Adopted Rules and Code Changes


A number of changes to the USA Diving Rules and Code were adopted by the Board of Governors at its 2004 annual meeting in Orlanda, Fla.

A detailed summary and the full text of all changes will be posted to the USA Diving Web site shortly. In the meantime, the following "quick look" is being provided as a convenience to our members. Please bear in mind that in some instances the proposals were modified by the committees before submission to the Board of Governors. The full text version of the adopted changes will reflect those changes.

The Board of Governors, at the recomendation of the Law & Legislation Committee, adopted: a method to allow USA Diving to reconstitute local diving associations that have fallen apart (C-1); a revised conflict-of-interest provision (C-3); a four-year term for all officers (C-4); a reduction in the size of the Committee for Competitive Excellence (C-7); simplified language for transfer procedures (C-12); and changes to the Code of Conduct for International Trips (C-13).

At the recommendation of the Rules Committee, the Board of Governors voted to define how long an armstand must be held (G-2) and to establish specific guidelines on judge deductions for excessive oscillation (G-3) in the General Rules. For Senior Rules, the board renamed the Senior Zone meets as "USA Diving National Preliminaries (S-1), streamlined 1-meter competitions at Senior Nationals (S-4), and eliminated the prequalification to Senior Nationals for top NCAA finishers (S-5).

The majority of the proposals submitted for consideration at the 2004 annual meeting concerned Junior competition. The Rules Committee deferred consideration of substantive changes to the Junior National Championships qualifying meets and possible realignment of regions and zones until the 2005 annual meeting. Junior changes adopted at the 2004 annual meeting include: assigning authority for qualifying meet site selection to the Junior Subcommittee of the CCE (J-3), allowing meet entry forms to be automatically forwarded by the meet director to the next level of competiton (J-4), requiring meet information to be submitted to the National Officer by the meet host 90 days before the competition (J-5), setting a 24-hour deadline for submission of meet results to the National Officer (J-6), adding 9 & under competitive requirements (J-7), establishing minimum degrees of difficulty for platform competiton in summer East/West and Nationals (J-9), codifiying methods for making cuts in qualifying competitions if necessary (J-13), providing judges be identified by team name (J-14), mandating choice of East or West Championship be determined by region in which diver competed (J-17), confirming minimun DDs in East/West Championships (J-18), changing eligibility requirements for Junior National Championships (J-19), and specifying divers will perform voluntaries first in Junior Nationals (J-20).