YBT final 2011

[pete.owens]

Several comments have been made about the need to encourage beginners to take part, but aren't we talking about the NATIONAL FINAL of this competition? Older beginners do have a role, even at the final, but it does sound amateurish to place emphasis on their participation.

Actually we are talking about the rules of the competition as a whole including the qualifying rounds. It is a team competition, and if anything, more important to enable novices to join in with their club and build a club spirit. Also, as a number of posters have pointed out, some smaller clubs struggle to assemble a full team. The top MW10-12s have plenty of chances to shine in individual competitions - and in any case take a certain amount of pride in competing on equal terms against older juniors - even if they don't beat them all.

Remember, a first year M14 may still only be 12 - especially when the competition is brought forward to the summer. At our schools league events we have plenty of Year 8 & 9 runners on the yellow course and very few on light green (and our scoring system provides a positive incentive for them to progress to harder courses when they are ready). So although from the perspective of a an orienteering family who's children started string courses as soon as they were out of nappies an M14 running yellow seems a bit soft - this is the level that very many juniors of that age are regularly competing at.

[awk]

Adrian

The thing about the YBT was that it wasn't designed to be a competition to find the club with the 'best' in each age group - that can be done at the JK, British etc. It was designed as a competition aimed primarily at M/W14+s, and to be inclusive of all abilities. I certainly don't see that as being amateurish.

Unless those who now run the competition decide that the main objectives should change, then I see no reason why M/W10-12s should be given priority over less experienced MW 14+ on the Yellow course. RJ and others describe allowing this as being 'unfair': I contend that it's not because the Yellow is primarily a course for less experienced M/W14+s on which the M/W10-12s were allowed to compete if they wanted.

Personally, I think the argument over it being a waste of time travelling long distances for 20 minutes simply doesn't hold water. My son, a keen cyclist, travelled 6-7 hours each way a few weekends ago to race for barely 7 minutes in a hill climb championship race along with a dozen others from his club. Some sprinters do the same to race for only a few seconds. It's only orienteers from whom I ever hear this argument - most others recognise that it's the quality that matters not the quantity.

Incidentally, one of the rules we originally had but seems to have been ignored for some years now, is that the final be in the M4-M5-M6-M62-A1 box. Part of the problem was finding clubs to host it.

[RichT]

Awk,

Normally agree with your points of view but would offer a couple of alternatives.

Firstly I think your son has moved on from M10/M12 and consequently has a different perspective of how acceptable the long round trip might be to be set against such a short period of racing.

Secondly I think its good that the YBT and other junior competitions do rotate around the regions. If you try and restrict junior competitions to central England then my perception is that it will favour the midland clubs in terms of logistics (not that I'm competitive or anything ).
If you look at the locations of the major junior competitions this year they have a reasonable geographic spread, which is good forgetting kids involved in at least one of them.
JIRCs-NWOA, Peter Palmer-WMOA, YBT Final-YHOA, BSOC-SOA, BSSC-SCOA.

And in 2012 its
JIRCS-EAOA, Peter Palmer-WMOA, YBT Final-SWOA, BSOC-NWOA, BSSC-WMOA.

To promote junior orienteering clubs could do worse than offer to host one of these 5 events . . . but maybe thats another thread.

[awk]

Firstly I think your son has moved on from M10/M12 and consequently has a different perspective of how acceptable the long round trip might be to be set against such a short period of racing.

Yes he has - but I don't think age comes into it: our next door neighbours are keen runners, with daughters in that age group, and they regularly run races all over the country at no more than 10-15 minutes, and often under 10.

Secondly I think its good that the YBT and other junior competitions do rotate around the regions. If you try and restrict junior competitions to central England then my perception is that it will favour the midland clubs in terms of logistics (not that I'm competitive or anything ).

If I gave the impression of disagreeing with the change from the old rule, I didn't mean to - I'm neutral about it, recognising some of the advantages of the new way (as I said to Adrian, there's also the issue of finding clubs to host!). I simply meant to explain to Adrian, in the light of his comment, that there had been that rule in place but it wasn't used any more. Having said that, the only association that couldn't host the YBT under those rules was the NEOA, so there was more geographical spread than you might have envisaged (we, Airienteers, hosted one year for instance).

[RJ]

......I see no reason why M/W10-12s should be given priority over less experienced MW 14+ on the Yellow course. RJ and others describe allowing this as being 'unfair': I contend that it's not because the Yellow is primarily a course for less experienced M/W14+s on which the M/W10-12s were allowed to compete if they wanted.......

Absolutley no problem with "less experienced" running DOWN, and never have had. That is not what ANY of my comments or arguments have been about. It is the more experienced junior who is the inappropriate runner.

It can be simply sorted by...

..... a hard rule is required then can I suggest that you post the wording of such a rule on here for us to comment on.....

(1) A team manager from each competing club, who shall be a BOF member, SHALL be responsible for the selection of the juniors competing on the various courses at the competition.
(2) Any junior may compete on any course so long as they are only running DOWN one colour standard from what they normally, or are currently competing at other events in. Eg. May enter Orange if they normally or in the recent past have competed on Light Green (say, a minimum of three times.)
(3) The entries SHALL show the age class and current standard for each entrant and the course they are being entered for.

The club team is entered by ONE person who knows all his/her athletes, and therefore knows and is able to justify the standard of those athletes. The standards are published in the entry list for the event so everyone can see it is FAIR.

