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March 27, 2020 - Message to Our Membership from the General Chair - 3/27/20


Message to Our Membership from the General Chair

Dear Pacific Swimming Community Members,

The Pacific Swimming Executive Committee met on Wednesday, March 25th to assess the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our sport and update our response measures.

Currently all of our teams are prohibited from conducting swim practice let alone hold swim meets. This severe loss of income is directly hurting many of our teams and the Executive Committee will be sending out a survey to our clubs to assess their ability to cope with the loss of income and help us in figuring out what we can do as an LSC to help them get through this difficult period.

We also discussed plans for restarting swim meets once it is safe to do so. The Committee decided that Pacific will cancel all May meets with the goal of resuming swim meets starting June 1st. This is contingent of course on the guidance of our public health experts which we will continue to follow. Since none of us has a “crystal ball” to know exactly how long it will take to get to the other side of this pandemic I would like to explain how we came to this decision.

  • Our primary goal is to keep our membership safe and it was felt that social distancing measures most likely will be continued into May.
  • The coaches on the Committee strongly recommended that swimmers have at least two to three weeks of practice and conditioning prior to competing in a swim meet.
  • The Committee believes it is an unfair burden to invite families to signup for swim meets that stand a good chance of being cancelled.


We know that this decision directly impacts your family and continue to ask for your patience and understanding as we navigate our way through this epidemic. Be assured our Board of Directors will continue to monitor the COVID-19 developments and will actively reassess our response as conditions evolve.

I urge all of our members to follow the guidelines of our local public health experts and keep your family safe. We are looking forward to seeing you and your family poolside as soon as conditions allow.

David Cottam
General Chair