M/W 21 turnout.

[Big Jon]

One possible reason for a lack of W/M21's - the lack of effort put into attracting NEW orienteers from schools (I emphasise NEW rather than juniors with orienteering parents). Many clubs seem satisfied with an intra-orienteering breeding programme, however this is never going to get enough newcomers to replace the natural wastage of youngsters to other sports, pastimes, apathy etc. Look back to Scottish orienteering in the late 70's and there were dozens of schools competing at the Scottish Schools Championships who pumped hundreds or even thousands of newcomers into the sport. The majority left, but some have stayed and are available to help leading the sport at club and SOA level. If we want to guarantee a healthy thriving orienteering sport in 20 years time we need to get into schools and offer proper orienteering to the children. Complaining about a lack of success means that the project is not being properly planned or implemented. Without offering orienteering to every child how can we be sure to catch the SOA president of 30 years time or the 6-Day organiser of 2037 or the next Jamie Stevenson?

[RJ]

........ we need to get into schools and offer proper orienteering to the children.......

Fortunately there is quite a lot of it going on at the moment. There are quite a few clubs with the support of RDO's who are having success at that strategy. The key to the 'success' is to have a workable model, and a clear set of aims. Club Mark has done a lot to focus the minds of committees on to the junior end of the sport, certainly with those clubs who have taken the idea seriously, and who strive to fulfil the ethos of Club Mark to its full potential.

[graeme]

Fortunately there is quite a lot of it going on at the moment.

And the main example of this in Scotland is STAG. They have an incredible number of local schools and park maps, they put on a eyestretching number of small events, easily accessible in Glasgow. The events are cheap, well advertised, good quality and they get an impressive turnout. STAG provided much of the driving force to bring the World Schools Scotland. They have been doing it for years.

Glasgow leads the way in schools orienteering: as I've said before it is a good thing for and of itself. Which is just as well, because it has had minimal effect on the number of adult orienteers in the city, which is probably lower per head of population than anywhere else. I suspect STAG puts on more events than it has active adult members.

Like RJ says, you need a clear set of aims, and if you are foolish enough to think of schools orienteering as a means of increasing M/W21s, then its a proven failure. If you think of it as a route to Club Mark, its likely to be a success.

[Mrs H]

which is probably lower per head of population than anywhere else.

Where as Malvern

the key is to use the schools as a mechnaisim to get to the families - if you expect anything from the schools themselves (teachers) you are on a hiding to nothing - without parental support it's a non-starter no matter how many kiddies you get to turn up at the local park/schools league on a saturday morning.

As for M/W21s - as I've said before the key is in the universities - i'm giving it some thought - unfortunately i don't think it's going to satisfy BOF's social requirements - but I don't see the future of the sport as some kind of politically correct exercise in tokenism!

[BandD]

And that brings us back to governement and sports council dictats.
Their objective is to produce world and olympic champions, not boost numbers in sport (although to fair they think the first will produce the second).
Somewhere they got the idea that producing champions meant starting children off at primary school age.
So for the past ? years in counties across the country we have had primary school development.
Primary kids moved onto secondary schools and found (with some noticeable exceptions) that there was no followup there in orienteering and many other sports.
I agree, let's get the sport in senior secondary schools and universities onto a firm footing and that includes working on problems like transport.

[El]

Just came back on nope to check on how this discussion has progressed since I posted (and to see how Ben did in the photo competition). The post history is really interesting; none of mine, Rocky's or Wonderboy's posts were responded to and no reference has been made to them since the discussion has been reignited.
It doesn't overly bother me - this is a discussion forum and I guess therefore the point is for people to air their own views. BUT, if the original question was genuine, would it not make sense to take on board what people from the demographic in question have to say, rather than people not from that demographic arguing with each other about their best guesses?

(as an example, university recruitment is all very well but a lot of the various issues identified by me or Rocky are post-uni issues)

[Copepod]

Can I just add that university clubs can help reignite interest in people still under 35 years or in the next couple of age groups? These people may be mature students, researchers, technicians etc. As an example, I spent a year as a research assistant at Newcastle University when aged 42 years, and enjoyed travelling to about 6 races, mostly with students - I guess they tolerated an oldie with a car, but hopefully it wasn't too painful for them.

And some people don't have children because they can't! That doesn't mean they can't mind children while their parents run, though, or coach beginners, eg from schools, youth groups, families etc at a country park - and enjoy doing so, not just as a duty.

[Mrs H]

El - there is nothing we can do to help you with where you live or how many hours you work - the standard of competition as regard the poorly planned courses you and Murray talk about are technical issues which should be looked at (not quite sure how but it's got to be something to do with BOF at a guess) But the numbers of people (which should help with the standard of opposition which matters to all of you - as well as the standard of banter which seem to matter to Murray and Wonderboy if not you) are something which this thread is definitely addressing as it is certainly a recruitment and retention matter which is surely what we are all talking about - isn't it?

[awk]

El - there is nothing we can do to help you with where you live or how many hours you work

I think there is: it comes back to regular good quality local competition.

To some extent orienteering is always going to struggle on this one. By the very nature of the sport, it's going to require more travelling than, say, going down to your local gym/football club/sports hall etc, even given the efforts of satellite club projects etc. But the advent of different forms of urban racing will, if used appropriately, help. Then it needs some form of regular, local social/training to go with it (which is where the satellite clubs can come in). I know El says midweek socials don't work for her, but they do for others. What these posts indicate is a need for a variety of hooks that people with different limitations/opportunities can latch on to, with a local and regular emphasis.

