Is traditional orienteering dying?

[SeanC]

I'm wondering that this could be quite an easy problem to solve.

Lets say a particular county can get 1000 entries per yearin a particular county from runners looking for a super dummed down version of orienteering that doesn't take any more navigation skill than can be picked up at the start briefing. That's 100 runners at 10 events, quite achievable. At a modest £5 an entry = £5000. Assuming this leaves £3000 after overheads, that gives quite a lot of possibilities.

So all we need to do is to not try and market this runners orienteering as 'introductory' or 'newcomers' but as an end in itself. Most runners won't have any ambition to progress to technical orienteering, but if they keep coming for the easy stuff they keep generating the money.

So what to do with the money? One option is to subsidise mainstream orienteering, eg a new map where one wasn't affordable. Another is to spend the money on the minority of runners who will want to progress to technical orienteering seriously. If it's 1 in 20 of the runners turning up for easy orienteering, that's maybe 10 people a year, quite a decent growth rate for many clubs.

As it happens £3000 a year is about the amount club nights were getting in their first year start up from BOF/SportEngland. We found that, with some income from people on the night, this was enough to pay a coach for 40 evenings a year and for overheads. Of course it doesn't have to be school hall orienteering or even coaching. You could pay someone else to put on 40 small orienteering events with a learning element, eg the 100 variations on a score event as described in Compass Sport, and the club wouldn't need to find a coach.

Such initiatives would be a good bet for a government grant, so maybe the £3000 might be matched from another £3000 for new kit from a grant.

If I were in TVOC I would be thinking very hard about something more ambitious like this rather than the traditional conservative response of sending some emails, and offering 1 or two coaching sessions a year etc. It sounds like Mike is well in the zone with his publicity and such a development opportunity is worth exploiting whilst it's there.

[aiming off]

From the rankings its relatively easy to track serious participation (simply defined as number of athletes with six scores on the BOF Ranking List).

Hard data: over the last two years the three Regions which have seen modest growth are the ones with fewer athletes ranked in the top 200 (EAOA, NIOA and WOA). The three regions with severe decline in participation are the three regions with by far and away the highest number of athletes in the top 200 (SOA, YHOA and NWOA).

Assertion: the general standard of the incumbents is so high in some regions that it is a huge barrier to entry to newcomers.

We have not been very successful in bringing newcomers into the sport in recent years. In my class the most recent addition to the top 100 took up the sport 7-8 years ago, (and is the parent of a junior squad member).

For it to work, (and despite Graeme's cynicism I've seen it work occasionally through the Junior Squads) it requires a lot of input/experience to bring newcomers up to the point where they are competitive. And it can't IMO be done solely in a school hall or playing field.

[Gross]

And it can't IMO be done solely in a school hall or playing field.

So true.... and (I'm guessing) but also the vast majority of orienteers in UK nowadays haven't actually experienced any full blown technical orienteering.

[graeme]

Assertion: the general standard of the incumbents is so high in some regions that it is a huge barrier to entry to newcomers.

I couldn't agree more. The only question is, what do you mean by "it"

Assertion: the general standard of the incumbents is so high in some regions that
getting beaten
is a huge barrier to entry to newcomers.

Assertion: the general standard of the incumbents is so high in some regions that
the technical difficulty of serious events
is a huge barrier to entry to newcomers.

Assertion: the general standard of the incumbents is so high in some regions that
the cliquey squad system
is a huge barrier to entry to newcomers.

all we need to do is to not try and market this runners orienteering as 'introductory' or 'newcomers' but as an end in itself

..then maybe take out the brambles and mud and call it something like "urban". It might just catch on.

all of the above...

[Clive Coles]

Hard data: over the last two years the three Regions which have seen modest growth are the ones with fewer athletes ranked in the top 200 (EAOA, NIOA and WOA).

Well, in EA at least, we largely form our programme out of level C and level D events. Occasional Urban races, some low key street-O local events but mostly tradidtional colour coded pay up and go events.By so doing we appear to provide members with local "value for money" events ~ this maintains participation levels and encourages family participation and those trying to fit other things around a hectic life.

A few of our more competitive orienteers do commit in advance and venture out of region mostly to multiday weekends or Orienteering Festivals such as the JK or 5-day events. There is a message there ~ one off level B events on well known areas don't necessarily attract folk to travel ~ make it a weekend of orienteering and you might receive more entries.

[SeanC]

I'd be careful about drawing cause from whole region statistics as the statistics will hide a lot of club variation. A couple of years ago (so we learned on the development committee) all the growth in Wales was from one club, SBOC. They were rapidly growing the number of local events, and received a development committee grant, then later some more money for a club night. If you look at their fixture list you'll see an event a week of different types (urban, night, park, forest), plus lots of coaching (a club night and some introduction to orienteering days). Lots of opportunities to start orienteering, and lots of opportunities to improve skill. They are only a medium sized club, with the disadvantage of being right on the periphery, so if they can.....

