Analyzing the USA Swimming House of Delegates’ Decision to Reject LSC Boundary Changes

The USA Swimming House of Delegates voted down a number of proposals aimed at adjusting Local Swimming Committee (LSC) boundaries during its 2025 legislative session, leaving many territorial issues unresolved.

The defeats included three notable proposals involving Potomac Valley, Texas, and Indiana/Kentucky jurisdictions, each designed to realign borders or allow cross-LSC sanctioning in overlapping areas.

The following actions were not passed by the USA Swimming House of Delegates:

• Potomac Valley / Virginia Swimming— Proposed allowing Potomac Valley Swimming (PVS) to sanction meets in Northern Virginia counties already home to PVS clubs, including Loudoun, Prince William, and Manassas.
  • Result: Defeated.

• Indiana / Kentucky Realignment — Proposed shifting Floyd and Clark Counties, Indiana, from Kentucky Swimming to Indiana Swimming.
  • Result: Defeated.

• Texas Realignment — Proposed transferring Platinum Aquatics, Tiger Sharks, Bell County, and Milam County from South Texas Swimming to Gulf Swimming.
  • Result: Defeated.

While those three measures were formally voted down, the Informational item matters were settled by votes within the LSC:

• Proposed merging Lake Erie Swimming and Ohio Swimming into one unified LSC, and redistricting Woodbury County from Midwestern Swimming to Iowa Swimming, and redistricting multiple towns in Maine from Maine Swimming to New England Swimming.
  • Result: Informational

Each of these items highlighted the growing tension around how USA Swimming’s 59 LSCs define and defend their borders, with increasing overlap between geographic lines and club communities.

Minnesota LSC delegate John Bradley, who attended the 2025 session and previously served as General Chair for Minnesota Swimming, described the outcome as a textbook example of what he called “resource guarding” in an interview with SwimSwam.

“I think what you’re seeing in a lot of places and what a lot of this stuff comes down to is you have a an LSC that doesn’t have a 50 meter pool and there’s a 50 meter pool across the border and an adjoining LSC…they reach out and they say we would like to use this facility, now the problem is is that the LSC that has that facility in its area has a claim that because that facility is in their area, they should get a fee for allowing a need to be held there.”

He compared the behavior to control battles rather than competitive development.

“I think it was a resources issue where the team or teams that wanted to move, felt that they would have better opportunities and better resources within the Gulf plan for how they’re going to allocate funds to athletes or coaches or clubs,” Bradley said. “If you see a better opportunity someplace else, I think they would like to move… If we let these guys go, we won’t have access to that facility. So the walls go up and it becomes a border war.”

Bradley pointed to an underlying problem: many LSC maps haven’t evolved with the sport.

“The LSC borders are crazy,” he said. “They don’t make a lot of sense. It is my understanding that the LSC map originally came out of the old AAU maps.”

The Indiana–Kentucky proposal exemplifies that. While Floyd and Clark counties lie in Indiana, their swim clubs often train and compete within Louisville’s facilities.

“From a map perspective, you’d think they should be in Indiana Swimming,” Bradley said. “But if your pools, coaches, and meets are all tied to Louisville, that relationship complicates everything.”

Bradley believes that while administrators view these disputes as logistical, the effects trickle down to everyone involved.

“You know, if you want to build your team, there has to essentially be what I call line of sight. There can’t be another team in the way that you’d be leapfrogging because then you have this weird sort of gerrymandered, you know, border issue, almost like a political issue. And that’s not healthy for anybody.”

He also stressed that these fights rarely benefit anyone in the long term.

“You know, why would you want to have somebody who isn’t happy in your LSC? And they you know, they’d be happier someplace else. And it doesn’t really matter.” Bradley said, “Now, if that team had something that would have been beneficial to them and they were a big club. All of a sudden, that’s where the problems start. And that’s the big issue.”