Discussion: USA Juniors

Erin's first month

We would welcome help with these "committees"
Europe trip next summer for any advanced junior
Movies, media, web, branding
Fundraising
Supporting the juniors' decision-making collective (for development grants for clubs, & travel grants for kids)
Recruiting
Local development: build on existing clubs' activities; figure out how to get & spend seed money to start local sustainable paid-coach programs all around.
Team support

link above gives a not found error...

Try this.

that works, thanks...

Sorry, fixed.
In related news, Canada has named a junior coach and assistant junior coach for their High Performance Program and solicited volunteers to help with their efforts locally.

That's great reporting, and progress. Keep it up.

Wow, it's great to see everything typed out and updated!

Is Erin still coming to Seattle this month? I know there was talk about that earlier, but I didn't see anything in the write-up about involving WIOL.

Thanks for asking! Last I heard he was thinking about January - can you get in touch with him directly?

Great!

Erin's second month

Erin participated in the Ohio training camp one week prior to the OCIN meet, then helped out at the meet itself. He connected with over a dozen juniors there, and led a course review and training on the Saturday.

Erin is close to rolling out the development and standing teams. The development team will be open to all juniors. OUSA will work with them and their local clubs to make sure they have a mentor or coach to help them achieve their goals. The goals don't have to be about orienteering competition, though they could be. It's whatever the junior would like to do relative to orienteering - maybe teach other kids, or make a map, or help the club put on a meet.

The standing team, as currently envisioned, will have 12 men and 12 women. Juniors can apply to be on this team, and agree to train each week, attend training camps, be in regular contact with the Junior Coach, and represent the USA. Everyone on the team will be invited to travel to Europe for training and JWOC, regardless of whether they are competing at JWOC.

Erin and I had a great conversation with Mike Waddington and Mark Adams about Adventure Racing Kids. Erin has similar ideas for growing the sport. In his contract with OUSA, Erin laid out his 10-year goals of having at least six clubs with a significant budget, each, for junior development; that's on the same scale that ARK has already proven viable. That would pay for a staff member and equipment to really keep a program going. Our next steps will be to talk to some of the larger clubs about how we can move junior development forward in this country by creating fun map running experiences that appeal to a lot of kids and their parents.

Nice!

(a random detail--it would be great if the Vitalyte sponsorship went somewhere. It's not the same family company it was when Bill was running the show.)

Note: I'll be in Seattle Dec 29th (evening) to Jan 2, and hope to see some of you there including Bob Forgrave.
I'll be in the San Francisco area the following weekend, Jan 5th.

Sponsorships are two-way roads... what value do orienteering clubs provide to a sports-drink-mix sponsor? How many serve refreshments at the finish? How many have stocked aid stations on the courses? How many give a goodie bag with samples and informational flyers to event participants? To this last question, my bet is the answer is safely none.

Barb, when you are in San Francisco, look me up. Thanks.

Well, one of the most appealing reasons—perhaps for some, the most appealing one—to go to JWOC is no longer.

"[Björn Persson] said that, despite the IOF’s, the organiser’s and the SEA’s efforts to conduct a successful banquet for the JWOC participants, alarming reports on misbehaviour are received almost every year. Therefore, BP proposed that the banquet no longer be part of the official JWOC programme and that the obligation to organise a banquet thus be removed from the organiser’s agreement.

"The Council agreed, with regret, that the banquet be removed from the official JWOC programme."

Let's not underestimate the party ingenuity of JWOCers. Surely there will still be wild end-of-JWOC parties even if the organizers aren't required to host one. There will probably even still be free trips to the hospital!

Also, I think international relations are also a prime motivation for going, and we all know that you don't need a banquet for those...

I welcome this news.
I love the idea of the banquet, but it has gotten out of hand.

I'd like to keep this thread for USA junior news & discussion - if people want to talk about the banquet issue, please start a new thread!

Folks, OUSA is looking for local mentors & coaches for individual kids in your area. Please drop me a line or post here if you're willing to serve. This won't be burdensome; it will be fun. Thanks!

... willing to serve beer?

