Good Morning Lightning Parents, Guardians, and Family Members!

My name is Ben Carafiol, and I am the Meet Director for the Lee's Hill Lightning for the 2025 summer swim season. For those of you that are new, welcome to the team! For those of you that are returning, welcome back!

In order to put on swim meets - both home and away - we need a great deal of volunteers, both trained and untrained, to fill key roles before, during, and after the meet itself. We have three home meets, three away meets, and the Division Finals meet at the very end of the season. A volunteer shift is usually one-half of a meet, but some jobs occur before the meet starts, after the meet ends, or (for Division Finals) are for one of multiple "meet sessions." Generally speaking, we need more volunteers for home meets (roughly 55 shifts) than we do for away meets (roughly 30 shifts) - this is because when we are the home team we have to set up the pool for the meet, put everything away afterwards, and handle more of the trained jobs to host the meet in as fast and fun a manner as possible. Division Finals is its own thing so we will talk about that (and how volunteering works) later in the season.

When you registered your swimmers, you all committed to volunteering so our swimmers can have the best summer swim experience possible. Registration is not fully closed, but as of the sending of this email we have roughly 70 swimmers and 35 families, so the estimated requirement of six (6) volunteer shifts may end up needing to go up a couple of shifts to make sure that we can fill every position for every meet.

Failure to meet your volunteer obligation could result in your swimmer(s) being unable to participate in meets. We understand that summer travel and activity schedules will likely result in not every swimmer/family attending every meet; however, at the current team size we're going to need almost every family to cover one (1) shift at away meets and many families to cover two (2) shifts at home meets just to get the bare minimum of volunteer coverage.

There are many volunteer positions that require no special training: Announcer; Assistant Clerk of Course; Awards Clerk; Concessions; Heat Winner Ribbon Distributor; Meet Set-up; Runner; Safety Marshall; and Lane Timer.

There are several that require training from the Rappahannock Swim League: Head Referee; Administrative Referee; Clerk of Course; Head Scorekeeper; Head Timer; Starter/TimeDrops Operator; and Stroke and Turn Judge. Training for these positions is 100% online via video and embedded check-quiz. Those are available at https://rsl.swimtopia.com/training. Training for more positions can be completed in an hour or less; referee and stroke take longer as there are more questions to answer as part of the training.

During registration you were asked to put in the trained jobs you would prefer; if you could complete the training for your most preferred position it would greatly help the team fill these roles as the season progresses. Many of the trained roles have untrained positions in the same area (lane timers working with/under the head timer; etc), so having completed the training will help even if you aren't acting as the trained volunteer. Not everyone can be at every meet, so we can't rely on a single trained volunteer to work every shift of every meet.

Please make sure to follow all instructions from the RSL about submitting proof that you completed training. If you have already trained, thank you for doing so! If you are not done training yet, thank you for training!

The sign-up process for meets (both from swimmers and volunteers) is handled entirely online, through the team's website or through the SwimTopia app. I strongly recommend you download this app so you can keep track of your swimmers during meets, sign them up to attend meets, check their times, volunteer...it can be your one-stop portal into everything during the swim season. You do not need to get the paid version of the application for the essential functions; paying lets you get faster results during meets and other bells and whistles, but they are absolutely not required for anything that we use the platform for.

Specific meet volunteer positions will open up on a rolling basis as the season progresses. The benefit to you is that you'll have a better idea of which family members will be at the meet a week in advance than a month in advance. The downside to the team is that we'll not have a better idea of who is filling the critical roles until a few days before the actual meet. So, just like voting, please volunteer early and volunteer often. Before you know it we'll all be working together like a well-oiled machine.

Volunteer sign-ups for our first meet, which is on Wednesday, June 11, should be open early next week. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions or if I can be of any assistance.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing everyone at the pool!

Go Lightning!

-Ben Carafiol