This was a Presentation given to the Board of the Amateur Swimming Association on Friday 20th September 2013

Slide 2 Intro
Who am I well
28 years as a masters swimmer
21 years on committee
author of masterstrokes column in Swimming Times since 1996
more recently I've developed an alter ego as the binge swimmer

It may be hard for some of you to imagine that I’ve a professional or grown up life but I'm the managing partner of a law firm in NW Durham, and as if that’s not enough proof of my establishment credentials I'm about to be installed as President of the Newcastle Upon Tyne Law Society

So Thank you for allowing me to come and present our paper to you this evening.

This is a new experience for me and I'm a little out of my comfort zone so whilst I’d ask you to bear with me I hope that I can persuade you to move out of your comfort zone.

Because Craig and I are going to talk this evening about moving masters forward in a dramatic way. Our paper is a plan to transform our discipline and significantly without any additional cost to you.

Now I know you all take your duties very seriously and I’m sure that you've all read the paper and considered its content, you will be relieved to know I don’t intend to go through that point by point but rather we hope that this presentation highlights what we think are key points, I would like you to be
1.​Interested: and perhaps
2.​entertained as we are all involved in this fantastically life affirming sport and sometimes we forget that we do this for fun and finally
3.​inspired to action in ways that a 2000 word paper and an exhortation to read Kelvin’s “a strategy for Masters swimming in England” just cant do.

So can I first of all introduce my colleague

Craig is the General Manager and operating board chairman at Ealing swimming club.

A comparatively recent arrival on this side of the pond Craig ran a hugely successful masters programme at Asphalt Green in NYC and is passionate about Masters swimming.

Craig's a former member of the USMS coaching committee and was heavily involved in the move to take USMS professional.

He’s going to tell you about their experience and the opportunities that a professional set up will bring.

On principle of no taxation without representation

We need the Masters movement to be accountable to the ASA Board or whatever variant replaces you and more importantly to our members we propose the following:-

I think back in 2007 in the swimming times I described Kelvin Juba as the Masters Fairy Godmother. ( oh no he's not!) I hear you shout!

Kelvin bless him, a strange sort of fairy godmother. His report is in places a little wooly and unfocussed but his recommendations are crystal clear and chime with the points that Craig’s just made which are that:-

To make substantial progress in Masters it needs to be professionalised

Need to involve masters in running the discipline and making decisions.

This is a little bit of a strange situation because if you think about it I'm presenting to you and asking you to move forward on a strategy that you've already accepted and green lighted.

Can I just be a little mischievous here and remind you what our web site says

The ASA was keen to encourage Masters swimming as a fitness-improving activity and as a sport and so asked consultant Kelvin Juba to pull together a strategy for the next 10 years.
His subsequent document, 'A Strategy for Masters swimming in England', outlined ways to increase participation and shape the future of Masters Swimming in England up to 2017.

By reading the strategy you can see the radical recommendations he made regarding the future of Masters Swimming in England, many of which have and are being implemented.”

Have I missed something? Where’s “the dedicated masters professional” or the one stop Masters office.

Our proposal gives you the chance to live up to that declaration to transform Masters swimming by 2017.

Why has implementation failed to date ? Well there are a number of reasons but

Fundamently Juba recommends a dedicated professional working for Masters ie for the member’s side whereas there appeared to be an unwillingness to commit resources for the benefit of the members and the position was hijacked by the Health and Participation Agenda.

Form the very first appointment it's been a fudge I think it was nearly pulled it off with the first appointment the Life long Participation officer was a committed masters swimmer and was making a good fist of the job from our point of view.

I’m not being critical of the Health and Participation agenda But challenges in trying to address the life long participation agenda leave the current nominal masters professional with no time or priority to address the needs of the current Masters membership.

When I first prepared this slide I had a page of notes on this all about how the staff at HQ were overburdened and had no time for us, and how we were always bottom of the pile. But actually if we want to move masters on it’s not about what you haven’t done it’s about what we can do.