Speaking of JWOC programme change. This year the races go in a tad different order. Opening ceremony on sunday. The Long is first race on Monday. Followed by the middle qualification and middle final on Tuesday and Wednesday. Rest day Thursday. Then sprint on Friday and the relay/closing ceremony is on Saturday. Same races but wont have the rest day after the long and sprint is later in the week instead of earlier.

Middle quals the day after the long? That certainly puts the pressure on teams whose best runner(s) competes in both long and middle. I wonder who came up with that order and why they thought it could possibly be a good idea.

Willing local mentor here!

Thanks, Becks!

JTESC (the USA junior team steering committee) had a great meeting today. We talked about the development and standing team plans, which will be rolled out soon. Most of our meeting was spent discussing changing the JWOC selection rules. We are working on a proposal to change the selection procedure quite radically. After I check in with steering committee members on my notes, I would like to share them with all of you.

We will publish applications for the Junior Standing Team soon.
We'd like to get the Team up and running in January.
We're also working on the new and improved Junior Development Team; that may be a little longer, but hopefully we will roll it out in the next month.

The Standing Team is for a select group of 12 men and 12 women, who will train leading up to the European trip to JWOC and beyond. All of the Standing Team is welcome to come on the European trip. (Others are also welcome to join the Europe as long as we work out logistics; the focus will be on the kids who have been training in the first half of the year.) Erin will be in touch with the team members each week. We'll work to get them local mentors/coaches. We'll ask them to log their training. They'll gather for a training camp in their region of the country in the spring (we're anticipating camps in 4 places). As JWOC approaches in late spring, there will be more opportunity to train together as a team, leading into the 1-2 week period before JWOC when we'll train in the Czech Republic.

This is the year, I believe, when we get serious about the junior team, when we do a lot more for them, and they do a lot more for us: when we respect the team as athletes, and invite them to step up to the challenge. With the number of younger juniors that we have, we are laying the groundwork for significant improvement from year to year; imagine, if we have kids going to Europe competing either at spectator or official JWOC races this year, and training as a team for 2-3 weeks together, and mentored all spring -- and some of these kids have 2 or 3 or 4 more years of competing at JWOC after this year - WHAT CAN HAPPEN!!??

The proposal for the Development Team: as in the new OUSA rules, this is for all juniors. Benefits: set orienteering goals (competition related or community-building or other), and have a mentor help you achieve them. Connection to juniors within your club and across the country. Gatherings at A meets. Training camps. Because we want to seed more local junior development, and because we believe that successful programs will benefit from paid staff, we're hoping to have the JDT raise money via suggested donations, to seed some of these programs in 2013. JDT members will do all sorts of things; some kids will help us solicit grants from clubs, and decide where the money is spent. We want kids to feel empowered in lots of ways, and this would be one of them. Ah, and we're also planning to make a cool T shirt for JDT members. Anyway, details of the team are under active discussion.

Barb, you are so awesome! It's about time that we have big thinkers like you and Erin in a position to actually make a difference!

Sign me up as a local mentor.

Thanks, Alex!

Erin is the big thinker; I'm just the convert trying to support him. And I want to also mention how important Guy's role is too -- without him, there is no way I could do this. Among many other things, without his involvement when things get hard, this would be too stressful...

I'm not sure if everyone has read what Erin wrote in his ONA introduction in September - but I'll excerpt it here, because as we finalize the Standing Team application, and plan the spring schedule, and head into talks with leaders of clubs, I find it useful to see the big picture.

Erin wrote:

My goals are to move in three directions. First, to begin to teach the juniors in the sport how to be athletes, how to train consistently, healthily, and regularly, both on physical level and a navigational level. I am hoping to have a standing team of a couple dozen juniors that have guided regular training, support to get to A-events, and opportunities to travel to Europe for competition and training. I would like to build a US junior program that people respect, because the athletes carry themselves well, and at the same time enjoy what they do and have success doing it.

The second direction is to tie coaching clinics in with trainings. I’d like to get a group of interested people together, from around the country, to learn about coaching athletes from beginner through elite levels. The process will incorporate understanding human development, athletic development, how to train physically, navigationally, and how it can be brought to younger kids in fun imaginative ways, through games and activities. On the more advanced level, coaches will learn to work with individual athletes, to help them reach their maximum potential and develop spatial navigation -- a sense of direction and distance.

