Selling O' to teenagers

[tim sleepless]

"but Most teenagers aren't keen on the idea of running."

Not sure teenagers are particularly keen on the idea of a gentle walk through the woods either, unless it's to get to a rave at the other end.

It's a sport, not the Walton's day out.

[Guest]

Harry wrote: in my experience the keen people are the ones who can only walk round, so they join and get involved and then much later decide yes i like this sport and want to do better and eventually start running and getting fitter.

You weren't thinking of anyone in particular when you wrote that were you??!! Sounds like me ( Harry's Mum!). Though what I do is hardly 'running'.

[Carnage Head]

Recruiting 'runners' into orienteering can work at the school level, if you implicitly aim for runners in your 'campaign literature' (active images, etc) - and then accept others if they enquire if they can join. If you are lucky, the 'non-runners' will beat the 'runners' at the first event or two, thus giving them a confidence boost and giving the runners a reality check and an aim, too.

Being a 'runner' recruit in my mid-20s (joining due to the Outdoor Activities PGCE subsidiary at Leeds Uni), I have repeatedly tried to get fellow 'runners' to 'give it a go'. It's so hard to get them (even fell runners and XC runners) to even try one event! One event! Carnage! Loads of them seems to be in a comfort zone, despite breaching the physical comfort zone in every training run they do. What can be done to get them on board? A stall at the National XC Champs? Bribes? Trickery?

[Carnage Head]

Another tip to get teenagers interested is to make orienteering training competitive, whether it is in terms of practice runs, races, or even 'guess the symbol' or map memory or whatever.

And 'big-up' every event - even the tiniest local / district event has become 'your chance to beat [best runner]', and the British Schools Champs is being touted as 'THE BIG ONE!'(which I suppose it is!).