Chairman's Chat

by Mel Goldstein, GRIN LMSC Chairman

Over the next two years I look forward to serving you as the Greater Indiana Masters Chairman. My vision for our LMSC is to grow our membership to more than 1,000 members. We can do this if we all work together and make membership growth and membership retention a priority. Masters swimming is an adult swimming program. There are some who perceive it to be for the elite swimmer and highly competitive; this is not the case. Masters swimming is an adult aquatic fitness program for adults who have chosen aquatics as a means of exercise for a healthier lifestyle. Masters programs are generally made up of three components: fitness swimmers, triathletes and competitive masters swimmers. USMS has many tools available to promote membership growth in your club or in your community, and I hope with my experience in club development I will be able to help you use these tools.

I want a representative from each club throughout Indiana to get involved with our Greater Indiana Masters LMSC. We plan to do this with quarterly conference calls on Thursdays, 8:00–9:00 PM, in the 3rd week of the last month in the quarter. Since our GRIN State Meet, we have had two such meetings with limited participation. These meetings are for you. The meetings are telephone conference calls and are for one hour where we discuss tentative meet schedules, changes in our GRIN State Meet Championships, and many other topics that concern you, the swimmer. Each club should have a representative attend these meetings, because better communication promotes greater participation. Our next meeting will be October 4th. I hope to have the minutes from our last two meetings posted on our GRIN web site. Please feel free to email me with any questions or ideas at goldsteinmel@sbcglobal.net.

In closing, I want to thank Cheryl Gettelfinger and Dick Sidner for serving as GRIN Chair and Vice Chair, respectively. Cheryl will be staying on as our Top 10 officer. I also want to extend a big thank you to Barbara “Babs” Larsen, who has served the Greater Indiana LMSC as Registrar for many years. She has been a tremendous asset to our LMSC and to USMS nationally. We wish her well in her retirement, and I am sure she will enjoy being a grandmother. Babs has passed the torch to our new LMSC Registrar Maegen Himes, who made the transition on July 1st. Maegan is an accomplished high school, collegiate and now Masters competitive swimmer who coaches with Carmel Swim Club and currently swims with YMCA Indy SwimFit at the Jordan Y. We also welcome Kris Houchens as our new Vice Chair. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Kris for many years, and am excited to have her as a part of the GRIN Board as well.

Mel Goldstein, GRIN Chairman