Norwood Swim Coach 'Disappointed' in MIAA Proposal

The MIAA subcommittee charged with finding a solution to the issue of teams has come up with proposal that would phase the fall season out entirely by 2015.

The Boston Globe reported that at their meeting Monday, the subcommittee voted 4-2 to hold boys’ swimming championships in the fall for the next three years. Following that, in the 2015-16 season, the fall season would be completely dropped, making swimming a winter sport only, for both boys and girls.

NHS Swim and Dive team coach Kim Goodwin said the proposal would make it nearly impossible for schools like Norwood to maintain a swim program.

"I am very disappointed that a subcommittee would be making a proposal that will ultimately lead to several high schools not being able to continue to have a swim program," Goodwin said. "I think it is an easy fix for some to suggest that fall programs can just move into the winter season (these may be coaches, etc. who have pools in their own towns and, thus, are given priority for practice time). If a town does not have a pool, this is pretty much an impossible solution."

The issue came about last fall, when broke a 25-year-old meet record for the girls’ 50-yard freestyle event. Higgins is one of six males on the NHS team. Since the school does not have a winter program, these athletes have only the fall season, traditionally a girls' program.

In Massachusetts there are 47 schools with fall swim teams. Last fall season, eight teams included boy swimmers.

Ray Grant, the MIAA Swim Committee chairman and athletic director at Seekonk High School, told the Globe that the propsal is, "not an easy fix," but would align swimming with other MIAA sports that only have one season.

Goodwin said that what the subcommittee is forgetting, is that the facilities needed for high school swim teams are usually not at the school or sometimes even in the same town, and are shared by many different teams and groups. As the winter season stands right now, she said, the Norwood recreation team, the Norwood Stingrays, gets maybe two hours practice per week (unless they swim on weekends) because they are competing for pool time with boys' high school teams, co-ed teams, private school swim teams, and other girls' teams, as well as other recreational town teams that swim in the winter. 

"If Norwood High School is forced into the winter, we would be competing with our own town's age group/recreation team for the scarce hours available in neighboring town pools...." she said. "How can this be a viable, fair solution?"

"We need to do so much sharing of facilities...." Goodwin said. "I am sure there are other reasons that the subcommittee is making this proposal. Has to be, because these members have a love for swimming and wouldn't propose something that would so adversly affect the growth of the sport, would they?"