Steps:
Step 2- Recruit Teams and prepare for the day
Events
Links
City
of Omaha
Parks
and Recreation
Home Page
Steps:
Step 2- Recruit Teams and prepare for the day
Events
Links
City
of Omaha
Parks
and Recreation
Home Page
Planning and Approval
In order to hold an event like this, you must first be able to commit to a lot of planning time. Chuck and I spent way over 80 hours of just planning for the day of the event. I had originally gone to the Aquatic Director of the pools and got approval to hold an event like this. The approval day happened on January 3rd, 2003. Immediately I started work on the project and began to plan. In April, Chuck was assigned to come help out with the event. We looked over all of the stuff I had done, and decided to cut or keep it.
The first item on are agenda was a policy and procedure manual. This manual was like the bible for us. It laid out all of the general information about the competition, rules that teams had to follow, the way points would be accumulated, an appeal process, and individual event information. We did this manual for many reasons. One reason for making the manual was to help plan and organize the event. Another reason that the manual was created was to help educate the teams about what they were required to know and how they needed to prepare.
The second item on are agenda was to get judges to come help out at the event. Lifeguard instructors judged at a majority of the events. Chuck has a lot of ties to other organizations and was able to recruit people to come and judge. We will warn you now; this can be very difficult. The event that we had was originally scheduled for a Saturday and Sunday, but had to move to Friday and Saturday. We regret moving it because it was hard to get people to leave their job on a weekday. If there is any way that you can schedule the event on a weekend, do it. Judges will be a lot more willing to help then because they won't be asked to leave their daytime job. All the lifeguarding skill events had a lifeguard instructor. At events where it was not primarily lifeguarding skills, we had volunteers come and help.
The only other pre-event item that we had to take care of was awards. Due to budget constraints, we went with the lowest cost prize as possible. The top 3 teams received a lifeguard competition shirt. The shirt was also given to all volunteers for coming and helping out at the event. These were the major things that had to be addressed immediately. The policy and procedure manual is what basically plans the entire event for you. Once this is made, the rest of the event falls into place.