Swimming Committee gets a head start

The MIAA Swimming Committee is wasting little time in looking to secure venues for the Fall and Winter seasons.

At Monday’s virtual meeting, tournament director Kim Wentworth said that she has reached out to Boston University and MIT and is optimistic that those facilities will be available to host sectional and state championships as they have in the past.

Due to COVID restrictions at many college venues, the MIAA had to use both Milford and Dedham to host swimming and diving events last year. Longtime EMass tournament director Pete Foley said numbers were down due to logistics (Milford has a sixlane pool as opposed to the traditional 10 lanes you find at the college sites), but said there were no complaints. He lauded the two sites for coming to the rescue on short notice.

As for next year, the preliminary dates being bandied about were Nov. 5-6 for fall sectionals and Nov. 12-13 for states. Foley targeted a winter sectional date of Feb. 11-12, with the states running the following weekend on Feb 18-19. One of the issues that troubled tournament directors was Direct Athletics, namely the fact that several coaches couldn’t properly use the system for one reason or another. Whitworth suggested making an instructional video on how to use it and placing it on the MIAA website for further guidance.