Compass Sport Cup Scoring System

[Tatty]

SOC may be a large club in the terms of membership units, but , despite a lot of work from within the club, the number who participate regularly and would be prepared to travel is about 35% of the membership. I did better getting people out this year than before, and still had less than most other clubs. I'm envious of those clubs where they have a much higher participation level. We only wish we could do the same. We have always had a major problem with getting any "Non orienteering family " juniors, partly due to the attitude of our local LEA to us being a dangerous sport. but therein lies another tale.

[awk]

What this thread, and your post Tatty, highlights is that each club's peer group competitively is not so much absolute size, but clubs that are of similar strength (which includes ability to turn a team out, of whatever size). Which is why I would have loved to have seen the CSC/T go down the route of matching clubs together based more on ability than size.

The concept would involve merging Cup and Trophy and then (as example), splitting the country into 3-5 areas. Each area would itself be split into divisions of 4-5 clubs within those. Round 1 would see the area divisions matches (hosted perhaps by one of the middle ranked clubs from the previous year). Winners would then go forward to have a final match against other winners of their equivalent division, for National Division 1, 2, 3 etc. titles. For the next season, each regional division winner would get promoted, each last place club would get relegated. The Cup winner would be the winner of Division 1.

There'd need to be some juggling as to where the Scots fitted in (I suspect that Scottish Div 1 winners would not relish the prospect of matching up with English Div 1 winners - or maybe they would?), but I suspect that this structure would seem even tighter competition, and some real incentives to middling clubs.

[HOCOLITE]

[quote="Adventure Racer
In the context of numbers running on courses that's not necessarily relevant though, particularly if they have 35s and 40s who would run the longest courses anyway. For example HOC didn't have a single M21 running, but their top scoring course was Brown. It's when you don't have people eligible to run the shorter courses that you have a problem, as you can't run people down (unless of course, as is possible, I totally misunderstand the rules).[/quote]

This was very true for our club as being the host club, we needed to find planner, organiser and due to all CSC's being on same day controller. Also of course the mapper should apparently be non comp.
We got the organiser to run, the mapper ran non comp, but the controller could hardly run. unfortunately Organiser, Controller and Mapper make up our best Green Vet Men, so we lost quite a few points. I know by having helpers you get better participation but it doesn't make up for loosing senior experienced members.
Also Paulo mentioned the event being in school hols... this is obviously the same for all clubs, but it must reduce participation. Also some clubs lost their top runners to Squad warm weather training.

[NeilC]

unfortunately Organiser, Controller and Mapper make up our best Green Vet Men, so we lost quite a few points.

As a level 3 event the controller should have been from another club. Always invite the srongest orienteer from the arch rivals to control.

As for the rules.. well we beat SLOW so the rules are OK by us! No doubt at this very moment The Loofa is working out why SLOW should have won - not that it really matters, they will probably end up beating us in the final again

[Blanka]

This was very true for our club as being the host club, we needed to find planner, organiser and due to all CSC's being on same day controller.

The solution is to organise the event as a region, which has worked very well in EAOA several times already. At yesterday's event, the organiser, planner and controller were all from different clubs, so that each club only lost one runner this way (at that, the organiser did get a run as well).

Also some clubs lost their top runners to Squad warm weather training.

I agree with that - after all the support they get from their home clubs, the elite athletes should make an effort to come and turn out for them in the CSC/T (and the organisational team of the Squad should be symphatetic of that).

[guest]

...in the SE round today, 3 of the 8 clubs (DFOK, LOK & SAX) had less than 20 runners each...

Whereas POW had 23 - must be a lesson there somewhere

[HOCOLITE]

Is the scoring fair to girls? On the light green no W16 is going to stand a chance against a good M18, should the W16's do orange or should the M18's do blue?

[NeilC]

...in the SE round today, 3 of the 8 clubs (DFOK, LOK & SAX) had less than 20 runners each...

Whereas POW had 23 - must be a lesson there somewhere

Yes, keep working towards a format in which the smaller large clubs have some incentive to compete.

[guest]

Is the scoring fair to girls? On the light green no W16 is going to stand a chance against a good M18, should the W16's do orange or should the M18's do blue?

Tell that to Julia Blomquist who won the Light Green course at Black Wood yesterday !

[Jess]

also harriet batten beat all the guys on the orange there too

[redkite]

Is the scoring fair to girls? On the light green no W16 is going to stand a chance against a good M18, should the W16's do orange or should the M18's do blue?

Our W16s scored well last year on the senior womens courses so as to avoid the M18s. There are options, they just need to be thought through.

[distracted]

Distracted, I wasn't suggesting anything abuot the cut-off between large & small clubs. It would obvisouly be very difficult to come up with some accurate way of defining a larger and small club. For example, today SOC and HH had 28 runners, BKO 26, but SARUm who are a "small" club had 39...

Mharky > The point I was trying to make is, as you are saying, that defining a 'large' club is very difficult. It's done by numbers at the moment, maybe it should be on participation? But that creates a whole new load of problems...

As AWK suggests, maybe just having Cup and Trophy isn't the way to go, as the Cup aspect of the competition covers so many sizes of 'large' club. And yes, you would expect the largest of the large clubs to have more good runners and so come out on top all of the time. I'd be interested to see how many different teams have qualified for the CSC final over the past few years - I guess there is a 'core' of clubs who are there pretty much every year (NOC, AIRE, BOK, OD, SO etc...). It's like a 'top division' of clubs which others may break into once in a while - and that could well be dependent on the draw for the qualifying rounds - so why not make it a top division?

[Tatty]

Have been asked by our younger juniors why the yellow course doesn't count for M/W 10. As it is we had an eleven year old and two nine year olds running on the orange which was chal;lenging to all three of them. Also a younger brother would have coped with the yellow but certainly not orange.

[HOCOLITE]

No discredit to Julia cos she's good but she was hardly taking on the top M18's, I don't think any of them appear anywhere in the FCC listing, as for Harriet the Orange is more open. Jess I'm sure you'd agree that Harriet next year is unlikely to beat Adam, Mikey, Daniel, Chris E. On our event Cath Bushnell who is no slouch was 8th 7 mins behind the leader. So what about the run of the mill girls. Also Julia was competing in the trophy not the Cup.

[guest]

I'd be interested to see how many different teams have qualified for the CSC final over the past few years - I guess there is a 'core' of clubs who are there pretty much every year (NOC, AIRE, BOK, OD, SO etc...). It's like a 'top division' of clubs which others may break into once in a while

OD had never qualified for the Final before last year. Winning it on their first Final appearance. As others have remarked, it is all about getting people out to compete.