Ted Haartz U.S. Masters Swimming Staff Appreciation Award
| Recipient: | Ed Tsuzuki |
| Year: | 2012 |
| LMSC: | New Jersey |
Written and presented by Anna Lea Matysek at the 2012 Annual Meeting
The U.S. Masters Swimming Ted Haartz Staff Appreciation Award is named in honor of Ted Haartz, a leader in U.S. Masters Swimming since 1970. Ted helped establish the foundation for U.S. Masters Swimming’s evolution into a professionally operated organization. During Ted’s tenure as President, U.S. Masters Swimming became the only self-governed Masters organization in the world.
This award, established in 2009, recognizes one individual each year who demonstrates excellence in assisting and supporting the U.S. Masters Swimming staff in the national office with its professional duties of servicing, promoting, and building the membership. This award celebrates the organization’s volunteer roots, as well as its future, specifically by recognizing efforts that support and assist the staff in its responsibilities.
In addition to Ted, the past recipients of this award have been George Simon and Ralph Davis. Both George and Ralph continue to provide assistance and advice to the USMS staff on an almost-daily basis.
This year’s recipient has also gone above and beyond in providing guidance to various national staff members. Over the past two years he has assisted Tracy Grilli with all of the pre-convention communications, including the Delegate Welcome Letter and the new Delegate Survival Guide. He also created an educational and entertaining New Delegate Orientation presentation that is shown during the first House of Delegates meeting. He also assisted Tracy with the workshop schedule, serving as the liaison to the LMSC Development Committee.
Our recipient has worked with me to distribute grants to selected LMSCs that allow them to fund a delegate to the convention. He also assisted me with communications and mentoring for a couple of LMSCs whose officers needed assistance with issues within their LMSCs.
Our recipient has been a tremendous help to the USMS webmaster, too. His work on the Records and Tabulation Committee was instrumental in the transition from an offline Top 10 process to the current integration of the event results database and the Top 10 database. As the leader of the End-to-End Event Management task force, he did a great job of integrating both staff and volunteer input in the development of the online event sanction database and tools. He is reasonable to work with and digs in to understand the burdens on both the volunteers and the staff while seeking out the best solution for USMS.
This year’s recipient manages to stay involved and up-to-date while maintaining a grueling international travel schedule for his real job. If you ever wonder where he is today, look no further than his Facebook page for photos of the pool he just swam in and the exotic meal that he just ate!
I am honored to present the 2012 U.S. Masters Swimming Ted Haartz Staff Appreciation Award to Ed Tsuzuki.