I know that's all been said before, but I do think that these posts from El and the others really underline their importance, and as she says, it's not just a matter of getting into unis: there is just as big a fall-off (if not greater) after people leave, and that's got to be something that the open clubs address directly. Certainly, seeing the roaring success our local running club has made of their local activities (all of which an O-club could do as well) shows what can be done. Having said that, they are junior/vet dominated as well!

[Scott]

And that brings us back to governement and sports council dictats.
Their objective is to produce world and olympic champions, not boost numbers in sport

I think a few people on here could do with actually looking at the stated aims of the Sports Councils - Sport England's are here. Intriguingly, one of their main focuses (and supposedly the target of 60% of their funding) is sustaining participation, including "reducing the number of young people who stop taking part", so it sounds like they might be aware of the problem.

I do worry slightly that orienteering is already overdependent on the universities, both for junior retention and for recruitment of new M/W21s. Although it is an excellent opportunity to rope people in, in England less than 40% of the population are now going to university at all (though that varies across the country - only about 15-20% of my school year went on to higher education). As far as I know, there's very little (if any) selling of orienteering to the other 60% - and it's not as if they're not interested in sport (I regularly see them driving thirty miles for ninety minutes of bottom-tier football). Perhaps the lack of a decent social side is putting them off (no beers in the clubhouse afterwards), or perhaps it's just the image of the sport (it is possible to appear too family-friendly). I'd also be quite interested to know what happens to any decent junior orienteers who don't go to university (are there any?) - how many of them are still active by the age of 21?

[RJ]

The M/W21 audience out there may very well come across the sport and an event. But what do they find/notice when they see the sport.

A very valuable exercise is for anyone to sit down and examine their own club's events and think of themselves as a 21 and see how they would respond to that event. Often a club will organise an event to satisfy their own membership because that is what they have always done! Does your club organise a broad range of events with a very definite, different and distinct target audience for some of them?

An active club that puts on 'something' every week will attract new people. An active club can't help but get noticed. An active 'Club Marked' club will have all the systems in place to attract and cater for new people..... just look at those clubs who are increasing their membership.

[Paul Frost]

...Often a club will organise an event to satisfy their own membership because that is what they have always done!

I know we need to recruit new members, but isn't a clubs first priority to provide events that the existing members want to enter?

If you put on a different kind of event that might be appealing to another group and they turn up and enjoy it, what happens when next week they turn up at a "normal" event and find it's not what they thought it was?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I don't think it's pretending to be something we're not.

A couple of activities that spring to mind when I think of different groups of people participating, is climbing and kayaking.

There has been a massive increase in indoor climbing over recent years (a lot of them young from my observations) and I suspect that a very large number of them will never climb on real rock out in the mountains.
At the same time I know climbers who can't see the point of climbing indoors!

River kayaking & playboating have a low average age, often happens for short periods of time and close to facilities like pubs, cafes etc.
Whilst sea kayaking has an older age profile, lasts all day or several days and in the remotest of locations.

There is some crossover between the two but generally they are separate groups with their own clubs or groups within a club.

So maybe orienteering will split in a similar way and the more traditional, longer, remote forest group will shrink and the newer, faster, urban type events will become the main focus.

There may be a problem though, unlike the two newer examples I gave above, orienteering needs a lot of pre-event planning and organisation, texting round your mates on a Friday night that you're going to put an event on tomorrow isn't an option.

[graeme]

if the original question was genuine, would it not make sense to take on board what people from the demographic in question have to say, rather than people not from that demographic arguing with each other about their best guesses?

But are you the demographic in question? Just retaining disillusioned ex-junior-elites isn't going to solve the problem. The theme I see running through all three posts is of doing so much, with such expectation as a junior. The idea that somehow you're special, and then in the open classes, as wonderboy says, "the winning stops". I can quite understand why with that type of background more of the same is unappealing.
Similarly, if you've raced all round the world, a local CATI isn't going to inspire, and
if you're not interested you won't enthuse anyone to come.

That's why we need to think about recruitment more than retention.

Anyway, most of us have been in our 20s, and some of us can even remember it. The thing which put me off most was arrogant squaddies talking down the local events we went to, and dismissing any good results by newcomers as "runners luck" and "not proper orienteering". I still hear this.

The main factor which kept me in orienteering (as opposed to things I had some natural talent for) was what Murray identifies: club spirit. But it wasn't delivered by a bunch of oldies. To illustrate try finishing the following sentences...

"M/W45s with young families can create a great atmosphere for twentysomethings by..."

"The type of kit that old bloke needs to look really good in is ..."

A problem is that - aside from a few gurus (Martin Hyman, in my case) it's difficult to get excited about social events with people of wildly different age groups.
I'm not going to bring a bunch of small children down the pub.

I think most of Murray's issues are Edinburgh-specific. When I came to Edinburgh the "happening" running club also had all the orienteers, now we've all grown old and
Murray's running club (HBT) has little contact with orienteering (though it has some very good orienteers and potential orienteers). In Edinburgh I think the answer is to get all the old fogies/families out of Interlopers, and return it to the younger/single persons club it used to be. But easier said than done.

Sorry, I know this is still not very helpful.

[Tatty]

So what do you suggest all the old fogies/families from INT do? I'd hazard a guess that if they all left en masse that INT would struggle to put on events and to "develop" It happened to SOKI in the past and is much more of a problem now.

[graeme]

So what do you suggest all the old fogies/families from INT do?

I think we should join ESOC. Edinburgh has a perfectly good family club, and it used to have a good "21s" club - which worked just fine. It doesn't need two family clubs and no 21s club, for all the reasons Murray points out (and others). But like you say, the club already struggles to put on events (over one four year period, one of two individuals was an official at every single INT event), and no single family will leave their friends behind.