Club code.club The Club Portal Home Page allows you to show both your current website AND the Club Portal web address. You can maintain both. If you do not have a team website, the Club Portal becomes your own website! PASSWORD To set up your club portal we are enclosing a password. We are sharing this password with you as the Head Coach of the team.

Your password is: _______________. Only the person who is authorized to add or change information should have access to this password, i.e. yourself as the Head Coach or someone selected by you. If you are not a detail oriented person it might be better to delegate this task to someone who is.

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ACCESSING YOUR CLUB PORTAL

1. To gain access to your Club Portal you must be signed in with an account that you created on the USA Swimming website. To sign in click on Sign In found in the upper right-hand corner of the home page. If you do not have an account, click on Create an Account of the front page of the USA Swimming website-follow the instructions to create an account-then Sign In.

2. Click on the Club Search found in the USA swimming tools section that appears on the left-hand side of almost every page on the USA Swimming web site.

3. Enter the appropriate club search information for your club. By entering your state,

you can search all clubs and find yours.

4. Click on Club Website. 5. The information about your club is drawn from the SWIMS

database. If there is any incorrect information, contact your LSC registration chairperson.

6. You can enter/change data in your team’s club portal. Click on Club Administrator Login.

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7. A box will then appear for your password. Enter your password (listed above in this letter) and click on Edit Club Portal

8. Read the information box that appears. 9. Go to step #1 “Create or update your club portal.” Click and get started!

10. To enter the information for “Home,” Follow the directions listed at the top of the

page. On this page you will be able to: a. enter a welcome message b. select whether you wish meet results from the SWIMS database to appear c. decide what type of contact information is to appear d. load a team logo e. load any type of picture

11. Upon completion of the page click the Save Changes button in the lower right-hand corner of the page (otherwise your information/changes will not be saved). After doing this you will be taken back to the main Club Portal Administration page.

12. Your new mini website address will automatically be generated and appear on your Club Portal “Home” page. If your club also has a website entered in the USA Swimming SWIMS database that site will also be listed. If your club’s website has an incorrect web address showing on your Club Portal “Home” page, you must contact your Local Swim Committee (LSC) registration person to have him/her make the correction in SWIMS.

13. To enter/change information on “Announcements,” “Practice Schedules,” and “Upcoming Meets” click on the words. Follow the directions listed at the top of each page.

14. Make sure to click on the Save button on each page to save any new information or

changes that you have made.

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15. If on the “home” page set-up screen you had checked the box Show Meet Results the “Meet results” pages will automatically load.

16. “Facilities” that your club uses are loaded onto your Club Portal through the club profile section (see “Updating your Facility Information” after the “Club Profile” information).

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CLUB PROFILE Beginning with this rollout, USA Swimming will gather comprehensive data about USA Swimming clubs on an annual basis. We intend to use this data to improve services to our members and to study characteristics common to successful clubs. You may wonder why you should bother spending the time to answer all of these questions. USA Swimming gets asked lots of questions that we cannot answer. We need your help!! Among the questions we would like to answer:

• What are the common characteristics of successful clubs: How big are they? How much pool time do they have? What are the training patterns of the different groups? What access to technology do they have? What is the typical training time of successful senior swimmers?

• What are pool rental costs? • How many clubs are coach owned? Parent owned? • What is the impact of High School swimming in different parts of the country? • What facilities are our clubs using? Long Course vs. Short Course? How deep? How old?

The Facilities Task Force charged USA Swimming with compiling an inventory of pools. This will help establish that inventory.

In order to list and map your facility in your Club Portal and/or the Club Search feature, you must complete the Facilities information in the Club Profile! The facilities information is found on the Team Operations tab in the Club Profile. Separate instructions for completing the Facility Information are included after this section. You will need to set aside some time to complete the entire Club Profile. We estimate that it may take from one to two hours. Subsequent annual updates should take less than twenty minutes to complete. You may break your initial profile input session and/or subsequent annual updates into smaller time frames-just make sure that you click on:

If your club has “Satellite Sites,” read the following. Otherwise skip this paragraph: Another new feature in USA Swimming’s SWIMS database is the ability to allow clubs to designate particular sites of their program as “satellite clubs”. If your program uses multiple sites and you would like USA Swimming to communicate with each site independently you will need to contact your Local Swim Committee (LSC) registration person. This will allow you to enter accurate information about each of your sites. For example, we know of one swim club that trains out of four separate locations and each location is governed in a different manner (one is a non-profit parent-governed program, one is owned by a college, one is coach owned, and the final one is affiliated with a health-club). Under the new satellite option, the club can now enter correct information about each of the four sites. In the “old” scenario, the club would have to pick and enter the information in their Club Profile for only one of the sites. ACCESSING and EDITING YOUR CLUB PROFILE

1. Sign in as the Club Administrator on the Club Portal Page. Use the password sent to you. (Go back to steps #1-7 if you are unfamiliar.)

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2. Go to “Manage Your Club Profile & Facility Information.”

3. Follow the instructions in the gold box and go through the steps in order.

4. There are seven different sections to the Club Profile

• Step 1: Profile Survey deals with some very basic parent education issues. You

can also indicate if you would like additional information on various USA Swimming programs.

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• Step 2: Athlete Statistics asks for an overall breakdown of your team by

male/female athletes, year round/seasonal, short course/long course, and 12-Unders/13-Overs. It concludes with a section asking about club/team records.

• Step 3:Team Operations is comprised of three separate sections. 1. An overview of your General Team Operation (non-profit, annual budget,

etc.).

