YBT

[Jude]

Yes we have always had a long journey for this competition, but I think this year was our furthest. Some team members had to leave home at 5:00am to arrive by 10:30.

It was worth it, we had a good day and we love the format of the competition. It will be great however to have less than 3 hours drive to get there.

[old lough]

I had difficulties with the map ( but I am getting too old to read 1:15000 anyway!!)especially the red overprint on the yellowy/orange areas

But a really well organised event... well done NOC

[Guest]

I have to agree with everyone that Sunday was a great event enjoyed by all the juniors taking part.
In particular the planning of the Yellow and Orange courses was excellent. (These should be used as examples to show to the many planners who insist on making them too easy.)
Thank you Nottingham.

However, it is perhaps worthwhile looking at the overall direction in which the Yvette Baker Trophy seems to be going.

The competition is beginning to look very elitist.
In 2004 OD won with 866 points. Their lowest placed counter was 9th.
In 2005 NOC won with 879 points, including three 1st places, and no counter lower than 7th.
OD scored 876 points, with their counting runners spread across all eight classes, and no counter finishing lower than 6th.

Of the top seven clubs in 2004 only Walton Chasers didn't finish in the top seven in 2005. Their place being taken by HOC who knocked them out in the qualifying round.

In 2004, 345 juniors took part. In 2005 this had dropped to 295 juniors. (One club less took part, so 14 rather than 15 clubs.) Are they being put off by the realisation that if they can't finish in the top few places then they aren't going to have any effect on the winning teams?

(I had a thought that opening the event up to include more counters might help, but in fact this would only put NOC and OD even further ahead, all be it probably in reverse order).

What do other people think ?

[Mrs H.]

Err.... this is meant to be a competition isn't it? Not some politically correct table tipping exercise - what exactly are you saying? Surely the best teams should do best - and if as you say making more counters would have just increased the gap then surely that proves the point. The point is the other teams should do better.

On a point of order - HOC did not "take Walton chasers' place " this year - we took our own place as we were in the final last year as well and were very, very pleased to improve our position from 12th to 5th. Who knows - with the influx of my little MADO recruits -several of whom travelled up and had a really great time - we may challenge the top three next year.

anyway - put your name to your post if you are making a serious point.

on the subject of the map - it struck me that is was rather 'lurid' in that the yellows and greens seemed very intense making it harder to see any other colours printed on them

[H ocolite]

re guests comment on courses particularly Yellow and Orange. Firstly one minute he's saying courses were good cos they were tough and next minute he's saying competition is becoming elitist, well if it were not the top competitors others would and some did struggle with the courses Secondly I have only looked at the Orange which was spatially cramped, but I did notice it had two controls on opposite sides of the same feature( a smallish fenced enclosure). I am happy to be corrected but I think this is probably a bit suspect and certainly not good if the competitors are less experienced.

[H ocolite]

Re elitism again Mrs H did not mention that certainly 2 of our counters were not elite, one who had a 5th position has only competed at schools competitions and MADO, the other has done a few more events and did go to the Scottish but only runs the B class in their age group at present, as they only came into the sport at 13/14

[Guest]

wch were robbed. sooooo much better than hoc normally

[Rob P]

Things have changed quite a lot in the last few years. In my last year as a junior (1999) if I remember right NOC won all the courses and got almost maximum points. I think the 2nd NOC team may well have got the next best score.

There are probably only a few clubs who can win it but the gap at the top is now much closer and more teams compete in the final so it's not like only a selct few get the chance to take part.

[Stodgetta]

wch were robbed. sooooo much better than hoc normally

I don't know who you are, but that's not really very helpful! HOC beat us on the day with 9 runners to count and their score was better than ours. What's happened in previous years counts for nothing. All clubs are working on development and getting stronger, including Chasers, so hopefully in 2006 we can come back stronger.

I don't think the original guest was saying that HOC took Chasers place in the final results unfairly, but that comparing this years results sheet to last years results sheet, HOC were there instead.

[Guest]

The great thing about the YBT scoring (and don't forget that this was started by AWK when he was the BOF Development Officer) is that it encourages everyone by giving all a score. Even the non - counters can then feel that they have contributed to the team effort by 'pushing down' scorers from other clubs. This has the knock-on effect of favouring those clubs with big teams and strength in depth.

I wouldn't say that our team (NOC) was 'elitist' as we had lots of club juniors from our schools development work as well as the orienteering family juniors. It is a good finale to the term for those youngsters following on from the schools competitions and the YBT regional matches. Many of the clubs taking part on Sunday also had teams with 'new' orienteers as Mrs H has said about the HOC team. Incidentally a jump from 12th to 5th by HOC and no where to 11th by HH should make others sit up and take notice.

One less club taking part just reflects the regional heats - what 'guest' doesn't mention is that more clubs have got involved in the competition in the last 2 years.

2 clubs chose to take their teams away for 2 days, do a bit of training and stay over then compete - a good social time including a swim for 1 team!

All these are great examples of development work in practice - it's a good competition!

