Has anyone looked at these? Can an 18 year old swimmer on a team with a 17 year old be friends on social media?
How will recruiting visits work?
While Safe Sport is a wonderful organization and is doing wonderful work, some of this is a bit of overreach and would be near impossible to administer (for a program) and police.
I would imagine most high school swimmers and coaches are members of USA Swimming and that these rules would apply 24/7/365 so in essence high school programs will have to comply. Separate locker rooms for those 18+ or separate locker room times? No team social media pages if there are 18 year old high school seniors. Seniors driving younger athletes to and from practice becomes an issue. No exposure of 18 year old athletes buttocks, have you seen female water polo suits and those same players often times are swimmers as well? Communication to a minor is restricted to 8am to 8pm, could be problematic for the college coach (that is a USA Swimming coach) trying to recruit, given swim practice schedules.
Implementation of this will be very interesting to watch.
This is from USA Swimming about locker rooms:
It’s probably best to post the definition of applicable adult:
https://www.usaswimming.org/docs/default-source/safe-sportdocuments/maapp/applicableadults.pdf
This is a mess. I’m a USA Swimming Official, so I’m included in the first item. My wife times and sometimes runs the computer, so she is included in the second. Also, any 18 year old swimmer (HS senior) is included.
Here is the part about social media and electronic communications:
With regards to locker rooms the documents are contradictory. In the Q&A referenced above it says teammates can use the same locker room however in the full document it states:
If the organization is using a facility that only has a single locker room or changing area, separate times for use by Applicable Adults must be designated
This would appear to say athletes can not share the same locker room times, although I guess it could mean teammates can share a locker room but only if no other team is in there.
Here is the part about the locker room:
https://www.usaswimming.org/docs/default-source/safe-sportdocuments/maapp/usaswimmingmaapp.pdf
I read section III to mean absolutely no nudity when 18 and over swimmers are mixed with younger swimmers. Good luck with that.
Section IV allows for the athletes to share a locker room, but other applicable adults (coaches and officials) can not use the locker room. That sounds OK, but I routinely walk through the boys locker room to make sure everything is acceptable. I have passed numerous background checks, so it’s better to have me walk through there than create an area where a predator knows adults can’t go. And yes I’ve found a weirdo lingering in the boys locker room. The police couldn’t arrest him, but said he had a long rap sheet involving minors.
I’m waiting to hear back from my LSC about how this will all work. I’m not volunteering at any meets until I get clarification, and most likely I’ll resign as an official.
Really wondering how the social media will play out. My son is 18 now, but is still on team with younger people. I guess he can’t participate in social media with his teammates now- seems like this could be isolating. Can he be in their group chat? When he was recruiting (17), coaches friended him on social media I think to see what he posting. He also friended people on teams he visited. When he committed he became friends with older teammates. I don’t know how old the boy who will be his roommate is - can they still chat?
If I had an 18 year old son I’d be worried/laughing about this:
He better get a women’s race suit. 
@hopefulswimmer Those are my same questions. In looking at Safe Sport they state that Applicable Adults are considered to be covered by the restrictions until they are no longer involved in the sport. To me this means those future college teammates and coaches are restricted from much communication/social media until the recruit reaches 18 years old. Even more cumbersome if the recruit does not turn 18 until after reaching campus, as was the case with several of my teammates back in the day.
When high school juniors doing their OVs, most of them would be 16-yo, some only 15!
I interviewed several coaches and officials who are totally perplexed by this. One coach isn’t even sure how he’ll manage the younger swimmers who come late or take forever in the locker rooms. He said “at every single meet, there’s always one stray swimmer who we have to find, who’s staring at the ceiling in the locker room, or spraying water at another swimmer. They’re kids!”