Discussion: Clubs with coaches?

Just doing a wee survey:
How many of the clubs in North America have "coaches" to organise training? Has the response been favourable?
Are there any paid coaches?
Do you think a European would be interested in coming to North America to spend a year coaching/organizing events?

Calgary has weekly coaching but just for the juniors.
We have two paid coaches (one of them being me) I set up the exercises, controls, and activities and someone else organizes the logistics of the program and does all the SI computer stuff. We have other volunteer coaches at the time of coaching so we can have smaller groups.

The response has been huge, they all love it and the program has grown to about 30 this year. But as I said unfortunately its only for the juniors. For adult training a different person every week is in charge and sets up a course, sometimes with training aspects but there is no coaching.

Thanks Sarah, any snow in Calgary yet?
I know Alberta's done some training camps Sarah, how have they been?

I put together some training and coaching for SLOC a few years back. Attendance was a bit light (typically 5-10), but those who came seemed to like it. Mostly adventure racers. Stopped doing it when I took on the A-meet responsibilities and nobody else was interested in picking it up.

As you know Nev, GHO has had 'coaches' setting up technical O training off and on informerly for 30 years now (Russ, Steve, Ron, myself, etc and most recently Sudden). But only recently have we had Hans setting up physical training sessions. But we have never had paid coaches. There is a definite need for (paid) coaching in Canadian orienteering. Generally the way it has worked in North America is that the elite volunteer coach the juniors and the former elite coach the elite. Nobody has coached the masters. But as our elite crank up the training hours it makes it harder for them to be involved with junior coaching. Some would argue that they should focus only on their own training - and many do. So paid coaching would be a great opportunity. In the mean time we just have to help each other and let others know when training camps are taking place (like the one we organized with the Hott Johansens in Hamilton in January) to maximize the opportunities we do have.

Coaching - as in paid coaching - is actually quite rare even in Sweden. There are some clubs with coaches/instructors/administrators paid by - usually - local authorities (with an over-emphasis on administration?).
Very much of the club work - setting courses, planning training and actually leading training sessions - is done mostly by volunteers. This is possible due to the fact that there are - in the bigger clubs - 'lots of people' to pick from (it´s all relative) ...

I'll settle for any information on club coaching.
I know Ottawa OC has a junior program and had an open training day this spring. New Brunswick has alot of juniors on the National Team, there must be something there?
Yukon? Vancouver? Halifax?

Back when I was in Quebec, I organised weekly training sessions. Each week we focussed on something different, either a technique or a fitness quality. People paid a fee for the year (just like swimming lessons let's say), so that made me a paid coach. I had about 8 people the first year, 15 the next, and then I ran away with all the cash. The rest is history ;-)
But serisouly, people really enjoyed it and nobody minded the fee because they paid for their kids' soccer, their partners painting lessons... so why not orienteering coaching.

Vancouver lacks a junior program. For years there has been only one junior in the club. We are strong in many areas, but are very weak in the junior/kids area (as well, we are useless when it comes to promotion). We seem to lack the skill, knowledge and resources to get anything going.

not much snow yet, just rain.

Alberta normally has a spring training camp but I havent been to one in a few years. I remember really enjoying them when I was younger. This year we paid the Norwegian Junior Coach to run the training at the camp, I wasnt there but I heard really good comments about it. He also coached at one of the junior sessions and gave those going to JWOC tips about this year's terrain. I was sad I missed the camp but I think the response was positive enough that we would do it again if the chance came up again.

Well, since nobody else has mentioned it, I will (even though I haven't had anything to do with it). To my knowledge, the "highest" coaching/training session in the US is the Texas Junior Orienteering Camp. By "highest" I mean a vauge combination of both quality instruction and robust participation.

I can tell you what we do in NB. A lot of the junior related stuff is coordinated by my Dad, although there are certainly other club members who've helped a lot. Last winter, as there were so many of us going to JWOC, he organised speed and agility training using the Icebox programme a couple mornings a week at the Y (I wasn't there cause I was in Halifax, though). As so as the end of April came around we had Tuesday night events in city parks which were not just for juniors, but which we all went to. We also helped set some of them up since we didn't have to be at work in the afternoon. Between NS and NB, there were two meets basically every weekend of the spring. Dad also organised things like a clinic on anti-doping and blood testing for us to go to and has encouraged us to get our coaching and meet official certification.

The thing that I think makes the biggest difference for our orienteering is that Dad frequently takes us out of province to compete at larger events. Last spring we drove down to the States for 10 days to go to the US long and short champs and to West Point. We also went to the Ottawa Interclub (Eastern Canadians?) in May. I think that these trips are one of the biggest motivators for juniors as we're all travelling together, getting to compete on different (and usually more detailed and recently updated) maps and meet other juniors from across NA.

I don't think that junior activities have to be kept completely separate. While it is nice to have the juniors get together sometimes for dinner or to write orienteering articles, I think that as there are so few orienteers around, you might as well have everyone at the training events that someone has put a lot of work into. Mind, in NB we don't really have any very competitive people in the 20-35 categories, so the level the juniors are competing at seems to be appropiate for everyone else.

Also, I just remembered but can't be bothered to work into one of my previous paragraphs that my club often organises a one night junior training camp. This is mostly aimed at younger juniors though and the older juniors help out, which is a big motivator for the younger kids. So I think that a really important part of any developing junior programme is to have slighty older orienteers around that kids can look up to in order to show that orienteering is something that fun people do. I realise that this is circular since you already need to have some juniors before this will work, but I still think it's a valid point.

Sorry, I guess my last post got diverted from coaching to junior development. Basically, my Dad is our coach and he volunteers. He does have level 3 coaching certification though. He also takes care of a lot of logistics stuff like getting all the JWOC stuff organised and helping us make training plans. Everyone helps to put on training and regular events.

Pi spoke about our lack of a junior program in Vancouver but we also do not have any official coaching. There is a core group of 5 or 6 people that often organise trainings and sometimes offer advice to newbies but no one who has been delegated the particular position of coach. Our Elite runners (Louise, Thomas, Magnus etc.) rely on each other and on personal mentors (ie. Ted) for structure in their orienteering training.

Although we have no official coaches we do make an effort to organise training events during the year which focus on technique such as the Sprint Training Camp coming up in Vancouver.

In the Yukon, Ross was a coach for a long time. Recently, Pippa and I have been trying to do what Mike was saying, train ourselves and coach the juniors. We have junior training once every 2 weeks through the summer. The weeks in between our club has a local B-meet so the kids can O once a week. The last couple of years, I have taken some of the older juniors out training when we go training. In these cases we are more like teammates than coach- athlete because I am focusing on my own training not helping them with theirs. I guess in this kind of situation, the training is still being organized, they are getting out on a map and we debrief afterwards. Better than nothing.
The bottom line is that while I'm still training myself there isn't enough time being put into it because I simply don't have it.