Masters Swimming Canada
Masters Swimming Canada is an organization that supports and promotes Masters Swimming in Canada at the national level. Masters Swimming Canada's role is to provide programs that are relevant to masters swimmers across Canada and to work with provincial bodies and clubs to implement those programs locally. Masters Swimming Canada's overarching goal is to enhance the swimming experience of its members and thereby expand participation in Masters Swimming. Masters Swimming Canada strives to meet the needs of all its members, from new swimmers to those who compete at the highest levels of Masters Swimming.[1] The word "Masters" in Masters Swimming refers to age and not skill level. In Canada swimmers must be 18 years of age to register as a Masters Swimmer. Masters Swimming Canada's organization values are "Fun and Friendship, Health and Wellness, Participation and Achievement".[2]
Masters Swimming Canada is registered as a federally incorporated non-profit corporation and is governed by an elected board of directors. Registered Masters clubs are the voting members of the corporation. The board of directors acts as a policy-governance board with an executive director responsible for ongoing operations. It is a member of Swimming Natation Canada Inc., the national governing body for swimming in Canada.
Programs
Competition
Competition, which includes short and long course pool competition as well as open water events, is just one component of Masters Swimming and in fact a large majority of Masters swimmers in Canada to not participate in official competitions. Masters Swimming Canada, through Swimming Canada, maintains the Canadian Masters Swimming Rule Book which governs all Masters swimming competitions in Canada. Masters Swimming Canada also maintains a calendar of all sanctioned competitions, a database of competitive results, the national rankings, and the Canadian national Masters records.[3]
Masters Swimming Canada organizes the annual Canadian Masters Swimming Championships. A bidding process is conducted each year leading to the selection of a local organizing committee.
Million Metre Challenge
The Million Metre Challenge is a Masters Swimming Canada program that allows swimmers to track their training by recording the number of metres swum in each workout online. As swimmers reach various milestone distances they receive recognition and awards. The program also has components involving total metres swum by clubs and virtual swims where individual and club metres achieved are plotted on maps. Swimmers can log distances by strokes, kicking, and drills, or just by total metres, and can record further specifics or notes.
History
Masters Swimming is a club-based organization that maintains a list of all Masters clubs in the country, and oversees structured swimming programs for adults which include competitions in pools or open water. Its primary objectives include fun, fitness, friendship and participation.
The history of swimming as a sport and a fitness activity for adults was stimulated just over a century ago with the rebirth of the Olympic Games, the growth of "leisure time" among certain components of society and the recognition of the relationship between exercise and health, quality of life, etc. Adult fitness swimming became popular in Europe, particularly in Germany, in the early part of the last century. The Germans, realizing the value of swimming for fitness, rebuilt their adult swim programs after the devastation of World War II.
The YMCA also became supportive of aquatic fitness at this time and built pools in many of their larger facilities where they encouraged adult lane swim. Until "the Y" introduced circle swimming in the thirties, only two swimmers could swim per lane. The Y also introduced the idea of putting a line on the bottom of the pool under the centre of each lane to help the swimmer swim straight and avoid collisions.
It is likely that the idea of a structured adult swimming fitness organization was introduced by the Germans to members of the United States and other occupying forces after the second world war, as it was primarily through the US military that this idea was first introduced into the Americas. Foremost among those involved was Captain Ransom J. Arthur, M.D., who by his leadership and commitment to improving the health of adults through swimming established the first Masters swimming programs in the US. It is believed that he first used the term “Masters” swimming to describe the sport around 1960.
The first Masters competitions in the Americas took place in the US during the sixties. These were local, often very small and by today's’ standards, quite unprofessional. The first US Masters National Championship took place on May 2-3 May 1970 at Amarillo, Texas with 46 competitors. It was agreed at this time to set up a national Masters organization to be called United States Masters Swimming. They held their first annual meeting at Lake Placid, NY in 1971 and Arthur was elected President. The US swimming community, consisting of the children and youth swim clubs, the college swim programs and the state and national elite swimming programs, were not impressed with this development and basically wanted to have nothing to do with Masters swimming. This was probably a good thing as it allowed US Masters to develop their own parallel organization to USA Swimming and take full responsibility for their sport. As time went on it became clear that Masters were contributing greatly in a number of ways to aquatics in the US.
The first Canadians to become involved were Professor Hud Stewart of Osgoode Hall Law School, a Canadian track and field Olympian who had become keenly interested in adult fitness, and his friend Al Waites, entered the second US Masters National Championship, again at Amarillo, on May 7 and May 8, 1971 with 106 US swimmers. Hud was so impressed with this development that on his return to Toronto he established Canada’s first Masters Club, “The University of Toronto Masters” swimming at Hart House and consisting primarily of University staff but including some older students who were not on the University swim teams.
References
Sources
- Whitehall, Beth; (formerly Executive Secretary of Masters Swimming Canada), Notes