USA-Swimming Membership Highlights
(from the USA-Swimming 2006 Membership Report.)
By John Leonard
Posted: April 30, 2007

First, congrats to USA-Swimming for now being able to tell us everything we’d ever want to know about our membership. It's a huge step forward. Now, here are some of the more interesting standout items from that report.

1. In 2006, we had 249,326 Year Round Athletes in USA-S. Back in 2000, by comparison, we had 221,352.

2. Dating back to 1986, it appears that in the year immediately following the Olympic Games, we get a small “bump up” in our athlete membership. (in 1989, 4% increase. In 1993, 10% increase, in 1997, 8% increase. In 2001, 5% increase, in 2005, a 7% increase.)

3. In only 4 of the other years (of 21) did we actually lose membership. But all other increases were in the 1-3% range.

4. Our number of year round clubs has grown from 2590 to 2712. An increase of 122 clubs.

5. Retention rate for our athletes in all ages combined is 69%. Females are retained at a very small margin more than males.

6. Only 5 USA-Swimming Club have more than 1001 members. These clubs represent 6,406 members.

7. The average number of swimmers per club is 90.

8. 1,151 clubs representing 26,524 athletes have less than 50 athletes per club. In this category, the AVERAGE number of members is 23. But they are 41.9% of our total number of clubs. Small clubs are common.

9. USA-S has 10,650 people registered as coaches. Of these, 8,530 of them describe themselves as “Part time”. 2,120 of them describe themselves as Full Time Coaches.

10. There are also 10,725 registered officials.

Next project will be to compare ourselves to other Youth Sports on the same numbers!

Great job by USA-S staff in compiling these statistics.