As High School Season comes to a close and Club season begins to pick up we feel that we need to make sure that we address the issue of recruiting. Recruiting is the action of talking to or convincing another athlete from another USA Club to join our club. It is highly frowned upon and creates more problems and breaks relationships between club teams. Most people do not know that we have these policies in place, so we have decided to educate our members on this issue. Here is the official code of conduct article according to USA Swimming:

The USAS Code of Conduct Article 304.17 defines recruiting as: 

Action, other than through general advertising, by a coach, owner, officer, volunteer, representative, or employee of a swim club, or a USA Swimming or LSC employee, either through direct contact with an athlete or the encouragement of others, to recruit or otherwise encourage an athlete who is already a member of a USA Swimming member swim club to leave that club, unless the acting party receives prior written approval to recruit or encourage the athlete to change affiliation from the designated club representative of the athlete's existing USA Swimming-member swim club or contact is initiated by the athlete, the athlete's parent or authorized representative. General advertising includes any information that is:  

1. Distributed to an identifiable general population where there is a reasonable expectation that the majority of that population are not current members of USA Swimming, or  

2. Placed in or on any item that is sold. In the event of a violation of this section, a sanction may be imposed against any coach, owner, officer, volunteer, representative or employee of a swim club, or against any such club, or any combination thereof, as appropriate. 

TCA will not engage in recruiting and we would hope that our members do not engage in recruiting as well. If an athlete would like to join our club that is not part of another club, we can talk to or convince to join. BUT, if an Athlete is part of another club, we cannot and will not pursue contact unless they approach us first. 

Thank you,

Coach Justin