orienteering in 20's and 30's

[Guest]

Old orienteers don't die - they just repeat themselves!

[Blanka]

Yes it would be nice to have a younger contingent - but at whose expense?

The 20-30-somethings that you attract by having a more active local scene will hopefully get involved in helping to run the local scene eventually!

[bendover]

just to point out that there are some orienteers who go through the whole family thing, student orienteering thing, and are then spat out at the other end of the university thing and find that they still like doing it and continuee doing it.

there's a few more of us than you probably think, its just that most of us only really show our faces at the JK.

[SJ]

I wonder if you carried out a survey of the whole population of Surrey and the surrounding area, how many are aware of the upcoming World Cup event to be held there?

most of my immediate family and school friends live in Surrey/Hants/Berks in places such as Guildford, Farnborough (borders on Mytchett), Sandhurst etc and none of them have a clue about British Sprint/Middle Champs or even the World Cup except when I tell them about it. Then they forgot. Maybe that means they see advertisements but don't take much notice as it's not relevant to them, I'm not sure...

[John Morris]

Sean C wrote:-

Re: John's comments on BOF statistics. It would be interesting to compare the number of active orienteers in the 21/35 categories for 2004 and 1984. My memory is that there were many more in 1984, but my memory might be faulty.

I have BOF membership figures (not quite the same thing but the best you'll get, I think) for 1990 and 2004 - don't have anything earlier than 1990, although BOF may have.

1990:- M21: 1,898; M35: 958; W21: 1,070; W35: 581.

2004:- M21: 466; M35: 353; W21: 317; W35: 245.

Taking single birth years and both sexes together (I don't have M/W splits for this), at the end of 2004 there were 46 @ 21yo, 57 @ 22yo, 53 @ 23yo and 48 @ 24yo. Figures in the 25-29 range are 61, 60, 57, 57 and 52. Figures in the 30 to 34 range are 73, 52, 68, 77 and 103. Figures in the 35 to 39 range are 105, 102, 123, 152 and 169.


Sean C also wrote:-

By the way, I have no objection to beards so long as they are egg and lice free.

Would that be egg flied lice?

[David May]

John's comments on BOF statistics. It would be interesting to compare the number of active orienteers in the 21/35 categories for 2004 and 1984. My memory is that there were many more in 1984, but my memory might be faulty.

Another way of comparing numbers is to look at JK participation. I show below a graph prepared for an article in CompassSport a year or so ago:

It gives numbers, averaged over a 3 year span to smooth out fluctuations, for M21, W21 and M45. One horrifying statistic is that the ratio of M21s to M45s has changed from 4.7:1 to 1.3:1 over the time span selected. If you then correct for the 14 year age span of M21 compared to the 5 year span for the 45s, the ratios become 1.7:1 in the mid-eighties to about 0.5:1 in 2000.

The balance has shifted from being predominantly a young person's sport 20 years ago to the reverse now. Quite clearly, the 20s and 30s had no problems in being attracted to the sport and staying in it then. What's different today - is it the 20s and 30s who have changed or is it the sport?? And why is it that men have dropped out more rapidly than women?

David

[RJ]

NeilC wrote:

The concept of friendly, easy-to-organise, local events starts to creak under these numbers. (130.....)

Specifically why? Increase the informality. I am assuming electronic though!??

[RJ]

I remember a Northern Championships on Blea Tarn in West Cumberland back in 198...2?...3?...4? that had courses for M21, E, A1, A2, B1, B2 and C. They were almost fully subscribed for a three hour start block!

[Simon]

It gives numbers, averaged over a 3 year span to smooth out fluctuations, for M21, W21 and M45.

Rough figures (these are calculated by me) for the same statistic for 2003-5.
M21: 235
W21: 155
M45: 220

Ratio M21:M45 is 1.1:1 and corrected this become 0.4:1

[FatBoy]

I'm sure it's the same for participation but looking at "Badge" level events one of the problems now addressed is the length of M21S in particular, but also W21S. Even though I hate the name M21V is a necessary addition to the fold (if we assume for a second we're going stick to age classes). I can see from Simon's figures it hasn't helped yet but maybe if we get some of the many good points in this topic sorted it will help get the numbers back into JK, not just to district events. I know at least one orienteer who gave up "Badge" events because M21S was too long. Now he's o-ing again as an M35S.

[SeanC]

Replies from two more mobile child care companies.

"We have looked at this carefully and have decided that it would be very difficult for us to get the commitment of crèche assistants to be in a field on a Sunday morning."

"also we would need a room in which to care for the children, not just a field."

Thanks John and David for providing the stats and confirming my memory (though I'd have preferred if my memory was faulty).

I'm not asking anyone to spend hours crunching stats, but it would also be interesting to analyse length of membership verses age class. If BOF membership contains a healthy mix of long serving and new members, with new members coming in at the 40+ age group instead of 20-35 group in the past, then the membership decline could stop and the sport would stabilise as an older persons sport. If the 40+ age group are predominantly long serving members, then this implies that the 40/45 age group will be the next to experience a steep decline.

[John Morris]

Yesterday I put up some figures for BOF membership by age as at 31/12/04, running from M/W20 to M/W39. I may have misdirected your attention - we should perhaps be looking down, not up...