2. The Facilities section where you provide information about every pool that your team trains in during both the winter season and the summer season. Specific instructions for the Facilities Information will come at the conclusion of this section.

3. The Water Time section asks questions using four general classifications that many teams use for training groups (senior, advanced age group, age group and novice). Questions are asked about each training group.

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• Step 4: League Relations looks at the relationship between your club and local high school swimming and summer/winter leagues.

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• Step 5: Computer/Video asks some general questions about your usage of computers and video equipment.

• Step 6: Training/Testing asks about your overall philosophy regarding training and testing protocols.

• Step 7: Sport Med asks for information regarding Sport Medicine professionals that your team uses.

5. Please remember that you can click on

at any time to save the data you have entered so far. It is a good idea to click this button at the conclusion of each page. If you leave the Club Profile area without saving changes, you will lose

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the changes you made. You can continue to edit your Club Profile after you 'Save' or return at a later time to continue editing your club profile.

6. When you complete your initial profile input or if you complete updates, click on

. This will submit the club profile to USA Swimming headquarters. You will not be able to edit the club profile after you 'Submit' and you will not see the changes until they have been accepted by USA Swimming headquarters. You will receive an email when your changes have been accepted. You will then be able to view and edit your updated profile.

7. Click the “Cancel” button to cancel any of the changes you have made since the last time you clicked 'Save'. You will be returned to the Club Portal.

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UPDATING YOUR FACILITY INFORMATION Facility information is requested in Step 3, Team Operations. Entering accurate and complete facility information will do two things:

1. List your facility information and address in the Club Search for anyone who wants to find you.

2. Help USA Swimming compile an accurate list of facilities used by our clubs. You cannot simply enter a facility name in the Team Operations section. You must go to

the “Select Winter (or Summer) Season Pool” page and either search for a facility already in the database OR enter your facility information. Please try to be accurate with facility address and physical information!!

There are multiple steps required to enter facility information. You will first select the facility itself. The database then will require you to select or add an individual pool within that facility. This allows USA Swimming to keep track of separate pools within a single facility. For example, a facility may have: (1) an indoor 8-lane, 25 yard pool, (2) a separate indoor diving tank, (3) an outdoor 6-lane, 50 meter pool, and finally, (4) an outdoor leisure pool. We would like to have information on each of the pools at your facility (even if you don’t use all of them). Step by Step for entering your Facility Information 1. Click the Team Operations tab.

2. Start with the “Winter Season/Short Course” facilities section. Click on “Select Winter

Season Pool”

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See if your pool is in the SWIMS facility database. First look at all of the pools listed in your state. Click on “Search in the Selected State.” A search example is shown below.

Please make sure that you look at the list thoroughly to make sure that a facility is not listed under a different name.

4. If you find your facility listed, click on “View/Update.” You will see a screen similar to this:

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If the information in the above screen is incorrect or incomplete, please complete it to the best of your ability.

5. If there is no pool information listed under “Pools” click on “Add a pool for this facility” at the bottom of the screen

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Enter information about each of the pools in a facility. The “Add a pool” screen looks like this: (Example: Carmel High School 25 yd x 50 mtr)

• For an “odd-shaped” pool enter a description of it in the “Other” section under “course” • Please list all sides of the pool that have starting blocks • “Sanitizing System” and “Filtration Type” lists a drop down box of standard types • “Sanitizing System Brand” asks for the brand name of the main chemical used to

sanitize the pool. Leave blank if you do not know. Again, if the facility has multiple pools fill out the information for one of the pools then click on the “Add a pool for this facility” again to enter information on another pool in this facility (even if you do not use the other pool).

6. When you finish entering all the pools for a particular facility, scroll up to the top of the facility page that you have been working on and click on “Save and Return To Facility List/Search” You will be returned to the search page.

7. After you update a particular facility it will be listed on the main facility search page. Now you will actually associate the appropriate facility with the Winter Season by clicking on “Select”

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8. This will take you back to the main Team Operations tab. The facility name will now appear on the left-hand side of the screen. Now enter: • the average weekly hours that you train in the facility. • the number of weeks/year that you use the facility • the average yearly rental costs of this facility After the above items are completed, click on “Add this pool”

9. After you have clicked “Add this pool” the screen will show the following:

10. If you need to remove a pool from your profile click on “Remove”. If you need to change

any information about the pool click on “Change Pool”. 11. If you train out of more than one facility click on “Select Winter Season Pool” to start

the process over again for each facility (Use separate facilities for each satellite program that you operate).

12. If your hours and/or facilities change in the Summer Season / Long Course complete or repeat the above steps for that season also.

13. When you are finished entering the facility information please remember that you can

click the button at any time to save the data. It is a good idea to click this button at the conclusion of completing each page that you are working on. If you don't click "Save the changes I have entered so far" and leave the Club Profile area you will lose any changes you make!!! You can continue to edit your Club Profile after you 'Save' or return at a later time to continue editing your club profile.

14. When you finish your initial profile input or finish any updates click on the

button. This will submit the club profile to USA Swimming to be entered into the database. You will not be able to edit the club profile after you 'Submit' and you will not see the changes until they have been accepted by USA Swimming headquarters. You will receive an email when your changes have been accepted. You will then be able to view and edit your updated profile.

15. Click the “Cancel” button to cancel any of the changes you have made since the last time you clicked 'Save'. You will be returned to the club portal.

If you have any questions on the above procedures, please contact the Club Development Division at USA Swimming (clubdevelopment@usaswimming.org) or call the USA Swimming office at (719) 866-4578.