How to keep people involved in orienteering?

[DeerTick]

The worst dangers come from training on roads etc. and only running off road at races.

Yes, that's true and applies to the typical marathon runner. Hence my point.

My view on the potential for injury in orienteering is probably coloured by my own experiences recently as an M60. Ageing knees don't take kindly to abrupt wrenching when the foot gets caught under brashings.

AP

[DeerTick]

I cannot claim the same exposure to competitive sports as AWK but certainly this perception of orienteering being "dangerous" needs to be challenged. I have af course had a few knocks whilst orienteering in the form of sprains and gashes from undergrowth and branches that were lower than I judged ~ silly me : all repairable.

I hope I haven't given the impression that I consider orienteering "dangerous". I've done cycling and windsurfing and wouldn't put orienteering on par with either in terms of risk - I have the scars to prove it.

awk made my point better in terms of the risk to a highly tuned athlete running through forest without experience of that terrain.

AP

[DeerTick]

How about me - I've already answered that one, DT.

Apologies. Sloppy posting by me.

AP

[SeanC]

mmm, some quite pessimistic viewpoints here.

I'm not too surprized that committed runners don't often convert to regular orienteering. I guess eventually some will do more if they find they are too injured for running but not for orienteering? There are other sports where people tend to retire from earlier than running - Hockey, Football etc. Then there are those people on the fringe of running clubs, or who run a bit of running themselves but don't race and are looking for something different, or inactive people in their 30's/40's who want to regain fitness. What works for runners is likely to attract other adult newcomers - eg. TD3 courses aimed at adults with plenty of help and an opportunity to socialize afterwards.

There are 62 million people in the UK and currently rising by 500,000 a year. At least 50 million could finish an orienteering course and yet there are only about 10,000 club members. I would have thought this number could increase by at least 10 times - with large cost savings for all of us (because we wouldn't have to travel so far to our events).

Someone on this thread said something like: "Any publicity effort is likely to be long and hard"

Yes - I agree with this. But not as hard as say... keeping several hundred of the most detailed maps in the world up to date.

We seem to spend spend a lot of time worrying about the product but very little time on the product promotion. This would not happen if Orienteering were run more as a business as the long term would be given priority. There are some basic steps that can be done easily - as people have said putting the next events on the map, gathering email addresses of newcomers etc. The problem is that the effort is ad hoc, patchy and not that organised (at least not in the same way as our collective efforts on mapping, planning, controlling etc).

Things differ in different parts of the country - but we seem to be having no trouble getting on average 5-10 IND's to turn up to each of our local events with only a moderate amount of promotion. Converting these into regular orienteers is hard, and maybe about 1 in 20 of these do so - but that's still enough to create slow growth and ensure our future.

[Red Adder]

Whilst tidying up after decorating I came across some old Compass Sport mags - 25 years ago. Interestingly over 4000+ people had just at the JK in EA and there were worries about too many people at events and complaints that some clubs were in the position to actually reject late entries.

Also of interest was the seeds of our current problems in the 21/35 age range were possibly being sown. Very few BOC entries were received for the BOC. OK it was in Scotland but the senior entries were a very respectable 1500+.

And the number of university clubs - surely a good recruiting ground in the past, was far higher than today.

[70plus]

... there were worries about too many people at events and complaints that some clubs were in the position to actually reject late entries.

And the number of university clubs - surely a good recruiting ground in the past, was far higher than today.

I remember it well. With numbers at that level it could become almost impossible to park the vehicles - (and maybe more important) get permission to hold the event at all. It may be too easy to believe that 'recruitment' stopped because of that.

University clubs always did fluctuate, and unless they were especially vigorous they were run on a shoestring by a handful, and in the early days sometimes had one or two cars between them. And those could break down - but that's another story.

[Scott]

University clubs always did fluctuate ... and in the early days sometimes had one or two cars between them.

Many university clubs today would be thrilled if they had access to a car