The third direction is to work with clubs around the country to develop and enhance regular junior programs that meet a couple times a week all year. As the numbers and ability levels increase, these programs would evolve into multiple stages, supporting both kids who want to be competitive and kids who are just looking for fun, fitness and health.

The orienteering community is very important in our sport: the people who do the sport just for fun are actually the ones supporting the athletes that are training to compete. One of my goals is to keep this bridge strong and increase the numbers of both. If clubs are able to build programs that bring more kids and parents into the sport, it will increase revenue, which will in turn open up opportunities for paid coaching positions, travel grants and training grants for athletes.

Ten to twenty years from now, I think it would be really sweet if there were working relationships between clubs and schools in local areas, to develop orienteering as a school sport and even a viable collegiate sport. On a community level, orienteering would be accessible to kids all over the country, so they could learn how to navigate, read a map, and use a compass well. On a competitive level, when US teams show up to WOC and JWOC, all the athletes would be competing to be in the top 10 in any race. I’d like to see us model what it means to be a true athlete, and to have fun doing it. The depth of our programs would match and surpass that of the best orienteering nations. These are huge dreams that people may laugh at. However, if we start now, and put in some good work as a community, I think many of the first steps are possible, and they might open the door for the larger dreams to be realized.

Please help me fill in the gaps and correct errors:

For club contact points with JTESC:
BAOC: Trinka Gills
GAOC: Bob Frost
HVO: Guy Olsen
MNOC: Andrea?
Rochester: Rick & Linda Kohn???
OCIN: Matthew Robbins?
DVOA: Janet Porter?
NEOC: Mika Latva-Kokko
COC: Jennifer Flagel until she tells me another person; also talking with Bob Forgrave

Willing to be local mentor / coach:
Alex Jospe
Becky Carlyle

WCOC Joe or Pavlina B (unless somebody else volunteers)

Erin created a Yahoo group of junior mentors/coaches and I'm guessing that your list and his should be merged.

Yeah, I guess I should focus here on the club contact points.

Yes, Barb, I'll be the MNOC contact for now, in the future hopefully more. I agree with Carl about the merging

I don't think there is a Club Contact e-mail list or YahooGroup with which to merge it.

Janet Porter is the correct contact for DVOA Junior Program.

January 19-20: Junior training and meetings at the Georgia Navigator Cup A-event, east of Atlanta, GA.
January 26: Erin will be at the DVOA Winter Meeting, near Valley Forge, PA.
February 2: Erin will be at the Fire Mountain WIOL event, north of Seattle, WA.
February 9-10: Erin will be at the Sprint Camp, in Vancouver, BC.
February 16-18: Erin will meet with any interested juniors at the Tucson, AZ, B-event.
February 19-22: Advanced juniors and other advanced runners are welcome to join us for winter training in the beautiful (cactus-free!) area southeast of Tucson. Please RSVP or send inquiries to barb.bryant@gmail.com
March 2-3: Possible training camps in the midwest, east coast and west coast - stay tuned!
March 9-10: US Interscholastics and Intercollegiate Championships A-event near Kansas City, KS.
Late March: Tentative junior training, near Concord, CA.
April 5-7: Flying Pig A-event in/near Bloomington, IN.
April 21: Billygoat Run, near Amherst, MA.
April 26-28: West Point Annual A-event in the lower Hudson Valley of New York.
April 29-May 9: Training opportunities in Harriman State Park, NY, and environs.
May 10-12: US Individual (S/M/L) Championships & WOC Team Trials A-event, near Glens Falls, NY.
May 24-26: Tentative training camp in Colorado and/or Wyoming.
First two weeks of June: Training in the Harriman State Park, NY, area.

Erin's December report has been posted

Highlights:

• Worked with JTESC to define the Standing Team, develop the applications, create a selection process, identify top juniors to invite. (Applications went out in January.)
  
• Worked with JTESC to define the Development Team, develop the applications. (Applications schedule to go out in January.)
  
• Planning for the spring A meets, training camps, coaching clinic, travel to WIOL, Vancouver, meetings with local clubs
  
• Further work on overall plan for junior development in the USA
  

Thanks for posting (and doing!)

