BUCS 2009

[Rockaldo]

Distracted, you have no idea. Shhh.

You can get a degree at lots of universities, so maybe people look for a bit more than that.

A big city. A good night-life. A big & friendly student population. Somewhere where they can do their sports. A place with a respected reputation.

No offence, but Oxbridge is just full of wierdo's, and for most people that just isn't our scene. When I arrived at BUSA I found a group of students playing some sort of Dungeons & Dragons card game on the ground in the carpark. Seriosuly, WTF?

Edinburgh and Sheffield are two cities which actually fill all of that criteria. Edinburgh is ranked 6th in the UK academically, and we were 4th in the overall BUSA rankings last year. OK, so we aint Oxbridge when it comes to getting your degree, and we aint Loughborough for sport. But you know what, we are bloody good at both. Edinburgh is an awesome city, with a cracking night-life.

Normal people come on our weekends and have a good time. Have a look at some of the people who were at BUSA, the only people who actually seemed to have any social skills were are Edinburgh or Sheffield (with a few exceptions). I talked to some Sheffield people who I had never met before. Cambridge looked like they got lost on the way to the world Chess/Scrabble/Rubix Cube championships.

If you are a junior orienteer, JWOC standard or stuggling on the light green, then Edinburgh and Sheffield are the best univerisities to go to. They have good, big, active, fun clubs in good, big, active, fun universities. Sheffield are a great example of this, they have hardly any "elite" people left, but they are an absolutely amazing club. If I wasn't at Edinburgh I would be there, why? Well they were 3rd at BUSA so not because of their elite club (ha ha ha), but because it would be fun. And that is what students are looking for.

Who all turned up in fancy dress, who were the last people at the social???

I would like to nominate this for post of the week.

[Scott]

No offence, but Oxbridge is just full of wierdo's

Correct.

[PeterG]

Looking at the results there were just over 110 men competing and about 50 women. Because of this the scoring should probably be weighted 66% men and 33% women to reflect the spread of competitors and quality of competition. It would certainly prevent such silliness as Oxford beating Sheffield in the overall results.

[WHB]

Chauvinist Pig

[ruth]

Quote Harry; 'There's pressure on typical UK middle class O kids to go to a respectable Uni, get a respectable degree and then get a career. '

much much more worrying is the pressure on all orienteering kids to pick one of only two universities from the tens of decents unis that GB has got. picking where you do you degree is an important thing in your life and its sad that decisions are being forced upon O juniors.

.
Have a look at some of the people who were at BUSA, the only people who actually seemed to have any social skills were are Edinburgh or Sheffield (with a few exceptions). I talked to some Sheffield people who I had never met before. Cambridge looked like they got lost on the way to the world Chess/Scrabble/Rubix Cube championships.

Mark Nixon you are just an extremely rude individual, what gives you the right to be so offenisve to people who've caused you no harm?

[distracted]

I hope we can agree that university clubs have a key part to play in the development of elite and non-elite orienteers alike. They are also an ideal time to get people on board who would not have been exposed to the sport otherwise, or who may have wanted to get involved but had limited opportunity.

There are well over 100 universities in the UK. There were 17 of them represented at the BUCS Championships last weekend, 7 of these institutions were represented by a single competitor. So that's 10 universities in the country that can be said to have an active orienteering club - so under 10% of the UK student population has access to an orienteering club. Yes we're not a mainstream sport, but that is still worryingly low.

Although the local clubs can offer support, it is the students who run university clubs, without them the clubs cease to exist. By effectively restricting the universities that orienteers are going to, we are significantly limiting the formation of new clubs and the development and establishment of the smaller clubs. However many newcomers they can attract...

There are over 2 million students in the UK. We're missing out on a huge proportion of this number who don't even have the chance to find out what the sport involves, let alone give it a try. As Scott suggests, we could try to get someone involved to offer support, and I'm sure this would be appreciated. One or two people can make some difference, but ultimately the biggest and best resource we have to spread the word and get into universities is the students themselves.

[SYO Member]

Does anyone actually give any credence to the overall result, or was it something that BUCS under one of its previous names insisted on having? It was certainly only introduced in the last couple of decades.

