Area Sprint/Middle Champs

[Catfish]

Strangely there is a South-Eastern Spint & Middle Champs weekend (has been held for 2-3 years), but no Southern one.

The SE one suffers from quite low attendance (150-200 people) so might be worth upgrading to Southern? But would it really attract that many more people (this year's was in Kent, so would people really travel from Devon, Bristol, even Oxford)?

You would have got a much better turnout on both days if the SW Sprint Champs at Bournemouth Uni had not been held on the same day also on the Sunday SOC had a colour coded event in the New Forest which clashed with your Middle distance event . The knock on effect was the south central punters were spoilt for choice but both events suffered because of this clash.

I've just been trawling through the next couple of months in the BO diary of events and I'm astounded by the lack of events on some Sundays/weekends and then a abundance events on other weekends within the Southern Regions. This smacks off p--- poor planning, co-ordination and scheduling between the Southern Regions. Do the Regions have Event Secretaries and if they do, do they ever speak to their Clubs within their Regions to try deconflict clashes within the programme of events. Surely its not rocket science to make out a spread sheet at the start of the year, send it out to clubs and ask them to forecast their events for the next year or at least 6 months. Then make it visable to not only the clubs within that region but also send it to the other 2 regions with the Southern grouping. then try to deconflict where events clash. I'm sure this would improve the fixture list within the South of England, garuntee a better turnout and last but not least a provide healthy competitive competition.

[NeilC]

I've just been trawling through the next couple of months in the BO diary of events and I'm astounded by the lack of events on some Sundays/weekends and then a abundance events on other weekends within the Southern Regions

On what weekends before Christmas are there no events in the South East (apart from when everyone will be at the November Classic)?

[SeanC]

Sun Dec 13th and Sun Dec 20th have no events in the south east, but neatly filled by events in south central.

Reading this debate I'm thinking that we should avoid too many area championships for different lengths. If the SE sprint/middle champs had been a southern sprint/middle champs then the tendancy is for other regions to avoid putting on events on the same day. This deters the majority who are reluctant to travel more than an hour and handicaps the growth of the sport. Canterbury and Bournmouth are 3 hours drive apart (according to multimap) and only the few keen people in the middle willing to drive for more than 1 and a half hours had to choose. My bet is that this had minimal impact on numbers. As it was the local orienteers of Dorset and Kent both had great weekends of orienteering instead of being offered a long drive, which would have been turned down by nearly all.

[Clive Coles]

It is not for me to comment on whether Southern clubs have adequate consultations prior to scheduling an event. As an ex-Association Fixtures Secretary ( AFS) I would argue however that life has not been made easier ( in regard to the management of clashes) by the new BO fixtures system.

For Level 1 & level 2 events the scheduling is controlled by the Association Fixtures secretaries through the National Fixtures meetings. For Level 3 events however it's open house. Clubs have the ability to register L3 events as and where they wish.

This of course used not to be the case. Prior to the introduction of the new on-line system all registrations had to be approved by both AFS and NFS before an event appeared in the fixtures list.

I will defend the Association officers ~ of course they talk with each other and their clubs and do their very best to resolve clashes before dates and fixtures get committed. But there are some strong personalities out there and some clubs are resistant to giving way especially those who " always have the first weekend in ....".

Some Associations, and I believe SEOA as well as EAOA, do operate an unsanctioned process whereby no L3 fixture is registered on-line until approved by the Association. Yes Catfish we use spreadsheets which get circulated around Club Fixtures secretaries. In EAOA we have a voluntary agreement that the AFS makes the initial registration of all L3's in the region ( not the club). In that way we managed clashes as best we can. But each Regional Association is free to operate their own processes ~ there is no uniform process across the country.

Of course BOF never expected that L3 would contain more than 90% of registered events. I am not sure why ~ they combined C4 and C5 into L3 in the first place. They hoped however L3 would slim down to just contain true local events (the old C5) where clashes were less contentious.

I have argued in other threads ( and on various occasions to BOF ) that the old C4 District event is still alive and kicking and is likely to remain the backbone of Sunday morning orientering for years to come. Let's hope we can continue manage the L3 programme without too many clashes in future.

[Gross]

and some clubs are resistant to giving way especially those who " always have the first weekend in ....".

Best way to arrange a consistant fixtures list is to have regular timing.... 1st weekend in 'blah, blah' is 'blah,blah' competition....

Then everyone can plan their life in advance & it's much easier to promote, market & organise!

[Clive Coles]

Take you point Gross ~ as far as L1 & L2 is concerned that's fine.

In fact these events get slotted into the fixtures time table a year ahead of the L3's. They are currently visible on the BOF website through to end 2011 so clubs should be able to avoid setting up a clash between these and their larger local events.

But with most clubs registering events as L3 we do get problems especially around Association boundaries. There tend to be 4 weekends in most months and most regional associations have more than 4 active clubs.

So there needs to be some give and take and, in my experience, this is usually achieved without bloodshed ! That's where the Association Fixture secretaries need to exercise their persuasive skills.

[greywolf]

What's the problem with them being L1? National level competition (or at least supra-Regional) and all that?

because they can't justify that status

A) as other current threads demonstrate, there isn't enough room in the calendar for all these "National" events to have fixtures protection from the all the other fabulous events that clubs are putting on.