Junior Standing Team invitations:

18 young women received personal invitations from Erin to apply. I know of 5 who are actively working on the application.

20 young men received invitations. I know of 7 who are working on the application.

We're aiming at 12 women and 12 men. You don't need to have been invited to apply. Erin sent invitations to juniors who would do well on the team, or who were recommended by their clubs.

Great Work Barb.

@Barb: $171,800?!? We need to talk...

Good luck all.

This sounds like an ambitious plan but absolutely in the right direction. One thing I would suggest is that racing need not always be at A meets - well planned training weekends which are more local (less expensive) with technique first and races at the end is something we would do all the time in the Yorkshire and GB Squads. The field is good if aspiring seniors and all the juniors within 3-4 hours drive are there. With some help hanging I'd totally plan something like that in WCOC land.

Also, the juniors will learn a lot more than just orienteering with a few weeks in Europe (and just being part of the squad). So consider it good value, whether or not it is affordable.

$171,800: this is what it really costs to send a team to Europe to train and compete, and to pay a coach. I know we're not likely to pull it off this year, but I think it's important for people to realize that properly supporting a team costs money. I think it's important for people to realize that most of the financial burden is falling on the families (which means many kids can't do it). OUSA made a commitment in the strategic plan to improve team performance. To do that you don't wave a magic wand. You invest in training the teams, and you invest in building the pipeline so that you have thousands of kids in the base, hundreds of kids competing seriously, dozens on the standing team, great performances at JWOC, and a few eventually making it to WOC.

@Becks: Can you plan WCOC training weekend March 2-3? Can any of you others hang controls? That would be TOTALLY AWESOME!

I think so yes. Will put it in the calendar.

I think it would help your general argument if you could benchmark your numbers against other non-Olympic sports in the US of similar size/scope/standing.

I'd also add that there already have been "thousands of kids in the base" for years now - the kids in JROTC orienteering programs. And that's not even including the military academies.

Focusing so preferentially on the far fewer kids who come from orienteering families may seem natural to the JTESC given how the JTESC is composed (of parents, and not of JROTC or folks associated with the military academies), but for the sake of developing a truly competitive national team, these groups - and their coaches - should be an integral part of any national plan and the numbers bandied about in connection with them.

Benchmarking/comparing: great idea. Perhaps Glen could do that with his lacrosse experience.

Make it "tens of thousands" :-)

But yes, JROTC orienteering is awesome. The JROTC coaches should already have signed up for Erin's coaching group; if they haven't, please ask them to do so. I'm sure Guy would be happy to hear suggestions for including JROTC reps on JTESC. And all juniors are welcome to apply for JST and JDT, whether they're in JROTC or not; I hope that the coaches have encouraged their kids to do so.

"Focusing so preferentially...": I'm not sure how we're excluding JROTC kids, perhaps you could explain.

Please note that JTESC is not only thinking about the 2 dozen kids on the standing team, but also the hundreds of kids we hope to sign up this year for the development team. And we've begun talking with the larger clubs about programs that are different than regular local orienteering meets but that could draw more juniors into our sport. It would be great to have a JROTC specialist who did outreach to build that angle. Perhaps some candidate names could be given here?

By the way, I'm hoping that the funding for teams will at some point come from corporate sponsorship, as opposed to fundraising from within our community.

On the other hand, I think most of the funding for local development programs can probably come from participants and local sponsors & grants.

But that's just my uninformed opinion.

@greg_l, those numbers are quite reasonable (and again, I'm ignoring affordability). I don't know who you would want to benchmark against, and how the comparison would be reasonable. Orienteers have to train far from home too if they want to be great.

They seem reasonable to me too, but I am trying to get hold of old budgets from the GB Start Squad when it still existed for comparison. Not that this is particularly accurate, as we are luckier both in proximity to Europe, cheap flight availability, and local concentration of athletes. Will post links if I'm successful tracking them down.

I kept close track of the costs for two juniors in Europe for the last two years and the $5000/junior for that part of the budget seems pretty reasonable. My costs were about $3300 per junior but they did NOT include the JWOC event and training fees. Not sure what they were but I'd guess $1000-$1500 (or more), so the total cost is pretty close for that part.

