'BUCS' University Champs, 13-14th March

[madmike]

The novice course had four entries which is very poor in my opinion.

There were some more novices on the A cse though.

[mharky]

The jk has only 7 people on m21v, and that's a much bigger event

[Scott]

But the JK does have 75 people (admittedly including a few juniors) entered on Orange/Long Orange/Red, which is perhaps a fairer comparison .

That said, novice numbers at BUCS shouldn't necessarily be taken as any indication of the number of novices in student clubs - it is always going to be tricky to convince relative newcomers to the sport to devote an entire weekend to it (including, for most, a significant amount of travelling), rather than a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.

[Jon X]

The jk has only 7 people on m21v, and that's a much bigger event

One of the seven has run for GBR in a World Cup race though.....

[RJ]

The novice course had four entries which is very poor in my opinion.

This comment, and in fact most of the comment on all the other threads effectively stem from the problem that the sport has with numbers of participants. If we had twice as many people taking part, and if we had twice as many members, then most of our 'problems' would be minor.

An awful lot of intellectual energy seems to go into analysing what is wrong with the sport and various aspects of it. I feel sure that the sport would be better placed if that intellectual energy was directed into 'introducing' new members to orienteering instead of 'analysing' how we can make things 'better' for the ever decreasing pool of participants.

[Benjy]

I ran the novice course this weekend and have to say I throughly enjoyed the entire weekend. It's a shame that more people don't go into orienteering, in fact the only reason I even considered trying it was because I was lucky enough to have some friends already in the club to introduce me to other members. Now that I've started I can say it's great fun and I look forward to hopefully improving and doing more challenging courses in the future.
I think the problems with lack of participation is peoples lack of understanding or knowledge of the sport. I believed orienteering was just a thing at schools to teach kids to use maps and you just walk around stamping a piece of card. I never relised untill I joined ShUOC this is a completely false image and that it can be ran competeitively. Also I think if people wan to get into running I for one just thought about athletics or cross country running due to seeing it on TV regularly. Orienteering never popped in my head untill friends mentioned it to me.
Anyway, thanks to ShUOC for doing a great job in getting me interested and taking time to help me learn the sport and giving me advice and aid on improving!

[mappingmum]

. . .it's great fun and I look forward to hopefully improving and doing more challenging courses in the future.

Great stuff!

[Lucy.F.]

Thank you to UBOC for putting on a good weekend - much appreciated especially when they are such a small club.
We do continually do our best to encourage beginners - trying new ways every year - there is a member of the committee pretty much dedicated to encouraging new people. However with competition from over 60 sports clubs in edinburgh university it can be quite difficult and as Scott says, trying to encourage beginners to travel 10-11 hours each way within 60 hours, at a time of year when everyone has so many hand-ins, is going to be difficult. I hope that perhaps with Josh Jenner now in place we may be able to work with him, and other clubs, to improve the situation to benefit the sport overall.
Although there are relatively few clubs competing there were 5 different unis represented in the top 12 of the Mens A and 4 in the Womens A so there was some variety. I think it is nice to look at the sport in general to see that there is a lot of support, although in limited locations, from various uni clubs over the UK for experienced and beginner orienteers - which is much better than very little support.
Having had the experience of my sister going to a uni where the orienteering club has recently died out I'm seeing the other side of things a little and understanding how difficult it would be for a uni club to start up with so few orienteers. As I say, perhaps working with Josh, the situation can be improved.
[and having looked at the history of bucs/busa/bussf, there were a good many years when sheffield was particularly dominant - its just the roles seem to have started to become reversed]

[jjjl]

on a different note, roll on Edinburgh next year! We will hopefully be able to get some dates pencilled in in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes peeled.

[madmike]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40379556@N ... 525377195/

Some photos of BUCS Day 2 here includes OUOC, CUOC, Combined Services, SHUOC and EUOC athletes