Let's Meet!

The best part of Masters Swimming definitely is going to swim meets.  You'd never know from the leisurely 10-hour day that the meet is composed of hundreds of moments of individual terror.  Not for me, of course.  For coaches, meets bring little terror.  Lots of stress, for sure.  Describing a missing relay mate to their teammates when they have five minutes before the start.  "You know Bob.  He's the guy with that bad kick!"  "Tessa!  The one with the hair!"  And explaining to someone how to do a back-to-breast turn when I've literally said that 700 times before (and then watching them DQ).  But our meets are infrequent, with only a few each year.

As if to make up for it, Masters Swimming has a lot of meetings.  There are meetings in our local region, Pacific, and meetings with our national governing body, US Masters Swimming.  I remember telling a non-swimming friend once that I was on my way to the annual Aquatic Sports Convention.  She thought for a minute and then wondered if we talked about "which suits were cute" or "what games are fun in the pool."  Sigh.

By far, the worst kinds of meetings are the telephone meetings.  We had one recently where we hit for the cycle of dysfunctional communication.  Because Masters Swimming has gotten grayer through the years (though my team MEMO is luckier than most, with lots of Millennials) people in governance often can't hear too well.  And shortly after we started this meeting, our phone connection turned everything said into an echo.  "Wow (wow), I (I) think (think) there's (there's) an (an) echo (echo)!" said one member after another, somehow grasping this for the first time.  People also failed to identify themselves before speaking; didn't mute their phones while they did other stuff (including -- amazingly enough -- doing dishes and working outside); chatted about stuff known only to them ("Oh, I'm just swamped making wedding favors!"); didn't say anything when it was their turn because they'd muted themselves ("Oh shoot, I'm sorry!  Wow, (wow) is (is) there (there) an (an) echo (echo)?"); and accidentally kept hanging up while looking for the mute button and then having to rejoin the conversation.  Ding!  Joining the conversation. . .  The entire lost-1.5 hour-of-my-life-meeting was like a Mark Brothers routine, where people kept coming in doors and looking for someone who has just left via another door.  It was easily double the length of time of what it should have been.

We've tried to streamline our meetings by asking for reports in advance, yet some people still feel the need to kill the timeline by reading their written report.  Whether it's for emphasis or audience response I don't know, but it makes me crazy.  I have the best job of all,  Hospitality Chair.  In meetings my report is always the same: "no report."  That's one of the things people like about me.  Because only half of our meetings are by phone, we do get together in person, and then I get to work bringing people food and passing out awards.  If I could bring hand out puppies, scented candles, mints, balloon animals, and paychecks to this volunteer crowd I'd do that too.  Give me the easy stuff!

I mentally check out during the report of the treasurer, taking that as my own PTO, but I have to resort to shutting down the Yukon Solitaire to live through reports of upcoming legislative activity.  Concentration takes effort.  Amazingly I've been on governance in various forms for almost my entire 30+ year career as a coach.  I like the idea of giving back, but the phone meetings make me question that every time.  I think that maybe I'll just try being a taker!  But then I get a few weeks off and forget how annoying it was.  Does anyone else feel that way?  I'd like to discuss that with you more.  Let's ... email.