Becky, I can probably assist with a march camp - lets talk venues, ideas etc off forum.. Are you going WCOC winter meeting Sunday?

I'll be there.

So, in 2006, when we had really great government funding on an excellent program in place, the numbers from the UK were:

"Start squad" - domestic training, no competition support from 14 year olds to 17ish: 65,600 GBP (105,399.23 USD)

World Class potential - covers JWOC focused teams and competitions, plus a few young seniors (I think): 134, 650 GBP (216,315 USD)

This is not intended to start a slingling match about where funding might come from, but just to demonstrate that by no means is the figure Barb quoted unreasonable, especially once transatlantic travel is also taken into account. This program was excellent and many of the current young stars of the GB team benefitted from it from the age of 14.

So, if you want your club to fund its best juniors, it needs to get a lot more participants, or increase the entry fees, or both.

Which by no means means that clubs can't help fund juniors with smaller amounts in the mean time.

what's happened in the UK since 2006, in terms of funding (and funding sources), program size, and international results?

The size of the federation that supports the team isn't irrelevant. The last figure I can find for BOF is 10,000 members in 1998, which is about 4 times OUSA. Anyone have more recent figures?

Wikipedia says "British Orienteering receives funding from both UK Sport and Sport England. With UK Sport awarding £500,000 and Sport England awarding £2,275,000 over four years with the funding being received from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2013. The UK sports money is likely to be spend on the International aspects of the organisation with the Sport England funding going mainly to development of the sport in England.[10]"

Isn't that nice!?

...given how the JTESC is composed (of parents, and not of...

Wow, I didn't know I was a parent! ;-)

It takes a village

Greg - not an expert on this as I've been away for a few years now. The main difference for Juniors is that the start squad and related foreign tours have been scrapped. Now regional squads are expected to plug the gap (as they did before funding), which works but is much more difficult to cost up. Some of these squads will get local authority funding for the team or individual athletes, but it makes a coherent program more difficult. I think once this funding cycle comes to an end the whole thing is in peril but I could be wrong there - the troubles of not being a high visibility olympic sport in such an amazing few years for British sport. Someone like graeme might know a bit more about what's actually happening there.

And Charlie - absolutely correct. But inspiring juniors has to be a way to work on those numbers. Some of that funding you mention is also ringfenced for silly things like local club nights that always have to happen in the same place, which tends to be a hall somewhere in the outskirts of the big cities. A lot of money has gone to this despite the fact there's not many people convinced it's worth it. Ah, the joys of ringfencing.

And yes, Canadian is absolutely right. This is the likely situation that the Brits will be reverting to - internal funds to the various O' organisations for development, national funding (but less of it) for Team Performance.

A secondary concern during the dream phase, perhaps, but potential donors may want to see extraordinarily lofty goals tempered with a clear-eyed assessment of the landscape and an execution plan that inspires confidence.

By lobbing up noteworthy numbers for public consumption without context, one runs the risk of undermining the credibility of an otherwise laudable project.

Sometimes it may be wise to prepare the way before you show your cards. (Apologies for the mixed metaphor.)

Anyway, that is just one perspective.

Like

...an execution plan that inspires confidence... is exactly what all this is!
And the numbers seem to be reasonable too - lots of money involved, but still in the right ball-park.

Part of the reason the numbers look big is that the costs are included, rather than just going from parent to airline etc outside the budget. Plus it's 24 kids rather than 8.

I agree with j-man...

Posting a gaudy number -- regardless of how accurate it might be -- can produce a negative reaction, sort of like a backlash. Many will immediately write it off as impossible -- or worse -- and not bother to drill down to the details.

I really wish JTESC could have reviewed this document before it got posted on a public forum (as opposed to a log). Can't un-ring a bell, though...

I thought I just tried to suggest that it wasn't a gaudy number, particularly given the somewhat unique conditions geographically of the US Team.

To me it is an entirely reasonable number, if the purpose is to develop a high quality world class junior orienteering programme in the USA.

Just because you think the number looks big does not make it unsuited to the task. This is how much performance costs, at least. In fact, this is probably a modest estimate.

