BUCS 2009

[eddie]

SeanC

a quick fix for developing Uni clubs is good club/uni club links. (Harlequins/Brum Uni springs to mind). If Uni orienteers move to your area send them a quick email welcoming them to (potentially) a new part of the country. The difficulty is identifying where people are going.

[rocky]

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.

Not sure what you're getting at here. Do you really think it's best to have the winners as a subjective result?

Since you ask, the current BUSA/BUCS scoring system has its foundations in the early days of nopesport, when it was young and cool and there were less midlands housewives involved! See the original thread here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=134 it was first used last time BUSA was in oxford - 2004. At that time the ShUOC/EUOC rivalry was pretty fierce and we were after a definitive way of saying who was best it subsequently got approved by BUSA and hence has added to the worth of orienteering in the eyes of sports unions eyeing their overall BUSA position. It certainly made the relays very exciting that year (7.2km in 31:2x - 4:20/km ).

I wasn't there but I suspect EUOC were giving a helluva lot of credence to the overall result in Cav last night!

[Mrs H]

when it was young and cool and there were less midlands housewives involved!

Fair enough - can I have the rest of my money back then?

[harry]

Mharky: "a big city"? Edinburgh?

Def post of the week! Love this thread, EUOC won BUSA, hooray but let's slag them off anyway then various weird people calling each other weird. Oxbridge types getting all offended. Come on! You wear gowns to exams and you secretly love it. What normal person could live under these conditions?!

SeanC: A coach from London to Fort William? Are you insane?

Eddie: You are ruining this with your sensible "good club/ uni links" chat. You've changed, actually I think you're turning into my Mother...

[Scott]

a quick fix for developing Uni clubs is good club/uni club links. (Harlequins/Brum Uni springs to mind). If Uni orienteers move to your area send them a quick email welcoming them to (potentially) a new part of the country. The difficulty is identifying where people are going.

And if you do manage to get in touch with some student orienteers in your area, offering lifts to nearby events would be a good start - events are rarely accessible by public transport, so there unless are enough other orienteers at that university or a big enough club to justify regularly hiring cars or minibuses, they won't be able to do much orienteering at all.

[SeanC]

I feel honoured to be called insane. Everyone else is just wierd.

We might not spot orienteers moving into our area for a while. It would be better if they joined the local non-uni orienteering club, then they would come to our attention straight away. Even better would be members of small uni clubs to be automatically members of the local mainstream club, and could run for the mainstream club at CSC, relays etc, but could be Uni clubs for uni competitions. Does this happen now?

Yes, clubs should publicise public transport on the event details, and offer lifts from nearest stations. We are not bad at this, but don't always publicise this perfectly. The BOF event details don't have a space for public transport, maybe it should?

[mharky]

are codgers telling us that we shouldn't have an overall championships result, or that it should just be made up like before???

it's good to have an overall result, and this year just proved it, i think a lot of people were happy for oxford getting 2nd overall, when was the last time that the top 2 was edinburgh or sheffield?

if you were there, which you weren't (so I fail to see how what you think matters at all), but if you were there you would have heard me say that it's not about winning the relay but securing the overall victory. that is what we care about, that is what our sports union care about, it just so happened that this year sheffield didn't have any women to challenge with.

this is a student competition, so it's only their opinions that matter, this is a BUCS event not BOF, and as such the general british orienteering public have no right to make suggestions

[rocky]

when it was young and cool and there were less midlands housewives involved!

Fair enough - can I have the rest of my money back then?

Nothing to do with me any more! Though of course I'm sure you've been with us since those very early days - the above comment was just a reflection of my feeling that student matters should be left to students to sort out.

On the wider subject of student participation one of my greatest memories of my time in EUOC was of the immense team spirit which filtered down to great club spirit and made the club a great thing to be a part of. Sure recruitment was maybe not our strongest point but I think retention was - and that always comes from being a club thats fun to be part of.

I get slightly worried by the over-riding emphasis on recruitment in British Orienteering. Are we that confident with our product (events) that we feel that as soon as we get people along the will be hooked and will remain in the sport? If clubs are well thought out and set up then with minimal marketing they will attract natural growth. I've seen this happen in my own running club - absolutely no effort to market the club but through great team spirit at races, non-elitist atmosphere (despite quite quick members), great socials and weekends away and weekly training sessions&pub night we have a constant stream of new members. Obviously this is a different situation to orienteering, as people are likely to be at races without being involved with a club in any way, but I think it highlights the fact that being a great club is the first step to being a growing club.

As such, I don't think its a bad thing to only have a handful of strong university clubs, and probably much better than having lots of small clubs where a few people end up doing a lot of the work. If the big uni clubs are good at retention (which I would say they are) then that is half the battle.

Finally, on a personal note, when I was applying for uni I was pretty bamboozled by the choice of places to go (I studied maths, so could have gone anywhere really), so I just used orienteering to filter out candidates - either proximity to decent terrain or presence of a decent club.

