Rule 9, Sect.4, Art.6, Pg. 56 …Circling Voluntaries.
This rule states that "In other meets, the competition consists of one voluntary dive, which shall be done first…". The circling of the voluntary and its degree of difficulty is redundant and unnecessary. Failure to circle the dive number and degree of difficulty should not be cause to call for a failed dive in dual meets.
Rationale:
The purpose of circling the dive number and degree of difficulty made the official’s job of identifying the voluntary dives, insuring that that correct number of voluntaries were in the appropriate order and adding up the total voluntary degree of difficulties easier and well defined for championship meets. However in a dual meet the voluntary must be the first dive on the sheet. That position makes it obvious that it is the voluntary dive. If the voluntary dive for the dual meet is not the first dive, it is failed and receives a score of zero as written in Rule 9: Sect.7, Art.5, Pg. 59, (m).
This modification does not have to take up space in the rulebook but should be part of the interpretation of the rules for both coaches and officials.