I think it was called gaudy because the US orienteering community is not used to seeing numbers with so many digits in the context of orienteering. Entirely reasonable or not, it's still an objectively large number. Totally agree that it is an honest number, but US orienteers are used to seeing numbers (for fundraising, etc) <$10,000. We never say, "this actually costs $xxx,xxx after you consider how much money the athletes are putting up themselves, volunteer hours, etc"

Totally understand what you're saying, but that's exactly why someone needed to put it out there. This is how much it will cost - can we/ are we willing to try to find that kind of money is the next question.

I guess I just frame it in a different order to j-man et al. Not saying that the second part isn't also important.

There are two issues. 1) a lot of money. I am less daunted by that than most. 2) Implicit assumptions about athlete and program development that are hardly prima facie the most efficacious means to achieve certain ends. These issues, in concert, might be a challenging sell.

As someone who has produced and consumed a number of business plans, I am sensitive to the need to connect dots clearly, and to convince people, for instance, that a T&E budget for your new hires will be more important to the long term health of the organization than polishing your brand and ensuring that the staff can benefit when you send them off to professional development conferences.

Like

Thank you for posting the plan and putting numbers to the costs of developing elite athletes. It's about time that orienteers in the US community publicly acknowledge how much it costs for athletes to achieve the goals we so readily put down on paper (or chase the dreams, without even achieving the goals).

Like Alex, I'm glad to see the 'real' numbers out there. I don't think anyone reasonably expects OUSA or any other body to be able to fund to that level, but its not a bad thing to know what it would cost IF we were to fund a full team with all expenses paid. One needs to see the big picture in order to craft a strategy for moving forward.

In 2015 we are hosting JWOC in Norway, in Rauland, Telemark.

Only the youngest current members of your team will still be juniors 2.5 years from now, so when do you plan to start taking them to Norway?

My brother & I are among the organizers, I am currently working on the base maps for all the terrains. :-)

I was going to suggest they should be going to Scotland for WOC2015 too - but the thing both our countries share is that they significantly increase costs in comparison to Croatia and Slovenia!

Indeed. I was going to suggest to Terje that we host some young Americans next spring, but not to mention the cost of being here...

Anyone know a key executive in an airline that might be willing to become an OUSA sponsor and help defray international airfare costs for all OUSA teams from the US to at least Europe?

We have been talking about that, it would be great to get sponsored by an airline probably, the best kind of sponsor we could find if we could get reduced air fair or free travel. Huge money saver there.

More figures: two week long training camps covering a total of 48 athletes aged 14-16 this summer in Scotland - 20,500 GBP (32,800 USD). This was almost entirely funded by the athletes themselves (many of whom would have got grants from their clubs and/or regions to help out), plus a small (3000 GBP) development grant, likely from BOF. This doesn't cover athlete travel costs to and from the venue, but does cover these expenses for volunteers (17 on each trip, coaches, physio, cooks etc).

What value can Orienteering USA create for an airline?

US Airways doesn't support sports (just arts & culture). United doesn't support sports leagues or thrill sports.

I don't see any limitations for American or Delta, and you can submit sponsorship proposals here:
American: http://www.aa-promo.com/
Delta: public.conxport.com/delta/sponsorship/

What value can Orienteering USA create for an airline?

It's not out of the question that the image of orienteering (as a challenging sport that might capture the imagination of the professionals who travel for business) could feature in a marketing campaign. The sponsorship is then a marketing expense, and airline marketing budgets have a lot of digits to the left of the decimal point, even in comparison to $171,800.

I tend to think the dollar numbers might be a mental obstacle. They certainly provided a diversion to this thread:-)) Large businesses don't generally build marketing campaigns round minor sports.

Like it or not, the sponsor that works for us is parents. They are driven by a mixture of reflected glory and desire to do the best for their kids. They are well off relative to the community as a whole. Kids are travelling all round the world for cultural, educational and sporting reasons, and while they might do "fundraising projects", it is parents who pick up most of the tab.

If they are motivated that is. And that depends on the kids. Around here it's generally accepted that junior motivation starts with inter-school competition, then international competition with a near neighbour. That produces the wide part of the pyramid which generates enough who will travel to Europe. (Twice as far as it is from North America.) Funded by the juniors and their families. I think the federation only funds team managers.

Is there a Can-Am school competition?