Mini Relays

[Miner]

I think the important thing about gaffling is to explain it to the juniors before the relay. When I first ran in a relay, as an adult, I had no idea the courses were gaffled, nor what gaffling meant. The result was that I was happily running in the same general direction as a pack of runners and suddenly found 3 controls all in close proximity to where I thought I should be. This immediately caused some doubt and hesitation and an element of drift towards the most popular control. If someone had explained it to me beforehand I would have known I needed to pay closer attention to my map and block out what other runners were doing.

For lots of mini relay runners it is the first time they are running in a relay team and they have all the extra anxieties of doing well for the team and working out the finish layout so that they run in the correct route to handover/finish. When my son ran his first mini relay an experienced club member explained the whole procedure to the team and took them to map issue, handover and finish so that everyone was confident before they started.

[LostAgain]

I'm not sure it was the gaffling that was the cause of the DQ's. It did not help, and you inevitably get some DQ's on the mini.

The mini relay should be composed of TD2 courses. In my opinion the BOC 2013 mini relay was not TD2. Control position and choice of sites was TD3 and the added gaffling and relay pressure made the likelihood of problems arising much higher.

You can brief the kids to expect TD2 (Yellow) and also explain that the other kids may not be on your course, but then TD3 courses are given. This was not expected.

The original post has several of the courses shown, clearly illustrating the TD3 nature of the courses.

[DJM]

"very few clubs have 3 m/w12's"

well, what are they doing then? 3 juniors across a 4 year age spread (competent M/W10's can run the mini-relay quite easily) is hardly a huge demand for most clubs.

The entry list seems to support the first assertion pretty strongly ... if you look at all the BOC Individual M/W10 and M/W12 entries together, you find that 2 clubs (SN and BOK) had enough juniors present to run three teams each on the Sunday, GO could have entered two teams, and a further seven clubs had three or more juniors available to run one team (EPOC, INT, WCH, HH, NOC, SROC and SYO).

28 other clubs had one or two juniors - not enough for a Mini-Relay team.

However, it seems that you can't always pick your Relay teams from those who ran the Individuals - the winning SOS team contained no one who had also competed on the Saturday. And WCH entered four Mini-Relay teams despite having only four entries to the Individuals. I'm obviously out of touch with how these things work

[Oldman]

But this is billed as the British Relay Championships, so it cannot have its standard compromised to suit juniors who are ill-prepared (either skill or knowing how a relay works).

Either remove it from the British Champs or (better) educate clubs as to the standard and skills/knowledge required of participants, or the risks arising if they haven't those skills.

[graeme]

...this is billed as The British Relay Championships, so it cannot have its standard compromised to suit veterans who are ill-prepared (either technically or physically).
... remove all those veteran classes from the British Champs

Well, actually he didn't but that's the logical implication .

[sloaner]

In terms of the 2 BOK teams that crossed the line first and second it was not inexperience that cost them, one of them was Jk winner, 3rd on M10 the day before (should have been 2nd, but that's another story all together) and part of the winning JK mini relay team and the other was in the winning team last year.... it came down to the fact that they just didn't check their control codes carefully!!

And Daffdy, as club captain I don't feel guilty

At least one member of the winning W50 team did so this time!!!

[Oldman]

...this is billed as The British Relay Championships, so it cannot have its standard compromised to suit veterans who are ill-prepared (either technically or physically).
... remove all those veteran classes from the British Champs

Well, actually he didn't but that's the logical implication .

No it's not the logical implication ... what seems to be concerning some people who're posting are the implications for mentally immature youngsters - there needn't be any (or at least, nearly as much) concern for adults, including older ones.

[Oldman]

it came down to the fact that they just didn't check their control codes carefully!!

... and what an important lesson to learn when you're young!

[Adrian]

There's no point trying to defend this year's Mini Relay. It was too hard, period. Only 8 teams got round in 75 minutes. (Last year 16 teams got round in 60 minutes.) Don't blame the kids, don't blame the coaches and captains. And it does matter. You might enjoy failure, but children don't, and the objective of the British Relays isn't to teach them a lesson, but (partly) to encourage them to stay in the sport.

[Mrs H]

mentally immature youngsters

You mean young children?

[awk]

But this is billed as the British Relay Championships, so it cannot have its standard compromised to suit juniors who are ill-prepared (either skill or knowing how a relay works). Either remove it from the British Champs or (better) educate clubs as to the standard and skills/knowledge required of participants, or the risks arising if they haven't those skills.

The whole point behind the mini-relay (note the name of the class!) was as an introduction to relays for the youngest competitors prior them competing in the full age class races (M/W14-). As Eddie has already pointed out, In early years it was effectively a run round the assembly field (or adjacent) in full view of the spectators, until the decision was taken to take the children out into the forest to reduce the pressure of being under such close scrutiny. Thus to talk about not having standards compromised is completely inappropriate for this class: it's not the standards that are paramount, it's the children, and the standards should be written FOR them.

Equally though, it then has to be presented as an introduction, and unfortunately it has now been integrated into the main programme in all but name and position on the start list. To me what this year's experience has underlined is that the mini-relay requires a rethink. In particular, the issue of gaffling:

The problem with the gaffling in a race like this is that, with the limitations required by the technical difficulty, the competitors pretty much all run past all the controls. This is distracting enough for adults, but can be very confusing for relatively inexperienced children. On the adult courses, the gaffling spreads the competitors apart: for instance I only saw one control from one of the other gaffles in my class the whole way; thus the distraction was minimal. Not so for the children on the mini-relay. I suspect that if any of the mini-relay courses had been presented as a TD2 (M/W10A) course as an individual, it would probably not have caused a murmur. The issue, as Graeme points out, looks to be the gaffling. I'm not suggesting necessarily abandoning it, but it needs a closer look as to how it should be used, and balanced against technical difficulty (i.e. the introduction of gaffling effectively raises the TD of a course at this level, so that any use of gaffling needs to be balanced by appropriate adjustment of the other technical aspects).

[Ant W]

I think it's important to identify early on which young orienteers can't cut it and weed them out of the sport: we've got too many juniors anyway choking the life out of it. Maybe replace the mini-relay with a "men with beards" race?

[AndyC]

Ah but how would you decide when stubble becomes a beard? I think an emergency meeting of Rules group (or whatever it is now) is required

[Mrs H]

Oldman - do you actually have any children - did they orienteer - and do they still now?

[andypat]

Mrs H - maybe the jokes on us - to satisfy narrative imperative, surely Oldman must actually turn out to be a W12...