Galoppen Scoring Systems

[Nottinghamshire outlaw]

The East Midlands also has an individual league based on many district colour coded events throughout the year and, yes, we also changed the name so that people would be able to spell it, pronounce it and understand what it is!! Prizes for first male and female in each colour coded course and certificates for the top three etc - definitely there to encourage participation within the region.

[Snail]

If the aim is really to encorage participation then other systems might be better than one effectively just based on just the total number of runners, particularly where one club is dominant in terms of membership.

eg the highest proportion of a club's membership - so that getting 45 out of 50 people out scores more than 100 out of 200? Or over a season reward the best percentage increase in attendance over the previous season? Then all clubs take part on an equal footing (except perhaps those with only a very few members).

These could always be additional awards, rather than necessarily replacing any current system.

[runnerbean]

Anyway, why use this mysterious Scandinavian term "ggaallooppeenn"

It's as stupid as having a a club spelled with a "k"

Don't they have something to do with orienteering originating from Scandinavia?! And what's wrong with a bit of mystery? Whatever the scoring system, I like the term galoppen, even though I don't know the correct way to spell it, or exactly what it means! Let's allow our sport to have some heritage and quirkiness.

[SeanC]

I take your point about giving everyone the opportunity to score Neil, but IMHO there are other ways a team event can encourage participation.

One way of making the SE league more exciting might be to allow clubs to enter any number of teams of say a maximum of 10, with the best 5 scoring. Borrowing the structure from my wife's hockey league, there could be two or three divisions with promotion and relegation. In Division 1 the SO 1sts team would battle it out with the other top teams such as HH 1sts and SLOW 1sts, but because the team size is limited, SLOW and HH would have a reasonable chance of beating SO. Down in Division 3, SO 3rds might battle it out with the likes of DFOK 1sts and MV 2nds.

There would be more winners and more excitement but everyone would get a chance to score. Small clubs like DFOK could aim for promotion rather than just being 10th out of 15 clubs. Newcomers taking part could be invited to join one of the teams. I wonder how many new or occasional orienteers are more likely to go orienteering if they were simply asked to by a club or team captain? Small team sizes might encourage socialising/team spirit, especially if there were results on the day. Also improving orienteers in bigger clubs would have the incentive of trying to make the 2nd or 1st team.

Of course the downside is that there's lots more work for the club captain (at the local hockey club this work is shared out) and the club captain would sometimes have to drop people from the 1st team, which seems to cause great quantities of grief at the local hockey club. I think this sort of competition also needs results on the day to generate sufficient excitement.

Orienteering is traditionally thought of as an individual sport. Do people think that orienteers will ever have the appetite for such team competitions on a regular basis?

[NeilC]

Sounds like a great idea Sean. Defining the teams in advance would be too problematic but just taking the top 10 scorers from each club (from a range of classes like the SE score) as the 1st team would work. Picking people for an individual team may not work, there are so many orienteers who refuse to do relays for fear of letting the team down.

Not sure the league co-ordinator would be too keen though given how many hours it takes him to work out the results currently. I'm sure some computing guru could code some suitable algorithms though.

Write up a proposal and pass it on to a suitable association rep.

[Neil M40]

I like the term galoppen, even though I don't know the correct way to spell it, or exactly what it means!

galopp means gallop (the noun, as in going for a gallop), the -en ending makes it the definite singular so galoppen means "the gallop".

How did "the gallop" come to mean orienteering league? Most likely it has come from the long-established Norwegian multi-day event Sørlandsgaloppen, which means "The South Lands Gallop". Or maybe not.

My knowledge of Norwegian grammar is derived entirely from the internet.

[roadrunner]

Good idea, Sean - one of our local Cross-Country leagues works in the same way, with all divisions competing at the same event (although it's a bit easier there, not as many age categories or courses). I don't see that it should take much more work doing the scoring, though I admit I haven't tried working it out for the present systems.

[SeanC]

roadrunner - is this league one where captains have to give team lists, or one where teams are somehow entered automatically. Is there a URL I can look at?