It is interesting that the GREEN course generates real competition amongst the clubs with no certainty over who will win. By defining the standard of the Yellow, Orange and Light Green runners you will make a much better competition where, I believe, the scores will be much closer.

Lets just have runners being allowed to run DOWN, effectively one technical difficulty level; that is, one colour below what they have been running in their normal weekend competitions. It just isn't about 'GOLD' standard any more..... for many years now 95% of ALL junior competition has been run on colour coded courses.

[awk]

That definition of a standard is I would suggest not very workable, not only requiring huge trawling through results on the part of TMs but not necessarily reflecting the standard a person is at either even when they've done it. Just because somebody runs a colour doesn't mean that they are competent at it.

Where we are in agreement is that the standard probably need to be based on colour coded courses. Personally, I think some colour coded badge scheme that gives some aspirational standards (like the old badge scheme) is needed anyway.

Alternatively,something based on a ranking scheme points system (is that possible on non-TD5 courses?) perhaps? That could even free the competition up almost completely from classes defined on ages - you are simply required to move up once you have accumulated X points in Y events.

What we need to try and move away from is this concept of running 'down' or 'up': it's about juniors running at their appropriate competitive level, whatever their age. I don't think we're in disagreement about that.

[Snail]

Sometimes I think we are so obsessed with making things fair that we make them too complicated.

Any rule based on championship/gold/colour/LevelB badge/standard/flash/points etc still creates work for the TM, and can give rise to anomalies as described above. Since TMs usually ask juniors if they want to participate - at least for the final - why not simply ask / say:
1. What course do you usually run?
2. Do you usually finish in the top half? If Yes enter 1; if No enter either 1 or one course lower if you want to. (Both subject to a "maximum" of Green)

Could add an "... or for the sake of the team" clause to 2, although I would leave it up to the child to decide.

Even for the first round - when for many clubs the TM may simply explain which course to run to anyone turning up - the above rule is much simpler to state/explain than the current one.

Most TMs will instinctively know if the answers are right, but if in doubt before then final can simply check a few recent local event results.

[sketchweppers]

2. I've suggested that in future Yellow only be open to MW10/12. One reason for this is that otherwise MW10/12s who are willing and able to take part can be squeezed out by older competitors. The comment has been made that MW10/12s don't want to travel long distances, in which case the competition needs to be changed to make it easier for them to take part.

I think that is a bit harsh. If you are expecting juniors who normally run schools events to come to the YBT, as I am sure many teams do, then you could have year 8s who are M/W14. THey would only normally be running yellow at BSOC - so why prevent them from running in YBT.

As regards the other comments about colour coded badges - my daughter who is a December birthday W14 year 8 (just turned 13). She has managed to acheive her light green badge - but ran orange at the YBT. She probably manages to get in the top half of the light green course about 50% of the time at home in East Anglia. She did do W14A at the Scottish 6 days (because she wanted to come to the same start as the rest of the family). It is rather disheartening to come within 3 or 4 of the bottom each day - but I think it was a real achievement for her to complete the course on all but one of the days. It would be rather unfair if she was not able to run orange at the YBT.

I personally think that the YBT is a great competition - and don't really have a problem with the rules - I read them before organising my team so was aware of the fact that some of the older juniors run lower than usual courses. Don't mess with the rules - they will become too cumbersome and mind boggling.
I wonder what the move to have the final in the summer will do - I hope we would still be able to field a team - we rely on juniors from a prep school - they may have lots more things on at the end of the summer term - we lost a couple of good runners this year as it clashed with rugby.

[LostAgain]

The web address to a video of recent final. Not sure how to make it a live link here, maybe someone else could do this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8t067BuVeU

[alanbrett]

Clubs need a lot more than 9 juniors to make a complete team as there needs to be a range of ages to cover all the courses.

I agree with Clive's analysis. We (DFOK) don't have a strong link with a middle/secondary school so our juniors come from families. We do have maybe 10 or so, but only 4 or 5 would be keen enough to travel an hour or so to a YBT qualifier. In practice you need 10+ such keen families because the rules demand a spread of ages and because some families wont be able to make a particular date. In most cases, that excludes all but the large clubs.

As far as I know, CHIG, HAVOC, LOK, SLOW, DFOK, MV and SAX didn't field a YBT team from the South East.

The solutions are obvious... either allow two or more clubs who can't make a team to combine, or start a parallel competition for clubs with fewer juniors- eg teams of 5 with no age/course restrictions. Maybe it didn't make it onto the bulging agendas of the old event committee(s)? - hope the new event committee will see this as a problem worth fixing.

Sean - your comment prompts me to wonder if a local team competition for juniors might be worth considering. While we have a "schools league" at CHIG (no where near as successful as HH's one), the numbers taking part are relatively small. For those juniors in our club therefore, competition is somewhat limited.

What would be the potential for some easy to reach (existing) events in the greater London area designated as league events, with a trophy for the winning club?

[SeanC]

Alan - I sent you a PM.

The Kent Junior Championships is running again this year in Sevenoaks so quite easy for many in the SE to get to. Same format as last year (loosly based on the British Schools courses) and with a social/bbq type thing afterwards. You don't have to be DFOK or SAXONS to be a winner, I think even non-UK passport holders are allowed to compete. Sat June 17th.

[madmike]

I think even non-UK passport holders are allowed to compete. Sat June 17th.

Sean, you could regret that 2 of HH's best juniors are Russian