B) as a quick review of these events so far this year would demonstrate, they tend not to be anything that special in terms of the combination of competition, terrain, etc etc. (equally valid for CSC Final, although I can see the point of that getting fixtures protection even though its not relevant for some of us)

incidentally i spent ages trying to find details of the Midlands Champs for this year before realising it isn't till December - about 3 months before next years Midlands Champs - was it postponed from earlier in the year (like the Welsh) or just planned that way?

[awk]

Hi Greywolf

As far as I can see from your response, the main thrust is an issue of fixtures protection. To what extent are L1 events protected?

[greywolf]

Nope awk

The issue is that they can't justify L1 status.

Officially: "National Events are the most prestigious events in the Great Britain orienteering calendar" & "There is an expectation that all National Events will be prestige Orienteering Foot-O events with appropriate high quality terrain, mapping, facilities, organisation, planning and controlling."

In practice the Area Champs and the CSC Final (see other thread) haven't been able to deliver all the quality elements listed (which is not to say that they didn't deliver some of them or that they weren't enjoyable events) or particularly prestigious (based on the fields).

Beyond increasing the quality of the event itself the two obvious carrot & stick ways of increasing the fields & prestige of these events are a) bribing people with weighted ranking points b) giving them fixtures protection so they are the only event available on a given day.

Both of these options IMHO cause more trouble than they are worth. In the list of events by importance the Area Champs rank at best somewhere in the high teens / early 20s, and the focus should be on making them the best (regional) events they can be instead of trying to make them something they're not.

[Adrian]

We need to test how many folk will travel to area based sprint championships. We will not know this however unless we stage one.

The cost isn't just the travel but also the accommodation (or two long day trips).
Any thoughts about doing both in one day ?
Sprint starts from 10:00 to 11:00.
Middle starts from 2.00 to 3.00.
Although I guess this would involve finding somehere suitable for running both events at the same place, or two venues very close to each other.

I got the impression from our event last month http://www.harlequins.org.uk/results/20090913_C5.htm that such a format isn't especially popular - the turnout was certainly low.

[LostAgain]

I got the impression from our event last month http://www.harlequins.org.uk/results/20090913_C5.htm that such a format isn't especially popular - the turnout was certainly low.

At some point people will wake up and smell the coffee and realise that this not a particularly popular format. I would suggest that it is marginally more popular than Night Orienteering and the sooner we realise that it is a Nyche the better.

[graeme]

Greywolf: I'd rate the Scottish Champs as number 3, after the British and the JK. I'm surprised you rate it so low.

LostAgain: Interesting point about niches, you need to consider three groups of people:

1/ People who like classic orienteering and new formats
2/ People who like classic orienteering and dont like new formats
3/ People who dont like classic orienteering but would like new formats

At present, the fields for middle/sprint comprise only the first group. Obviously
that's smaller than the first two put together, so it's a niche. Only with
proper marketing will we find how big the third group is, and get them along.
Labelling the events L1 dilutes the status of existing L1 events, and doesn't mean anything to the third group.

[SeanC]

And a fourth group "People who like classic orienteering and are creatures of habit and prefer to stick to what they are comfortable with, but once they've tried something new they change their minds and the new format becomes part of classic orienteering."

I remember when few orienteered on a saturday, but now the calendar is stuffed with saturday events.

[greywolf]

Greywolf: I'd rate the Scottish Champs as number 3, after the British and the JK. I'm surprised you rate it so low.

Except that "British" is anything between 5 and 8 events, depending on whether the various elite races and age class champs are combined, and "JK" is 3 events (4 races)...and then there are the 3 WOC selection races, the Scottish 6 days etc..

Scottish Champs might be next – for us, because we’re in Scotland, but a quick look at the results shows that 90% of those attending were “locals”, which suggests that they’re not really that relevant for the rest of the world – conversely the Midland Champs are relatively important for OD and HOC members etc but rank somewhere below an L3 at Darnaway as far as I’m concerned. Curiously, it seems that in the BOF hierarchy the Scottish (& Welsh & Irish) champs, which are optional L1s, rank below the English Area champs which are automatically L1.

Incidentally, an indication of the high prestige of the Scottish Champs might be that they were desperate enough to ask me to plan this year's (don’t think I was the first choice by a long way) even though at that point I’d planned one C5 in 20+ years

[awk]

At some point people will wake up and smell the coffee and realise that this not a particularly popular format. I would suggest that it is marginally more popular than Night Orienteering and the sooner we realise that it is a Nyche the better.

Well, we changed our summer midweek events into sprint races, and saw a big leap in participation.
Our last weekend sprint event saw an entry of 191, getting on for the size of a decent district event round here, and rather more than marginally bigger than the night event we hosted the same weekend - 73.
Numbers at the British Elite Sprints over the past few years might be of interest:
2006 (Milton Keynes): 193
2007 (Scarborough): 286
2008 (Warwick): 387
2009 (Nottingham): 435
A trend that I suspect standard format orienteering might appreciate (and emphasising to me what a pity that BOF couldn't leave an increasingly successful even alone).