Future of Orienteering

[Helen S P]

alright love put your free time where your mouth is.

And anyway ALL the rugby clubs are doing Clubmark, Seal of Approval and development plans too.

And it's not BOF money that is paying for all this. If you did a bit of research eg BOF AGM finance statements ..yeah ok ok i haven't looked but i'm informed.. that all the money for these things Sport England wants comes from Sport England.

Now I shall get back to work, and maybe you can get on with your housework

[Helen S P]

censorship now?

[Mrs H.]

I'm not quite sure what's going on behind the scenes here or exactly what i've done to earn such a vehement attack except express a few ideas - which is after all what the forum is for - yes I will get on with the house work - who does yours Helen? but I also do plenty for the sport within my club and I have offered my services to BOF free of charge (not as a cleaner - I'm useless at it - but I was a pretty useful journalist in my day)- I am also working on next years JK and am curently at the computer because I'm working on the club's promotional leaflet for the Outdoor show (not very subversive is it?). I'm not very keen on the tone of your postings and suggest you may be doing your case more harm than good by making things so personal. Incidentally Helen, you do realise that sport england money comes from the tax payer don't you, I don't know about you but I pay plenty of that too

[Rach]

If in order to get money from sport england etc to develop the sport we have to do some safety things, then just do them. They might take some time but they're not going to hurt anyone. We should be concentrating on promoting the sport not getting bogged down in paperwork!

The razmataz etc is a great idea, more commentry at big events and coverage in the newspapers would be great.

As far as schools orienteering goes, getting younger kids to orienteer round their schools can only be a good thing. At least you're not going to lose anyone and implanting a sense of direction and basic knowledge before going out in the forest when they're a bit older will be really useful.

My mum takes a group of kids orienteering at her school. I've been along to help them with some training a few times and they're all really enthusiastic. Every time i've seen them since they've asked how many million miles i ran that week and when i'll be in the olympics!

Anyone who finds some time on their hands should offer to assist with coaching kids (you wouldn't have to be qualified if it wasn't organised by you), the best way to put across the 'adventurous' image of the sport is for the kids to see how enthusiastic you are about it yourself!

And with the coaching courses etc, maybe they could be a bit cheaper - i've just shelled out £80 for the instructor course and i've already spent 10 months teaching orienteering professionally with no qualification at all!!!

[mharky]

you can claim that off your region and/or your club

[harry]

Sorry i apologise in part as i didn't intend to offend you personally. Maybe it was the 12 hours of travel yesterday that left me all bitchy.
I won't get into how much tax I pay or housework i do, some of each tho.

I only meant to highlight that your continuous references to certain policies can grate on and belittle the work of certain people.. who are much more professional about this than me...

Also, I didn't mean to put down your journalistic skills as I have seen your little newsletter and it is very good, even without pictures of children

[Mrs H.]

Handsome apology accepted - we are all entitled to our own opinions - let the debate move on

[m]

There has been a lot of success wit schools orienteering in West Cumbria. There, there is a well developed schools league in which hundreds of school children compete. There are so many schools mapped it is fantastic. The maps are generally of the school grounds so really easy but the way the races are run makes it really exciting. There are normally 3 gaffled courses so the children get exciting racing but still have to navigate and check they are going to the right controls and they use SI. It does not matter that this orienteering is easy because it captures the exciting racing feel for orienteering and it introduces them to the sport.

This league has brought more juniors into WCOCs club activities such as a recent club junior coaching day and Spook O a fancy dress night event which attracted so many juniors last autumn. I think one of the importnat things here is that there is something for the kids to progress to after the schools orienteering. If the do orienteering in school there needs to be an active club who run events regularly so there is something for them to move onto. In the case of WCOC there is an event every week of the year.

If orienteering is presented properly then kids think it is great. A league like that in West Cumbra has been set up in Carlisle and I went into a Primary School to present their prizes. Afterwards I did a question and answer session with a class who had done orienteering as part of their PE lessons. They thought it was really fun and they asked me so many quesions about my training and how far I ran etc. They were so enthusiastic and it was fantastic to see.

I think schools orienteering if doe well can only be a good thing for orienteering. Even if the kids dont go straight into orienteering they will understand what the sport is about and in future may come back to it. Part of the problem with orienteeringis that not any people know what it is really about. Normally when I tell people that I orinteer they just give me a funny look but once you explain it to them properly and see how much training you have to do to be at the top they understand and give orienteering the respect it deserves.

[Rach]

I was chatting to a rugby player at a party the other night and when i told him i was an orienteer his response was "woah, you guys are really hard core, you train so much"!!! I'd definately never had that response before but it was a refreshing change!!

[Wattok]

Rach writes

Every time i've seen them since they've asked how many million miles i ran that week and when i'll be in the olympics!

there were rumours going around a while back about having orienteering in the olympics or commonwealth games or something. I think it may have been in a PWT format, what was the chat about that? Surely that would raise the orienteering profile no end!

[samsonite]

http://www.nopesport.com/forum/viewtopi ... 12&start=0

[Kitch]

what a busy thread this was over the weekend.

To go back to where we were earlier on in the discussion.
Putting out a harder, cooler image.

How about [nope] taking a lead on this ?
What do we need ?
better kit.
this means slick looking and modern materials. An opportunity for someone.
Who wants to work on some designs ?
Who will buy it if we make it - everyone on [nope] ? that would be 150 sales.

Some sports do really well because they have stacks of expensive kit
groovy kit to buy. MBK, Snowboarding, tri, AR. Dunno how we do this in O' but I'm sure someone can come up with an idea.