And the four words on this slide sum it all up

Desire; We want to do it and have the appetite for it, a volunteer is always going to be better than a conscript

Passion; we are all probably ever so slightly mad about our sport, and are ambitious to see it succeed and to be part of something that’s bigger and better.

Capability: 11000 swimmers from all walks of life, we have an abundance of talented people, with business and creative experience and we should be harnassing their talents to take the sport forward.

The Current Masters Committee comprise of a lawyer, a couple of chartered accountants with a wealth of professional and business experience, an IT manager, a retired IBM Project Manager, the owner of a sales consultancy, a coordinator at the International Centre for Drug Policy and a high proportion of the committee are graduates. Whilst we are all slightly mad about swimming we are well capable of making sensible, considered decisions in the interest of our sport.
Paul Pester current head of TSB finishes work at 7pm and goes off to swim with his local Masters group
CEO of Mace an International consulting and construction group that delivered last year the Shard, and the Olympics and Paralympics
CEO of EDF trading
A director of You Gov Guy Davies and his connections

These three traits identified on the slide will lead inevitably to intense focus on Masters something we don’t have at the moment.

We understand it, we live it, it is our philosophy, and our ambition.
If we don’t do it this will never happen.

Opportunity to grow the sport with masters being both exponents and advocates for swimming in general

A request for democracy and devolving powers to member’s reflect good governance. It’s a move to give the decisions about the sport to the people directly affected. Is that so terrible.

Frees up ASA resources for other things

Masters diving is a precedent but we don't want to go that far.

I cannot emphasise too much the fact that this is not a bid for independence it's about governance and democracy and giving autonomy to the people directly affected

Unlikely to change in the forseeable future because if we look at the structure of masters.

The majority of masters are members of ASA clubs and that is not going to change without a an unprecedented development of swimming pools there are very few discrete masters club. So swimmers would end up paying 2 lots of fees for a duplication of services.

Also all masters are natural supporters and advocates for the sport i.e we are on your side we want to see our sport succeed on all levels, I believe there’s a deep rooted respect for the national governing body.

Truly believe that we are stronger together Mutual support many masters hold volunteer roles in clubs and officiate at kids meets

Like to think of ASA as the parent and we're the child at the point of making out way in the world it's nice to know you're there to fall back on.

Why would we want to run the back office functions when it can be absorbed by HQ wasteful and inefficient and no fun we want the good parts.

We’re teetering on the brink here and I’m inviting you to take a leap of faith.. In masters ability to organise themselves
and pay for it

Already have a precedent for more autonomy in Masters Diving
(I can assure you we don't want to be able to have clubs and swimmers affiliate to us)


Of the three questions can I deal with how we fund it first

Funding
11000 members
current income from registration fees is 166,000 7.60 & 25.20
Masters expenses in broad strokes
Committee expenses 5000
Meets 50,000
Admin support 7000
Rankings decathlon etc 1500
Masters reception 1200
Total expenses 65,000 or thereabouts
That’s a net contribution to the NGB’s overhead of 100,000

We propose a levy of 5 - 7 per head give us 55k - 77k to pay for our dedicated masters professional and some development
Salary for the individual I would see above the regular current development officers, 30-35k?
This individual needs to be a leader and to have some clout I would see them sitting just under the senior management team, 45-50k per annum?
see attached job spec.

Now the levy, £7.00 is of course less than 2p per master per day.
Masters would like the opportunity to set it’s own registration fee after agreeing the proportion of income not ringfenced.
We do not like the two tiered registration scheme and would want to move away from it having one single price point for masters, this would be phased over a number of years. We believe the current regime is a deterent to the expansion of masters and does not serve our discipline well.
The key point here is to deliver value to the CAT 1 fitness swimmers so that they get more for their increasing fee. With a dedicated masters professional we have the resource to introduce all sorts of initiatives for them (they are currently not well catered for by the ASA)
Over say a four year period you would hope to grow the membership and the development budget.