HP

[Guest]

If you are going to look at any development of elitism in the YBT, then you need to look at a longer period than merely the past couple of years. After all, the competition has been going for a decade or so now.

In the earliest days, it was a one-off match to which anybody who wanted to come was invited - I remember some teams making quite a trek (the furthest distant was Chasers) - and the matches were dominated by Ebor.

Then it started to roll out nationally, and NOC and WCH had some very close fought battles at the front (there was a tie one year I recall). With the appointment of a full-time national development officer, it started to really take off in 1999 when it took on the name of Britain's recent first-time World Champion.

In 1999, there were 8 teams in the final. Since then the numbers have gone 10, 13, 12, 10, 15, 14. So no tendency to elitism there.

Guest bases one of his/her main claims for elitism on the dominance of the winners, particularly class winners and lowest position counter. Well, o course the winning team is going to have everybody scoring high up - that's why they've won! Even so, take a look a few years back. NOC won the first YBT in 1999 scoring 794 pts out of a maximum of 797, beating the second placed team (Lakeland) by 37 points! They had 5 out of 5 class winners and a lowest counter of 4th! Their 2nd team beat the next club's first team! This year 37 points back would have got you no higher than 7th.

In fact, since the start of the YBT in 1999, the winning margins have been 37, 14, 15, 10, 1, 3, 10 pts. There isn't an awful lot of evidence for elitism there I would suggest. Yes, a slight widening the past couple of years, but take a look at the spread across the leading teams: last year a mere 16 points covered the top 6 clubs. This year it was a bit more at 35, but that was still a closer spread than any other year ever. On that basis, the YBT has never been more open and competitive.

As for the argument that only one of the top 7 clubs changed since last year. oif course that will happen. Things don't change overnight, but let's go back a bit further. In 1999, the top 7 clubs were: NOC, LOC, PFO, AIRE, SOS, COBOC, WAOC. So - only two clubs still there today.

In fact, 16 clubs have featured in the top 7 over the past 7 years, and only 3 clubs (NOC, AIRE and WCH) have featured 5 times or more. Not bad in a sport with so few clubs, and even fewer doing any junior development. In the past 3 years, 10 different clubs have featured in the top 7. In the previous 3 years, there were also 10. So, it's certainly not getting more focused (or elitist).

As for participation numbers - well Guest compares 2004 against 2005 and notes a drop off - not exactly a broad enough time range to draw any conclusions. If we go back to 2003, then the numbers are actually up considerably (187 v 295), even allowing for the fact that there were more clubs this year. There were mitigating circumstances for that, but the point is that taking a one off comparison like that tells us nothing. In fact numbers over the past years have hovered either side of 300, and last year was the biggest yet because it had the most clubs pure and simple. There could be a fall off, but it's far too early to tell.

Numbers will also vary depending on all sorts of factors (2003 was down because of the location), including the clubs taking part, how strong they are in terms of numbers, and even how they change. An example of this was Cleveland this year. Back in 2001 they were just about filling a small minibus. This year they entered 40 or so. On the other hand, Aire had a smaller team because one of our schools couldn't make it - nothing to do with discouragement. Neither of those indicate any disaffection through uninvolvement.

Yes, I do think the competition needs to keep a careful watch on how it works - it's a lot bigger now than it was, and things need to keep up with that. I've certainly spotted one anomaly which I'm writing to JCG about, but as for YBT getting 'very elitist', far from it - I think it's more inclusive than ever before, and am delighted to see so many clubs making this competition so competitive.

[awk]

I really thought I had logged in this time! That was me (you can tell by the length!).

[HOCOLITE]

Having only been the last two years I find your facts very interesting AWK. I forsee changes again in the next few years as some clubs emerge and others fall back due to their experienced juniors joining the senior ranks. Often successful clubs have one or two families that are the king pins or leaders. A few years back our juniors were really disenchanted as we didn't really have any above 16 and they found competing against the top 20's intimidating(and that was only in the qualifiers.Now the club has aged we are hoping to maintain a balanced profile to ensure a continued presence inthe YBT final. This is tough in the West Midlands with three very active clubs as the qualification criteria becomes dependent on the previous years final, or who is prepared to travel where!

[Guest]

Guest claims that the event is getting too elitist.
Exactly the opposite seems to be the case, in that the results of the competition are now decided more by a club's ability to exploit the 'no gold badge' rule.

Excluding the green course where there are no limits imposed on juniors achieving gold at any level:
NOC had 3 of their 7 counters on the light green / orange / yellow courses over the age where a gold badge would have made them ineligible.
For OD it was 4 out of 7.
DEE, 2 out of 6.
SO, 4 out of 6.
HOC, 6 out of 6.

It would be nice to think that these were all juniors new to the sport, but some of the names look surprisingly familiar.
The trick seems to be to get older and better without ever dropping back down to a class on which you might actually get the gold standard.

[NeilC]

The trick seems to be to get older and better without ever dropping back down to a class on which you might actually get the gold standard.

Not unreasonable - not all juniors can reach gold standard but are quite happy moving up a class every couple of years.

If any club somehow prevented a junior getting a gold standard so that they could run down at the YBT then that would be sad.