Suburban Swim League cancels summer season

With its teams spread across three counties, the Suburban Swim League knew it would face the toughest decision of any area swummer swim league as to whether to allow competition this season.

That complication was one of many that led to the league’s board opting to cancel the season Wednesday night. The challenges — from maintaining social distancing to which counties will switch into which phases of Pennsylvania’s recovery plan when — proved too much to overcome.

“To organize a structured dual-meet season with a culminating championships, there was just too much uncertainty,” league vice president Casey O’Hara said. “The moment one shoe falls, the rest of it was going to fall apart.”

The Suburban Swim League comprises 14 clubs in Delaware, Montgomery and Chester counties. At the moment, all the clubs are committed to opening in some form. The elimination of the competitive swim season, which includes five weeks of dual meets plus a championship meet and relay carnival, gives clubs space to serve their members. Having a decision was important to O’Hara and the board, taking one uncertainty away as clubs build to their normal opening weekend of Memorial Day.

Summer swim clubs will not open in Pennsylvania as long as counties remain in the “red phase,” which features the most stringent social and business restrictions. There’s some question as to whether clubs can open in the “yellow phase” of Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan, but it’s certain that organizing large social gatherings like meets will be challenging. Chester County won’t enter the yellow phase until at least June 4, when the latest stay-at-home order expires.

O’Hara said the board weighed various contingencies. Clubs looked at what they needed, from the swimming and diving perspectives. It took in recommendations from USA Swimming, which won’t sanction meets through the summer, and USA Diving. And it looked at the business question of how to best serve its general membership, of which varsity swimmers account for about a quarter to a third.

In the end, all the what ifs — what if one county opens ahead of others? What if a county goes yellow but backslides to red because of a spike in cases? — outweighed what could make competitive swimming workable.

“As the color codes are changing from red to yellow to green, Montco or Chesco could be lifted before Delco could,” O’Hara said, “and that presented a real challenge for us as far as scheduling is concerned.”