Surely orienteers, whether students or not, are only interested in who won the Mens and Womens Relays and Individuals and most would consider any university that wins 2 or 3 of these to be the 'victor ludorum', if it's at all required.

When I did that project last year in conjunction with the SHUOC/SPOOK anniversary, it didn't just comprise the article that showed up in CompassSport but a whole load of stats relating to their successes, particularly at BUSF/BSSF/BUSA prior to BUCS.

While trawling through old results and magazines, I never thought it necessary to compile overall result successes which more often than not weren't reported (even though I've never worked out how they're calculated), and after handing everything over to SHUOC/SPOOK, nobody came back and asked me why I didn't.

[DIDSCO]

mharky wrote:
No offence, but Oxbridge is just full of wierdo's

To be honest orienteering in general is full of wierdo's, including Mharky, and most of the people that write on this forum, and Oxbridge probably breeds more than its fair share. You only realise the extent of how weird orienteering people are when you stop participating and can view the sport from a safe distance! Nope, was I one of those weirdo's is the question you ask yourself.... but then you think about the experiences you've had and all the good times and you realise maybe it was worth it

[RS]

Ruth said, 'Mark Nixon you are just an extremely rude individual, what gives you the right to be so offenisve to people who've caused you no harm?'

We know he often is but at least you know where you stand with him and in this case, I imagine he is saying what a lot of people think. Agree with Rockaldo, post of the week

[Mrs H]

Crikey - Mharky's amusing the old folks and offending the youngsters - you don't think he's becoming 'establishment' do you?

thinking about the problem I think you could sum it up as "Continuity versus Cool". How do you keep the good work going with such a quick turn over of personnel unless you introduce someone a bit long term to be involved (local club member - orienteering member of staff, some kind of development officer?) and keep the vibrancy of a student based club? Perhaps the glut of credit crunched unemployed post graduates could be retained with some development fund money to take the continuity posts on.

there are also many universities out there with fair populations of club and ex-school orienteers but no university clubs.

Ideas anyone?

[eddie]

word

from a former director of BUSA, current director of BO, former sports president of Edinburgh and current senior sports administrator of Oxford.

there is a lot of guff being spread on here.

and i'm pretty busy (trying to make sport better - funny that) so can't be arsed to explain it all (fairly standard)

[DJM]

From the Orienteering Whole Sport Plan 2009/13:

‘O’ in FE/HE: Further and Higher Education establishments are excellent place to recruit new members and orienteering has strong ties with a few universities such as Edinburgh, Sheffield University and to a lesser extent Oxford and Cambridge.
To develop the potential of the FE/HE structure will require a Development Officer devoted to working with the establishments and BUSA to grow the presence of orienteering either by establishing FE/HE based clubs or building strong links to local clubs or both.
Aspects of the programme include:
- Developing FE/HE links with clubs; the club membership will be able to provide guidance and support in the development of FE/HE orienteers or club
- Training Coaches: Using lecturer/student body to identify and train coaches to drive and support the programme.

[graeme]

Surely orienteers, whether students or not, are only interested in who won the Mens and Womens Relays and Individuals

Couldn't disagree more. Surely being part of a counting team is exactly what any club member wants? Why would anyone be interested in finding out who won the Men's individual and relay, when the result was obvious from the start list?

BUCS is about the only chance that a reasonable competent student orienteer has to be part of a team in a club they care about (Oxford and Cambridge also have the Varsity Match). For them, it can be the highlight of the year - but not for the winners.

[Mrs H]

Okay - we'll stop worrying about it and trying to think of ways to help and leave it to Eddie and the devoted development officer to sort out.

and of course we're all weirdos - anyone with any enthusiasm - let alone passion - for a particular interest looks weird to an outsider. I pity the people who don't seem weird

[SeanC]

Being weird is normal.

Try this test. Look round your office or workplace. Which ones would you sit next to on a coach ride from London to Fort William?

At least if two wierdos have the same interests they have something to talk about for 15 hours.

I hope this development officer thing happens. Assuming it's not imminent, what can the rest of us do to help new or struggling uni clubs?