Next
who are we selling the sport to ?
there is a big thread on schools which is useful but it is very hard to control the quality of the experience.
I had an interesting experience with some school kids last Thursday !!!!

steady....

I was up at the Hill End ski slope with Rocky waiting around for Cepls and Drew when a couple of minibusses came past with school kids, to go skiing. Their teacher came up and asked who I was. I told her, looking puzzled. She said " the kids saw your British team tracksuit, they were impressed, they did orienteering last term "
So, if we can get it right kids will think O' is a good sport.

Who else.
Thinking back to the AR thing.
I was ranting about associating with AR, however,
there is an idea in there.
, sell to AR.
Poach from AR
steal their people.

' You think AR is tough do you? so why is it you keep getting beaten by orienteers ? Orienteering - come and have a go if...'

' Fancy a real challenge but haven't quite got 36 hours to spare ?
Orieneteering - c a h a g i y t y h e '

' You don't have to keep it up all night to prove yourself. Orienteering - c a h a g ....'

Put together a roll of honour.
achievements of orienteers outside of orienteering

' So, you think orienteering is soft do you?
Explain this lot then:
Mr A Orienteer. European Cross COuntry Champion - in his spare time.
Mr B Orienteer. England Fell running International - in his spare time.
Mr C Orienteer. Scotland Fell running International - in his spare time.
Mr D Orienteer. Scottish fell running champion - in his spare time.
Mr E, and Miss C Orienteers. Winner of xyz Adverture Race series - in their spare time.
etc.

'Had an interesting weekend have you ?
When did you last run 10 miles flat out, climb 31 hills, jump 9 streams, wade 2 rivers, yomp 11 marshes, climb up 4 crags and down 6, jump 52 assorted trees, battle through 3 thickets AND hit 25 checkpoints with pinpoint accuracy ?'

this week
Monday - I ran 5 miles and did circuit training for an hour. Tuesday - I ran 3 miles and then did a 13 mile interval session. Wednesday I ran 5 miles in the morning and 10 miles in in the fells in the evening. Thursday - I ran 8 miles in the morning and did 20 hill reps in the afternoon. Friday - I ran 5 miles and then I ran another 5 miles.
Why did I do this ?
I need to.
I'm going to an orienteering race at the weekend.

etc.

lots of adventure races are 20- 30 but they have lots of money
they will also get a bit older and have kids - thats playing the long game.

[samsonite]

kitch points are pretty good i reckon. i dont think bof will go for them but never mind.

the designs are in draught stages, that was a big part of the point of nope originally, to bring a bit of decent kit into the sport (im sure you will all correct me as i know nuthin aboot climbing, but im told the injection of some decent looking kit and decent promo (vids/mags etc) about 94/95 brought rising numbers to the sport).

when we can get the designs finalised and find a quality manufacturer for a decent price it shall hopefully go ahead BUT not until some of u guys have been consulted and maybe we mifght even have some focus groups (dont be scared) and hopefully the whole thing will be done professionally.

we are also hoping to put together a promo video over this year, providing we can get some cameras at the right times. this will be a spankingly packaged dvd, with custom menus, a decent soundtrack, extras etc, to attract folk from other "extreme" sports. it will hopefully be in a sort of skating/mtb type format, but also informative. the american vid is not bad, but its a bit cheesy for my tastes. but maybe that rough format. again, we hope to hear from you about hwat u think it should be like, and we will be preying on many of you to be filmed and also to watch rough draughts etc. you have been warned.

the adventure race thing is also valid.

promoting the sport at all adventure races is a great idea i reckon, and we have a great opportunity at the rat race event in edinburgh in july, since so many live here. lets use that

another idea that pyrat and i talked about recently was the possibility of running a few events that are easyish but long, put on just for runnning clubs, hopefully with an inter club comp to keep people interested. i know this has been tried before and im unaware of the results (im sure u will tell me) but we thought we could make it work with enough support and rrazmataz and if we get the competitive streaks coming out between the running clubs. if this did work, there would then have to be a sufficient support system afterwards, offering people info about joinging a club, and sending running clubs events info.

id be keen to hear what u think about these points

thanx

samsonite

[Kitch]

BOF may not go for them but the internet is a powerful tool.
sure they are the sport's governing body and that is respected, but they do not have a monopoly on being allowed to talk about or promote the sport.
What is to stop [nope]sport doing the job ?
putting together all the cool hard hitting promotional stuff we are talking about
and,
as you are so adept at doing,
putting it on the net, linking to other people's / sport's sites.

as if you weren't busy enough !

happy to help with design, thoughts, etc.

what are you coding in by the way ?

[Steler]

I was disapointed by coments of a personal nature made by one contributor to this forum. This is one of the problems of the sport and something that nopesport should try to keep away from. It's easy to criticise others but where does it lead (hopefully not the way some of the most influential people in the sport are discussing in private). We need to work with BOF. I feel quite ambivalent towards BOF and I think that this is because their (and the sport in general) has such a major communication problem. This forum was set up to find out what you thought the sport needed to move forward and I think there are many good ideas here, lets keep to this topic.

Anyway back to the important stuff.
The major Adventure races seems to be a combination of foot orienteering, mountain biking orienteering, even canoe orienteering and a few other bits tagged on. No wonder why most of the top adventure recers in the world are orienteers. Nearly all the top racers in this country have come from orienteering and the only top competitor I know who didn't (he came from triathalon) has now taken up orienteering to get his navigation up to scratch. Adventure racing is developing fast so why not let the new adventure racers know of the benefits to them of taking up orienteering.