Tena koutou katoa,
With the country entering the red traffic light, our team has been working hard on plans to deliver national events safely between now and the end of April. We know how much we as a community want to see our national calendar go ahead in 2022.
Whilst I remain confident of getting plans confirmed and communicated shortly, we were surprised to learn on Wednesday that the Sport NZ guidelines had been redefined to state groups of 100 people cannot inter-mingle for the duration of an event. This has made planning more difficult given the multiple disciplinary nature of swimming. Therefore, our team have returned to the drawing board again after having a new plan nearly ready to communicate. We are continuing to work alongside Sport NZ, our regional staff, and the Events Advisory Committee to provide our pinnacle national events in the next couple of months. I would like to thank them for their advice and support.
Please be prepared that upcoming national events will be delivered quite differently than they normally are. All options are being considered. Please note that in this case, we will not open Apollo Projects NZ Champs and Apollo Projects NAGS entries until the new plans have been communicated shortly.
Banding Together
I encourage us as a swimming community to continue banding together to provide racing opportunities. Whilst our team will do our utmost to confirm plans to still host our upcoming national events, I ask that we as a swimming community continue to work together to provide racing opportunities. I have spoken to many who have expressed the need for racing opportunities to be provided and I totally agree. For this reason, I urge us to redefine what a racing opportunity is. Simply put, a racing opportunity is any opportunity to race against others. This can be achieved at meets such as club nights, dual meets, and local leagues just to name a few. Consider including some of these ideas in your training sessions and/or utilise your current lane space one night a week. In this case, I ask clubs and regions to work together within your local communities to establish fun concepts so our swimmers can still race. Let’s think outside of the box and be creative and share your stories, I’d love to hear about all your innovative meet concepts. I’ll be sharing some meet templates and useful documents with clubs, coaches and regions shortly to reduce the administration of setting these meets up.
I encourage these meets to be delivered as development meets. You’ll remember that a few months ago we adjusted our national events to accept times from both designated and development meets. Development meets allow us to have less people within the venue, as the minimum requirements are for someone to start the race, someone to time each lane with a stopwatch and someone to collate results.
Click here to refresh your knowledge or learn more about development meets:
Celebrating PB's
I’m also excited to share that a new feature has been released on the Mytogs app. If a swimmer you follow achieves a PB, you will receive a notification to assist with highlighting and celebrating this great swim. The swimmer will also receive an email from us with a certificate that can be printed out to proudly display on your wall. Whilst the Junior Festival has been postponed, I’m stoked that we can still assist our swimmers to celebrate making every stroke count! If you haven’t already, please make sure you download the Mytogs app to track your swims.
Thank You
Thank you for your ongoing understanding and efforts, I know this is a difficult time for us all. We are confident we can still host our upcoming national events, including the Orangetheory Open Water & Epic Swim, Apollo Projects NZ Swimming Championships and Apollo Projects NZ Age Group Swimming Championships. It’s a great time to host exciting and fun racing opportunities locally, so please work together to assist these getting up and running around the country.
There is no time like the present, as in the red traffic light racing locally is more attainable and reaches more participants than hosting national events for the whole country.
Key Points Summary
Plans for how our national events will be hosted will be shared as soon as possible, these are still being confirmed alongside Sport NZ, our regions and Events Advisory Committee.
Entries for Apollo Projects NZ Champs and Apollo Projects NAGS won’t open until the updated event plans have been released. This is an ongoing process following a speed hump redefinition from Sport NZ that groups of 100 people cannot inter-mingle throughout the duration of an event.
Entries for Orangetheory Open Water & Epic Swim remain open.
Clubs and regions are encouraged to work together and consider all meet concepts to host racing opportunities – be innovative and please share your ideas! Utilise the development meet structure to make hosting meets easier and reduce the number of people required within venues.
Mytogs will now celebrate PB swims via push notification from the app and emailed digital certificates to print.
Nga mihi nui,
Dale Johnson
Head of participation & events
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