Upcoming Events
Jan. 20, 2023, First Chance Long Course Invitational, Little Rock, AR.
Jan. 21-22, 2023, First Chance Short Course Meters Invitational, Little Rock, AR.
To view events across the country, visit this page on the USMS website.
To view events within our Zone, visit this page.
2023 Registration for USMS – don’t delay!
We are off to a good start on Registration for 2023, and hopefully it will be another record year. Currently the USMS registration annual cost is $65.00, however the fee goes up to $70.00 for the year on January 1, 2023. You can save $5 on all the benefits of United States Masters Swimming by registering in December. Your membership is good for all of 2023. Please contact our Membership Coordinator, Scott Halliburton if you have any questions: scott.halliburton@gmail.com
Where Do My Dues go?
Every fall, USMS asks you to renew your annual membership. You may think, “how are my dollars used?” and “what is in it for me?” If you have these questions, some of the answers are below. If you are not that inquisitive, still read on because the information below may be helpful when other lap swimmers ask you why they should be a member of USMS.
Benefits coming from the national level include:
- The Swimmer magazine with great articles on technique, etc.
- Insurance for team practices, swim meets, other sanctioned events
- Access to swim meets and practices across the nation
- Adult-Learn-to-Swim support for local organizations to give scholarships for ALTS coaching certification
- Marketing material for member clubs
At the local/state level, we get $12 of your membership fee. Besides a few donations, this is the sole revenue for our LMSC. Every January, the Arkansas LMSC board budgets for the following expenditures:
- Paying the sanctions for any club to host a swim meet or open-water event.
- Paying up to $100 for any team to host a swim meet, organized practice, or other event for masters swimmers.
- Sponsoring large events such as an open-water swim.
- Buying promotional items to be distributed at events (caps, towels, etc)
- Paying for the meal and award for the Masters Swimmer of the Year at the annual Arkansas Swim Banquet
- Paying for the Arkansas Masters website
- Covering the USMS Club registration fees for Arkansas clubs
- Providing grants for Adult-Learn-To-Swim Instructor training
- Providing grants for USMS Coaching Certification training
- Providing grants for swimmers to attend Zone and/or National level meets
Sadly, many of these budgeted items go unused every year. Our goal, as a board, is to provide value to our USMS members and we want the budgeted dollars to be used. The process is simple to request funds, as the forms are on the ARKMS website. And, if there is something else that you think would be beneficial to Arkansas masters members, please reach out to our leadership (byronshefchik@yahoo.com) so that we can discuss and possibly include in the budget for 2023.
New Records Set at Short Course Meter Meets
Scott Halliburton set a Citizen Record in the “dreaded” 200 Butterfly at the December MOVY Masters SCM meet with a time of 2:45.87.
And Mark Jechura set the following SCM Citizen Records at the St. Nicholas meet in Atlanta:
400 IM: 6:00.1, 100 Free: 1:01.53, 50 Fly: 29.32, 50 Free: 27.26, 100 IM 1:13.05
Nice work Scott and Mark!
12th Annual Arkansas Children’s Hospital English Channel Challenge
Stefan Sarkin continues to raise money for Arkansas Children’s Hospital through his love of swimming. Stefan provided the following stats regarding his most recent swim in September. It’s simply amazing to see Stefan’s dedication to this great cause!
Date – September 15, 2022
Start time – 3am, Finish – 5.48pm
Total time- 14hr 48m, Swim distance – 31 miles
At age 62, one of less than 30 male swimmers of all time age 62 and above.
Fund raising efforts: Total all time funds raised is nearing $500K.
Below are the admiralty charts of my 2017 swim (top) and my 2022 swim (bottom) showing the swim track in each case….presented by the Channel pilot to the swimmer to document the crossing.
When you Aren’t Swimming…
If you are a reader, you might enjoy this new book about the birth of American Swimming. Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:
In the early twentieth century, few Americans knew how to swim, and swimming as a competitive sport was almost unheard of. That is, until Charles Daniels took to the water.
On the surface, young Charles had it all: high-society parents, a place at an exclusive New York City prep school, summer vacations in the Adirondacks. But the scrawny teenager suffered from extreme anxiety thanks to a sadistic father who mired the family in bankruptcy and scandal before abandoning Charles and his mother altogether. Charles’s only source of joy was swimming. But with no one to teach him, he struggled with technique—until he caught the eye of two immigrant coaches hell-bent on building a U.S. swim program that could rival the British Empire’s seventy-year domination of the sport.
Interwoven with the story of Charles’s efforts to overcome his family’s disgrace is the compelling history of the struggle to establish the modern Olympics in an era when competitive sports were still in their infancy. When the powerful British Empire finally legitimized the Games by hosting the fourth Olympiad in 1908, Charles’s hard-fought rise climaxed in a gold-medal race where British judges prepared a trap to ensure the American upstart’s defeat.
Set in the early days of a rapidly changing twentieth century, The Watermen—a term used at the time to describe men skilled in water sports—tells an engrossing story of grit, of the growth of a major new sport in which Americans would prevail, and of a young man’s determination to excel.
Arkansas Masters Swimming 