Juniors seeking relay teams

[Lard]

In Scotland I've noticed a lot of small clubs have some promising juniors who are unable to field junior relay teams to help bring on this talent. Is there moves afoot to allow neighbouring clubs to join forces to support junior development?

[SeanC]

The same situation has occurred in the South East as well for many years, with only SO and HH with a good sized junior section (though GO have also come through with great junior development recently).

What competition are you thinking of Lard?

I know that combined club teams for 'small' clubs are allowed in the Peter Palmer relays.

With the demographic ageing so that the typical adult orienteer is unlikely to be young enough to be bringing along a junior, IMHO a more radical approach is needed than allowing combined club teams for neighbouring clubs. This would still likely leave many juniors without a team. I would allow any club combination (ie ignore club) for the mini relays/M/W12 etc, and allow any number of clubs to combine from the same region for the other junior courses (counting Scotland as a region in this context). Even that might not be enough as some regions only have 2 or 3 functioning clubs.

[King Penguin]

If I recall correctly, neighbouring club teams are allowed for Elite relays at JK and BOC, so why not for juniors ?
We need to do all we can to attract more youngsters. There are plenty who are not averse to running in poor weather - I was most impressed by the number of juniors at the Helm fell race near Newby Bridge in the wind and rain on Sunday.

[buzz]

Junior relays and team events are a great source of motivation for junior development in clubs and it would seem counter-productive to water this down, especially when I get the impression that junior development is beginning to take off given the number adverts I've seen for development officers in recent years.

I agree with Lard though - its a shame that individual juniors sometimes miss out on running relays against their peers through no fault of their own. Perhaps the answer is to allow non-competitive teams with juniors from any club. A challenge for commentators, but solves Lards problem without removing the motivation for clubs.

[buzz]

Junior relays and team events are a great source of motivation for junior development in clubs and it would seem counter-productive to water this down, especially when I get the impression that junior development is beginning to take off given the number of adverts I've seen for development officers in recent years.

I agree with Lard though - its a shame that individual juniors sometimes miss out on running relays against their peers through no fault of their own. Perhaps the answer is to allow non-competitive teams with juniors from any club. A challenge for commentators, but solves Lards problem without removing the motivation for clubs.

[SeanC]

'Non-competitive' has got to be a hard sell to all but the thickest skinned surely? I can't imagine any of us would want n/c next to our team name even if not particularly competitive. Uncompetitive yes, non competitive no

Another approach would be to allow either 'anyone from one club' or 'any one from one region' in teams, and give prizes for both categories.

I know all regions are different... but using my own region as an example I would expect probably just SO and HH to be able to field junior teams at the JK and British this year. Maybe another club if the demographics are lucky. If there was a regional category then juniors from SAX and DFOK, maybe MV and SLOW as well could combine instead of being sent home a day early. Getting a combined team between clubs isn't necessarily easy, but there would be benefits... juniors getting to know other juniors in other clubs etc. Not all juniors are in regional squads.

Another alternative is to allow juniors to join a relay club - ie different to their main or local club. They would compete for their main club in compass sport club or local leagues.

Looking at the JK relay results for 2023, the mini relay had entries from only 6 clubs and the junior relay from only 12 clubs out of a total of 80+ clubs. Either there is a chronic lack of interest in junior relays amongst the majority of clubs, or there are lots of juniors being denied a run.

EDIT - actually allowing both regional and club teams potentially makes things interesting for the big clubs with junior sections as they could potentially try for a win in both the 'club only' and 'regional' categories. This would stretch the team captains a bit and make them work with neighbouring club captains. It would make things less predictable and therefore give more clubs / regions/ juniors a chance of winning or gaining a medal.

[pete.owens]

One way forward would be to use a single mixed sex mixed age relay classes to broaden the the pool to select a relay team from.
eg MW48- with same courses (GOG) as JK junior relay.

[SeanC]

I might have misunderstood the problem, and misunderstood the sport after 45 years of doing it

Can ad hoc relay members be from different clubs?

