When Does A Swimmer Represent a Club?

QUESTION asked by an LSC:

When does a swimmer represent a club?  Is it when he enters his
cards in the meet and they are published in the meet program?  Is
it when he actually enters the water competing in an event?  Is it
as the official typed results indicate?  This seems to come into
question at the first meet of the season when a swimmer decides to
swim unattached and has already entered the meet attached.  Our
first meet of the season is a prelim-final meet and the mistake on
the cards is discovered at some time during the meet and someone
wants to change the cards.  The resulting confusion and commotion
usually results in the 120 day period of unattached swimming
beginning from the first day of the prelim-final meet at the
beginning of the short course season.  If the cards can be changed,
and the event is the event at the finals and the cards read
unattached at that point, is the swimmer attached or unattached?

ANSWER:

This question has come up from time to time and it was the early
consensus of opinion among Registration and Legislation Committee
members that a swimmer's status is governed by that existing at the
time he takes the starting blocks to compete in his first event of
the meet.  His status at time of preliminaries governs his status
at time of finals (it is, in fact, "one event").

The administrative difficulties presented when a swimmer switches
from attached to unattached status, or vice versa, from the time he
sends in his entry card until the day of the meet (or event), was
felt by the Committees not to outweigh the athlete's right to swim
attached or unattached as he chose.  But this must be tempered by
the fact that sensible rules must be observed and respected so that
meet officials can run an effective meet.

It is the swimmer's responsibility (or the coach's responsibility,
particularly when younger age group swimmers are involved) to see
that his status is exactly as he wishes it to be on the day of the
event.  Once the event has begun at the preliminary stage, he
cannot change his status for that event.  During the meet he can
swim subsequent events in an unattached status but he cannot again
switch back to attached.

Also, if he swims an event for Club A in a meet, then swims
unattached for the next meet, he can swim again for Club A in a
subsequent meet without regard to the 120-day rule; but if he
wishes to swim for Club B he must, of course, observe that rule.