Over a similar period and free to make our own decisions we know we can run the Championships to break even, without significantly increasing fees or compromising the quality. Producing ultimately a saving of over 50k per year.

Figures are questionable in January figures were 13070

From the issue of funding to the organisation

Masters Organisation Director

Can we start with the professional appointment

Getting this appointment right is absolutely key.

Absolutely must be Passionate about adult competitive swimming, have authority and respect.

Natural leader

Business experience

Draft job description circulate

Have a say in some key appointments needs to have people the MOD can work with.

Answerable to Masters and their agenda he who pays the piper (they pay for the MOD)

Masters Organisation Meeting

Think the equivalent of the ASA COUNCIL for Masters

An annual or biennial meeting for Masters

Delegates would be County & District Reps, and Club Reps maybe an open meeting to start things off.

Elections for all/key post board appointment

Masters Organising Board

The equivalent of the masters committee

MOB FATHER = chair (getting a bit carried away)

Oversee progress set strategy.

Retain regional representation

Masters Organising Projects
Business carried out mainly by project groups

My thoughts on this are that the project groups can meet primarily by conference calls to minimise costs

Perhaps meeting annually as more energy and motivation from face - face meetings.

A selection of the more obvious MOPS we would like to promote.

Responsible for the running of the competition programme

Starting point need a fully costed business plan for the office, appointment of MOD, and development.
Exploit financial opportunities kit etc.
Responsible for masters finances,
Sponsorship and Grants

Slide 19 Coaching

This is a key group of people

Experience tells us that the determining factor in the success of a Masters group is an enthusiastic coach.

Promotion of Masters Coaching module
Seminars, training days, schedules and
good practice guides

Rankings/decathlon/records
Brand Masters
Be more responsive to membership
Celebrate our success
Website/Social media
Newsletter

Time is running out as we are fortunate to have the 2013 Europeans in London.

The baton (or perhaps more accurately the LEN Flag) has been passed to us, you can see Geoff stokes and Jane Asher receiving it in Eindhoven

It’s coming and we have 30 – 33 months to capitalize on this opportunity

We are a wasteful sport with awful retention rates losing the vast majority of our swimmers as teenagers...

This is an opportunity to inspire people to get back into the sport
So they can compete in the Olympic pool at a monster competition

Inspiring people to return to the sport.
World champs in Sheffield in 1996. Biggest swim meet on the planet 4500 competitors 1600 Brits took part

London 20 years on the Europeans will be a major international meet in an accessible and desirable location at an iconic venue I predict it will be huge and the competitors could top easily top 7,000 just imagine if 3500 were British and every Masters club in the country were represented

Now that's what I call Legacy

And of course

The legacy of a vibrant and expanding Masters community is the fact that we provide role models and examples for our junior swimmers demonstrating that they never have to leave the sport. Or if they did there’s a way back.

Without sounding too Monty Pythonesque

Perhaps its an appropriate term to use that since Juba we've had a couple of false starts

Masters are asking you to take that leap of faith and give them chance to transform their discipline.

You know I'll deny to my grave that I shared this confidence with you but Kelvin Juba said to me " remember Verity you are presenting to a board who are world class.................. at maintaining the status quo"

Well I want you to prove Kelvin wrong I want you to

1.​green light this proposal. (you have already really)

2.​set up a working group to report by December with a detailed business plan and timetable for implementation.

3.​If possible clear the way for an increase in registration fees so we can have our MOD in post by next April

4.​Authorise a communication campaign to explain what we are going to do and why we should do it. (I would suggest this is a written newsletter to each CAT 1 and Cat 2 Master)

There’s never been a better time to do this, but the window of opportunity to hitch this development to the star of London 2016 is closing.

You cannot be complacent about this

Masters are asking

If not us then who?

If not now then when?