Looking at the British Relay rules it implies yes,

"For a team to be eligible to be British Relay Championship trophies and medals,
(all classes except for mixed ad hoc and junior ad hoc) all its members must be
from the same club, and that club must meet the club representation eligibility
requirements in the British Orienteering Rules of Orienteering".

Assuming so, actually the British Relay Championships do what I ask as there is a junior ad hoc competition, so the issue might just be awareness and organisation - ie the local big junior club could have an arrangement with neighbouring clubs to create junior ad hoc teams and no rules need to change?

The JK doesn't have a junior only ad hoc relay course.

[King Penguin]

I see BOF have now launched a Consultation on this - reaponses required by end of Sun 18 February.

https://forms.office.com/pages/response ... NCRjdLMS4u

[awk]

I really (really!) wish British Orienteering would get rid of the label 'Ad Hoc' relay - it's so off putting. As new club relay captain, it's very hard to sell, even if the only classes to enable smaller clubs and beginners to run teams. Applies to both 'Mixed' and 'Junior' - seniors equally put off.

[SJC]

I really (really!) wish British Orienteering would get rid of the label 'Ad Hoc' relay

So what would you call it then ?

[SeanC]

open?

Ad hoc is a negative so I guess it makes it harder to sell, also possibly not a particularly used phrase for people under 50 so not well understood.

Open is a positive, though it's still not perfect as it doesn't give the meaning that it's open to any club or class.

[pete.owens]

This is getting cause and effect mixed up.

There is nothing whatsoever negative or positive about the adjective ad hoc. The negative connotations among orienteers are that the most common use of the phrase we come across is to describe the relay team made of those left over at the end. As for being "off putting" - It is the most popular class at the relay champs.

There are THREE open classes to choose from at the relay champs:
Mens Premier, Mens Short and Mixed Ad Hoc.
Whatever names you allocated to those classes they will always be ranked in that order in terms of prestige.

[spitalfields]

There is nothing whatsoever negative or positive about the adjective ad hoc. The negative connotations among orienteers are that the most common use of the phrase we come across is to describe the relay team made of those left over at the end.

Regardless of the semantics, it is a term with negative connotations among orienteers. I know from personal experience that those negative connotations are very clear to newcomers.

As for being "off putting" - It is the most popular class at the relay champs.

It's the class with the most teams, but I don't think that means it's the most 'popular'. It's probably more an indication that the current relay classes don't work for the current demographics and/or numbers of club members.

There are THREE open classes to choose from at the relay champs:
Mens Premier, Mens Short and Mixed Ad Hoc.
Whatever names you allocated to those classes they will always be ranked in that order in terms of prestige.

I agree that the ranking of prestige will remain the same even if the names are changed. But that doesn't mean that the third ranked has to necessarily be burdened with the active negativity that some (including me) feel that it is. Why not consider alternatives that may be more likely to encourage people to join a relay team, and possibly later progress to a more 'prestigious' class?
Premier Open - Short Open - Mixed Open
Gold Open - Silver Open - Bronze Open
Brown Open - Green Open - Rainbow Open

[rf_fozzy]

Relays need fewer courses and classes.

Scrap the class start at a specific time system and just have people enter a course:

Long or Short (plus junior) (long = O/W/40 short = 55/70/older juniors, younger jun on separate course).

Everyone on Long starts at the same time, everyone on short starts 10mins later, then:
first team = open champs
first W team = womens champs
first M/W 40/55/70 team = champs in those cats.

Don't have enough for a particular cat? No issue - they simply run in the next available cat up - e.g. MUOC (made up orienteering club) enter a women's V40 team, someone gets injured the previous week and drafts in a 18 year old - no issue - run the same course, but just be an WO team.

We make life far too difficult for ourselves sometimes.

To the point of juniors making composite and 'ad-hoc' teams - absolutely and there is no reason they should not be competitive.

Seniors there's the issue of 'super-teams' so probably needs some more thought - but they could run n/c quite easily.