Anyone who's thinking about actually DOING something should look at the figures for these ages (data of same date):-

148 @ 10yo; 144 @ 11yo; 206 @ 12yo; 188 @ 13yo; 151 @ 14yo; 192 @ 15yo; 159 @ 16yo; 140 @ 17yo; 129 @ 18yo; 124 @ 19yo; 70 @ 20yo.

There's a relatively steady decline from 12yo (the parent-funded, pre-sexual peak) to 19yo. Then it plummets...

For there to be more, more attractive, orienteering opportunities in the 20's and 30's, there need to be more buyers in the market, so perhaps "we" (ie you energetic, unsatisfied youngsters ) need to work out how to reduce the adolescent drift and prevent the 20yo lemming leap. Me, I'd start with a well-structured survey of recent leavers in (say) the 15yo to 21yo band. Anybody doing, or supervising, a Master's degree course in sociology?

To pick up a couple of points from other contributions...

David May wrote:-

One horrifying statistic is that the ratio of M21s to M45s has changed from 4.7:1 to 1.3:1 over the time span selected. If you then correct for the 14 year age span of M21 compared to the 5 year span for the 45s, the ratios become 1.7:1 in the mid-eighties to about 0.5:1 in 2000.

To understand these figures, and I'm sure that David does, you have to remember that there was an Orienteering boom in the mid-90's. And you have to visualise "cohorts" (important statistical jargon term, please write down in your lecture notes ) passing through the age groups. I was once an M35, you know...

The current (2004) "M/W45" age bands are the residue of a group that were M/W35's in 1994. At the end of 1994 there were 892 M35s and 531 W35s; at the end of 2004 there were 647 M45s and 396 W45s. Net of compensating recruitment, 27% of the males and 25% of the females have left membership. If you repeat this analysis for other recent pairs of years, the weighted average retention percentages between these bands are 74.2% for males and 72.3% for females. What's more, the same technique tells us that 37.8% of these males and 29.4% of these females will still be orienteering in M/W60!

(Guess who did Statistics Joint Honours?)

These are actually amazingly good retention rates for a physical activity; Orienteering's positive impact on the health of mature (ahem ) adults must be saving the NHS millions - we should be getting our grants from the Department of Health!

Less optimistically, if you apply them to our current M/W35 population, the prediction for BOF's future adult membership looks rather grim. Current (end of 2004) populations of M35s (483) and W35s (364) become 358 M45s and 263 W45s in 2014 (compared to current totals of 647 M45s and 396 W45s) and lope or limp onwards to 2029 to become 183 M60s and 116 W60s (compared to current totals of 347 M60s and 155 W60s at present).

The 1990's boom is over.

RJ wrote:-

NeilC wrote:
Quote:
The concept of friendly, easy-to-organise, local events starts to creak under these numbers. (130.....)

Specifically why? Increase the informality. I am assuming electronic though!??

RJ, as you may or may not be aware, Southdowns runs 20 such C5 events every year. Tht's in addition to a typical middle-sized club programme of C3 Badge events, C4 and N4 Colour-codeds, CATIs, Park-Os, Scores and a scatter of other fixtures.

So, if our valiant volunteers are not to burn out one by one, the 20 C5's certainly need to be as simple to organise and run as possible. Which they are. And digitally assisted. Which they are. But organising 130 people into and out of car park, registration, forest, download and car park again is NOT simple. Not if you want to use the area ever again; not if you want the regular competitors to keep coming; not if you want give a good, hand-held, experience to eager, but easily baffled, newcomers...

So, hands off my Club Captain, please!

[RJ]

John Morris wrote:

NeilC wrote:
Quote:
The concept of friendly, easy-to-organise, local events starts to creak under these numbers. (130.....)

Specifically why? Increase the informality. I am assuming electronic though!??

RJ, as you may or may not be aware, Southdowns runs 20 such C5 events every year. Tht's in addition to a typical middle-sized club programme of C3 Badge events, C4 and N4 Colour-codeds, CATIs, Park-Os, Scores and a scatter of other fixtures.

John, it was not intended as a criticism... notice the question marks.. I think that sometimes we over-organise events, and as a general analysis there is no harm in examining WHY events start to stretch the organising team.
West Cumberland OC, a small club stuck on the periphery of the country, puts on about 70 (that's seventy ) events a year. Our informal events attract 60+ at times, and are run by a single person. Naturally we would welcome comments about where the crunch points are, before we get there.
There is a lot of innovation in the sport, especially because of SPORTident, and I would be most interested to learn of other clubs' efforts to make the system work in their favour. We have to solve this 130+ problem, because we are going to expand our participation.... aren't we.... ....in order to dramatically improve those dire membership numbers

[John Morris]

RJ wrote:-

John, it was not intended as a criticism...

Sorry, RJ, I'll get my teeth out of your ankle now...

[Toni]

I think a lot of sports would be quite happy with that sort of drop out rate - research I have been involved in shows a much higher rate of drop out from sport in general! (not that I am saying that we should be complacent and just accept the decline)

so perhaps "we" (ie you energetic, unsatisfied youngsters ) need to work out how to reduce the adolescent drift and prevent the 20yo lemming leap. Me, I'd start with a well-structured survey of recent leavers in (say) the 15yo to 21yo band.

If you sort this one out there will be NGBs across the country paying you millions!