2022 Inducted into the New England LMSC Hall of Fame (Contributor)
Years Active 2000-Present
2000-2017 & 2019 Meet Director NE SCY Championship
2018 NE LMSC Distinguished Service Award - recognizes outstanding long-term service to NELMSC. This is given to one individual based on leadership, membership recruitment, program development, and promotion of Masters swimming at the club, NELMSC, and national levels. Nominees must have maintained current NELMSC registration for the last ten years.
From the nomination - Outstanding service to Masters swimming. Promotes the sport locally and nationally. The BEST meet director. Supportive. Encouraging. Great announcer. Kind. Plays great music. Outstanding professionalism. Above and beyond. Thoughtful. Dedicated. Great announcer. Above and beyond. Friendly and fun!
Rick is the wizard of Harvard’s web page. His approach to meet management is part science and part art. The technology used to run the New England championships is equal to or superior to that used at our USMS National meet. Results were available minutes after the completion of every event. Team scores, individual events and relays were posted on our meet website within an hour after the completion of each session. We were very good at keeping to our meet timeline in large part because of Rick’s mastery of the many meet details. The meet web page exceeded our expectations. Visitors could observe live action via electronic scoreboard or live video through webcam (about 250 unique IP addresses logged on). We had more than 10,000 hits to our web page—without the general broadcast of availability of results! Rick was a very big factor in this meet’s success
Rick has been the SCY Championship Meet Director for over 15 years and has repeatedly demonstrated outstanding service to Masters Swimming on many levels and consistently promotes Masters Swimming at the Club, NE LMSC, and National levels.
USMS All American Honors – 4 years pool relay
USMS Records – 1 lifetime pool relay
USMS Top Ten Achievements – 11 individual, 17 relay
Club – New England Masters
USMS Profile - Rick Osterberg - USMS Swimmer
My first experience with Masters was before I was even part of Masters. We hosted the SCY Champs at Harvard in 2000 and Bob Seltzer and Steph Morawski got me involved. I was running meets at Harvard at the time (since 1995 really), and they decided to run a Masters meet at Harvard and I committed to the meet in late January 2000 for the April 2000 meet. I have been running that meet every year since... well, except 2018 when I missed it because of chemotherapy, and not since 2020 when we had to cancel. Hopefully we will be back.
It was a year later that I officially joined CMSC in 2001. (And I met Jess, and the rest of history.) Strangely enough, I don't think I've ever held an "official" role in either NEM or NE-LMSC. Part of that is because I was part of the NE Swimming (USA Swimming side) Board of Directors since around 2002. So that was more my "official role" service to the sport.
On the Masters side, I've been in the booth for a long time. I'm often found playing a supporting role behind people who are officially elected. I think I helped shape some of the changes to either or both the NEM and LMSC Bylaws as they have evolved over the years. Over all of these years... I only went to convention once (2016 in Atlanta, and I juggled USA Swimming and USMS sessions). And I've only been to USMS Nationals once (LCM 2012 in Omaha), and one Worlds (2014 in Montreal).
But perhaps fair to say that I'm a persistent advocate for the sport across all segments, and in particular an advocate for high quality meet operations and simplification of rules. I keep my hands in the mix from the SCY Champs at Harvard, to 100x100 at Harvard usually in January, to the Boston Light Swim, to helping unofficially at open water nationals in Vermont a couple years ago, to being part of the Swim Across America Boston organizing committee.