Right, I'm off before Mharky calls me an old codger...

[geomorph]

Passion.....

Good to read how passionate everybody is about their Uni club.

Shame there are so few of them. Concentration in just a few locales is not where we should be. Yes I can understand good orienteers wanting to be close to the better terrains and alongside similar standard athletes, but we've a fair number of instances where this has not mattered in terms of personal achievement.

As an Alumnus of one of the dormant Uni clubs, and as Graeme says, being an also ran, BUSF, as it was, was the third highlight of the year after BOCS and JK, and the one in which I could make a difference.

Had two of my best ever relay runs at BUSF (and one embarrassment with much humble pie).

And what was great we challenged and beat the establishment

[King Penguin]

How do you keep the good work going with such a quick turn over of personnel
Ideas anyone?

Become a permanent student and reduce the turnover ? There are one or two who seem to be adopting this approach.

[Familytaxi driver]

I get slightly worried by the over-riding emphasis on recruitment in British Orienteering. Are we that confident with our product (events) that we feel that as soon as we get people along the will be hooked and will remain in the sport? If clubs are well thought out and set up then with minimal marketing they will attract natural growth.

Slightly off topic I'm not a student anymore and I am middle aged working person - so you can all ignore me if you want.
I also wonder about the big emphasis there seems to be on recruitment all the time. What are you going to do with all these young schoolies or students that are converted to your sport when they grow up to become middle aged houswives or 9-5 workers or parents themselves and are not elite athletes, winners in any shape or form but just enjoy orienteering for the sport and the joy of it? Cast them aside and keep trying? Throw them off this forum?!
What exactly are you/we after. I feel there's not enough empasis sometimes on looking after the people we have already - but that's perhaps because there isn't continual hype about it/them.

As an addenda my son is choosing Unis for this time. He's a member of a regional squad but thats as far as he's got. He's not choosing a uni on the basis of their O clubs in fact his short list of 3 don't even have a club. He's talking about trying a new sport at uni. I think having realised he's not going to make a summer tour or anything else about the standard that he's got to he's having to adjust his feeling about the sport. He'll probably carry on at a less intense level of events for a bit - when he comes home in holidays and we take him; and may go back to it later. So is he considered "lost" to the sport? If he did gp to a uni with a thriving club he could well become re-enthused. As it is we'll wait and see.

[harry]

Performance doesn't matter. Recruitment is more important.
EUOC should give back the trophy and the first Uni club to recruit 10 new people to the sport should get it.

But seriously Rocky has hit the nail on the head, more focus on the product and less on the marketing will retain people AND give good word of mouth marketing.

The best club I've ever been in was Bellahouston Roadrunners. It's a very young club ~8yrs? with a brilliant atmosphere and equally strong on training & performance as atmosphere & socials. Regular trainings from the same place, £1 subs. Newcomers get the first 2 sessions free. Folk turn up, pay subs, mingle/ chat, get changed, at 6:30pm sharp everyone gathers for announcements about recent results, PBs, upcoming socials/ races. Then for example "Today we have 2 newcomers, Debbie will be running with group B and Malcolm will be running with group C" and everyone gives them a clap. 50-100 people at every twice weekly training. The committee members take it in turns to collect subs and write people's names in a book so they learn EVERYONE's names very quickly even though it's a huge club. Then after "announcements" which only takes 5 min but gives a really good feeling we would split into A B and C groups for the training. I knew everyone in my regular group really well but also got to know other regulars pretty well. From the very first training I was made to feel really welcome.

In contrast my current club does this exceptionally badly!! Training is extremely elitist. The coach will talk to the 4 or 5 of us that he is personally coaching and tell us what session we are doing. Anyone outside that gets "oh you can join X's session".. "er.. OK... X what's the session?..." The trainings are totally separate for elite, junior and members sections of the club. I've been here over a year but I don't know many people in the members section at all as I only meet them about 3 times a year at local events!

[SeanC]

Recruitment and retention seems a bit of a chicken and an egg. It's easier for a big club to offer all the stuff rocky mentions, but to become a bigger club you need some recruitment. They go together it seems to me.

I would argue that orienteering spends more than enough time on the product and not enough on the marketing. It's just that the time spend on the product isn't always the most efficient for retention. Eg the few big regionals with a beautiful map instead of lots of local events with coaching, a social buzz etc. It's difficult because orienteering is a labour intensive sport compared to say running. To be fair BOF and the sport in general seems to be recognising this.

[PeterG]

Shame there are so few of them. Concentration in just a few locales is not where we should be. Yes I can understand good orienteers wanting to be close to the better terrains and alongside similar standard athletes, but we've a fair number of instances where this has not mattered in terms of personal achievement.

So what you're saying is there should be artificial restrictions on where elite orienteers can go to university? Want to go to Sheffield? Sorry they've got two elites this year you'll have to pick somewhere else.

[Kitch]

Harry,
your Swinglish is so cute
(or is it Noglish ?)