2023 ASA Fall League Update

July 3, 2023

Teams,

I hope you have all gotten some well deserved rest after our 2023 ASA Summer Season and Championships. However, I wanted to touch base with everyone about our upcoming fall season. I would like to get a response from neighborhoods who were considering having a team for this season. Details on the program can be found below.

What I need to know at this point is whether or not your neighborhood is planning on having a team this fall. While your answer is not binding, we do need to get a feel for how many teams we may have and if we have enough teams in certain areas to be able to have a full schedule of meets, without having teams needing to travel far and wide to get 5 meets. Essentially we'd like to have at least 5-6 teams in each area (Buckhead/Dunwoody, Roswell/Alpharetta/Milton, Johns Creek/Forsyth, and Decatur/Tucker/LaVista) if possible. We know that we may end up with teams having swimmers from other neighborhoods swimming with them for this fall season, as many neighborhoods won't have teams. Please complete the Google form 2023 ASA Fall League Team Status Form by Friday July, 14, and we will proceed from there with organizational meetings and a schedule.

The Atlanta Swim Association (ASA) will be offering a "fall" season in 2023. This season is targeted (but not limited to) swimmer's age 8-19 and will consist of 4 meets to be held on Saturday mornings. The meets are tentatively scheduled to begin Saturday, August 19 and end Saturday September 16. Age groups will be 8 & Under, 9-10, 11-12, 13 and over. The purpose of the Fall Season is to offer swimmers a more chances to swim in meets without the full time commitment to year round swimming. Additionally, this season will provide a great chance for kids who will be swimming for their school teams to stay in shape.

The league will feature some of the following:

We will follow ASA rules, with relaxed membership requirements to allow swimmers access to more teams. Participation rules will likely be relaxed as well for these meets in an effort to allow kids more chances to swim, including events they may not get to swim in a normal summer league meet.

We anticipate smaller teams and smaller (shorter) meets. This will provide some kids a shot at winning events in a meet for the first time, as we anticipate most year round swimmers will be occupied with their fall seasons.

Meets will be held at a central location each week (kind of mini invitationals) and will have automatic timing used for results.

Team scoring will be kept, but will obviously not be the focus of the meets.

We plan of offering ribbons and the same essential structure and operational support you get in the summer.

Like other off season offerings for other sports there will likely be fewer practices offered, 3 regular season meets and a championship will be available.

We will have a championship meet (likely at Marist) in mid-September as a culmination of the season. Each swimmer will receive a medal for participating; as well as ribbons for each event. Entry fees for this meet are $25 per swimmer.

We hope this will increase participation in middle school and high school swim teams.

The smaller teams may provide your assistant coaches valuable head coaching opportunities if your normal head coach is unavailable to coach during this season.

This will also likely offer assistant team managers, parent reps, and other meet volunteers a chance to ease their way into their jobs.

League fees per swimmer will be $28 with online registration available via your registration provider. Swimtopia’s ASA form and waiver is already set up to receive registrations now.

Officials fees will be $30 per team per meet.

If you are interested in having a team, or more info about the program please e mail fmarsden@atlantaswimming.com, and stay tuned on asa.swimtopia.com for more details. We would like to get an idea of how many teams we expect to have and how we can best configure the schedule to make it as easy as possible for the teams. Please share this with your teams and families to spread the word on something that we think will help our sport. We plan on having informational meetings later this month and hope you can attend. I will forward dates and times once I have them set. In the meantime please let me know if you have any questions about this program.

Again, I know that many of you have a full plate and may not be able to take this on. I am certainly not looking to pile on more, I just ask that you share this info with your team. I feel this is a great opportunity for kids to get some more swimming in, and possibly hook them even more on the sport. I look forward to hearing from you all and hope you are all enjoying your summer.

Thank you again,

Franke Marsden 

ASA