Urban, yes definately, but we can get runners to both urban and forest orienteering. Some runners like cross country, some the roads, many both.

[DJM]

Hard data: over the last two years the three Regions which have seen modest growth are the ones with fewer athletes ranked in the top 200 (EAOA, NIOA and WOA).

"Growth" in what? Members? Events? Competitor runs? Anything else?

It would be good to know what the source of the hard data is ...

[aiming off]

I've assessed growth as the change in a two year period in the number of athletes in a region with six or more scores on the BOF ranking list (comparing now with around two years ago).

[greywolf]

your own private data or can anyone see it?
NIOA doesn't have a lot of ranking events so using 6 ranking scores as a measure of particpation there is rather sketchy.
More generally, there will be a fairly obvious link between the number of ranking events and the number of individuals with 6 or more scores
When you say the top 200, do you mean the top 200 in each age class or just the top 200 overall - if the latter then it's irrelevant to many folk: two-thirds are M16-35, and there are just 14 Ws (the rest are M40-55)
And why should the excellence of the best inhibit newcomers, plenty of folk seem to enjoy parkrun without being bothered that Mo Farah can do 5k in under 13mins, or that Fiona Matheson (FV50) can do ~17 mins...

[aiming off]

Own private data, in as much as it was based on two snapshots of the ranking list, about a month ago and about two years ago.

Top 200 overall.

Reproduced here

2013 2011 Top 200
SOA 384 457 -73 55
YHOA 310 357 -47 38
NWOA 368 409 -41 23
SEOA 464 462 2 21
SWOA 342 341 1 14
SCOA 208 222 -14 13
WMOA 240 242 -2 12
EMOA 225 234 -9 7
WOA 66 65 1 6
EAOA 143 127 16 5
NEOA 79 100 -21 5
NIOA 31 19 12 1

Total 2860 3035 -175 200

It just appears that the strongest regions are losing participation fastest. If the data is valid, and we can understand why, then maybe we can do something about it.

[greywolf]

maybe that was the case a month ago but a quick filter on the current rankings list shows 474 SOA runners with 6 scores

[DJM]

Of course, the number of those with 6 points in an Association could say as much about the number of Level A/B/C events there are within range of the Association in the year in question, as about anything else.

More opportunities to attend rankings events implies more people with six sets of points perhaps ... and vice versa.

[aiming off]

You're quite right Greywolf, ( I should have checked a third time before posting I guess!!)

The data from two different times appeared to show a very clear trend, but this measure would appear to be capable of changing rapidly: so maybe not reliable, I agree.

[SeanC]

Obviously written by a journalist, so not to be taken too seriously, but interesting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25263401

Also interesting to note that SportEngland say numbers of people running has increased by a third in recent years. Not something orienteering has seen?

[bewildered]

I would guess that there are a number of factors to the increase in the numbers of runners.

ParkRun will certainly be a factor. Regular, free and local. And from SportEngland's point of view, easy to count the numbers.

Then there are all the small groups of runners that have set up. These are recognised and rewarded by EnglandAthletics. I know of two in Barrow, where each one, set up by a couple of people and organised via FaceBook and social media. Both have 90-100 members. The "Athletics" club, however, seems to be declining.

As orienteers, if asked in surveys, we will probably say if asked that we run a couple of times a week - rather than train for orienteering - so we are more likely to show as runners than orienteers as we don't seem to "do" orienteering 3 times a week.

I guess BO were trying to replicate the ParkRuns with XPlorer and RunChallenge, both formats that have some merit - but should have had orienteering featured in the resources. RunChallenge seems to have failed to generate anything like the numbers expected. I hope someone will be able to work out why, now that Ed has left.

Previously they were trying to emulate the local club pay and play versions of sports like Netball and Hockey with Community Nights. I don't know how many of these are still going, or how many were aimed at getting new club members, or were successful at this. My experience is that aiming the Community night at beginner families, doing lots of work in primary schools to advertise it, can bring along families. It is also the case that many of these families are quite happy to just do inside activities and not really venture into the scary outdoors. Some, however, have become members and now go regularly.

If you talk to Mike Hamilton he talks about pay and play being the way forward. But as he isn't motivated by orienteering, just by getting the SportEngland grant, I don't believe he has any concept of the differences and how he should be working towards getting anyone that does XPlorer and RunChallenge into our clubs. As far as I can tell the board hasn't set any KPI for him to increase membership.

Having said that, I don't think we really have much of a clue about how to set up our events and activities to encourage newcomers to move from these to TD5.

That's why this thread is so interesting.