Dear Fellow Club Swimmers and Officers,

Please use the start of the new semester as an opportunity to take action to
improve
collegiate club swimming for yourself, your teammates, and swimmers around the
country
by joining the national collegiate club swimming league, the Adult Swimming
Association
University League. The league will be what you make it! It will make club
swimming more
rewarding and easier to get involved by pooling together and building something
strong
and lasting that can support member teams. With sponsorship negotiations,
publicity, and
a National Championship Meet, clubs will have more legitimacy and more
opportunities to
enjoy competitive swimming. The league website is the best way to see what the
league
is.

http://www.adultswimming.com

About the League: I started Cougar Swim Club at the University of Houston and
was
elected President for the last 2 years. Finding other clubs and organizing
competitions
with them was the hardest part of running the club for us. We started this
league with
Tulane University Swim Club to found a lasting organization for clubs that would
make it
easy to find other teams and coordinate competition, and do much more. We want
to
invite all the clubs around the U.S. to join with us. We already reach from
Texas to
Massachusetts with the addition of Northeastern University Swim Club and we are
talking
to clubs in every region of the country who are looking to join soon.

What we're doing: When you join, this will be your league as much as ours. We
want it to
work for everyone and you'll have an equal say in what we do with it. The more
teams that
join, the more we can do. We're negotiating league sponsorship with swim
apparel
companies and other companies. We want to do everything we can to share
resources and
make running clubs and organizing competition as easy, smooth, and enjoyable as
possible. By pooling together we can do so much more than we could separately.
One
club team would have a hard time getting significant sponsorship, but a
nationwide league
can get good sponsorship that will benefit everyone.

Rules, Sanctions, Results, and Records: Most club meets are not sanctioned,
results and
records are not coordinated among clubs, and rules are up to the host team. By
forming
this league with us, you'll have a recognized swimming body, the Adult Swimming
Association, sanctioning the meets and compiling results and records into a
searchable
database that will be available on the league website. It will compile league
records, team
records, single-year age group records, and ASA National Records. By
centralizing results
and having uniform rules we'll also be able to keep team win-loss records if we
want,
you'll have all your teams times right there for meet entries, and even if you
swim at a
non-ASA U. event, you'll be able to apply to submit the results for you or your
team,
provided the rules were consistent with ASA Rules. Anything swum under USA
Swimming,
NCAA, USMS, FINA, and other rules falls under ASA rules as well. Whatever meet
you host
or attend, if you're in the league, even if it's not a league competition, you
can send in
your results for consideration, and if you show there was an official and what
rules were
enforced, your times can go into the complied league results for record
consideration and
to be accessed for reference.

National Championship: We're going to make the National Championship the
biggest club
swimming meet ever, with corporate sponsorship, prize awards, national
publicity, and a
state-of-the-art facility. The new Rec Center at the University of Houston has
an indoor,
70m x 25yd pool with three bulkheads, a full-color video scoreboard, and
spectator
seating. It is the host of NCAA Conference USA Championships and the varsity
swim team
will be supporting us in hosting ASA U. National Championships. Next year, the
league
will choose a host for the National Championships and will support the hosts in
putting on
the meet. Many of your clubs host end-of-the-year meets, and it would be great
to see
you put that experience to hosting a recognized National Championship. This
year, I hope
you'll all make it down on April 2nd for the first ever collegiate club swimming
National
Championship. It will be an amazing meet.

I hope you will join the league with us and help us bring college swimming back.
Please
email me your thoughts and questions at bridgerbell@...

Bridger Bell, President
ASA University League
"University" link on http://www.adultswimming.com