My idea is to make the SE league more of an active team competition, rather than the passive competition we have now. If there is no appetite for all the extra work that goes with a more active competition then we could keep the current league, which is a good measure of participation, and have separate league table(s) for how well the club's top runners are performing - which would be less predictable and more exciting. This might be more realistic - if less fun....

[PKJ]

It's only as a result of reading this thread that I've looked up the YHOA website and found out that we have a regional Galoppen.

I largely agree with SeanC - unlike team sports, orienteering doesn't have the equivalent of competing for your club at 2nd, 3rd, 4th team level. And the simplest way to do it would be to have a competition where the highest-scoring 15 (say) finishers are the 1st team, next 15 are the 2nd team and so on, rather than designating people into the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th teams.
Whether there's an appetite for this type of competition I have no idea.

Like catering for all ages, catering for all abilities is one of the challenges for orienteering clubs, maybe from the novice to the international.
In the UK we assume that open clubs should be based on geography - are there any advantages in having clubs focussed on ability or age?

[seabird]

The reason the Yorkshire galloppen may have passed you by PKJ is that it is entirely an individual competition with no club/team scoring. It gets precious little publicity, although some club websites are better at promoting it than others.
Evidence of this is that the YHOA site doesn't list the 2008 events. I'd imagine that Tankersley and Pillar Woods were the first two events. Next one likely to be be Valley of Desolation now that Yateholme has been cancelled.

[roadrunner]

roadrunner - is this league one where captains have to give team lists, or one where teams are somehow entered automatically. Is there a URL I can look at?

You can find details on http://www.athletics.hampshire.org.uk/events/hxcl.html Team captains don't have to declare their teams, it's just the first N in the relevant age group that score.

[SeanC]

Thanks roadrunner that's helpful. Is it a new league? Has it been a success?

One thought after looking at the Hampshire league is whether the SE league could have separate league competitions for juniors (under 20), seniors (20-40) and veterans. It would increase the number of winners and potential prizes, and reward clubs who are recruting juniors and younger adults, but it would cease to be a whole club competition. What do people think?

I would some money on SLOW beating SO in a senior competition, but not quite the value of my house

[roadrunner]

Thanks roadrunner that's helpful. Is it a new league? Has it been a success?

It's certainly been going for some years, and is regarded as quite prestigious, so I think it could be considered a success.

[Wayward-O]

Some thoughts on the subject:

A competition is no good if nobody knows about it. Cumbrian Galoppen events are identified in the event title and on the map, so nobody that competes can say that they were unaware. Also, there is a direct link to the scores from the Cumbrian Orienteering gateway site at http://www.lakes-o.freeserve.co.uk . Firther, a bad competition with a good name is still a bad competition, a good competition with a bad name is still a good competition whilst a good competition with a good name will be a great and memorable one.

Rather than one series lasting the whole year, it might be better to organise a couple of shorter series, one in the Spring and another in Autumn, as the winners are announced quicker and it's on to the next. Also, allows people to move into the area, or move up courses during the year and still be competitive in the competitions. Could "theme" the different events - Speed in Spring, Accuracy in Autumn - i.e. fast running courses in a Spring Series and more focus on navigation in an Autumn Series.

Personally, I would like to see the Team competition in any series based upon how a Club performs at each of the events rather than how their best competitors score over the series. Therefore, I would propose that team scores are calculated per event and that the winning Club is that with the highest aggregate total from all the events in the series. In that way, more people will count in the final Club total, as the "counters" for each event are unlikely to be the same. Also, it would be more important for Clubs to get their runners out at each event, as a bad Club performance at one event would pull the final total down. The Club total for each event should also be calculated based upon a fixed number of results for each course as this requires a Club to have a good spread of abilities, rather than just on Browns and Blues.

[Oldman]

An overall club performance works fine when the club is based in a region where there are not often competing attractions in other regions. This would not work well in central england where I can sometimes travel 30 or 40 miles to an event in another region whereas my club might wish me to travel 100 miles to the league event in the same region.

Let each region set its own rules! That's what devolution's about.