Discussion: Developing a USA U25 Team

Hi All,
In talking with the Senior team this summer, Linda, and looking at what the juniors need once they age out. One idea was to develop something like a U25 Team. I would like to move forward with this idea. I am looking for someone who would be interested in being something like a coordinator/ mentor/ check in person with this group of people. It would be volunteer for now and the expectations would be:

Check in with the team every 2-4 weeks,
Check in with them about their obligations and training,
Help them thorough dialogue put together some racing
schedules and training camp schedules.

I am hoping this team can use each other to grow and develop and they will do most of their own work, however its always good to have some perspective and experience checking in and keep things rolling. If your interested please let me know and I will work with you on getting this going. it might not be official at first. I want to get it going asap, in a simple way so that it can grow. The goal for this coming year would be a good prepared WUOC team, and kids stepping up to the WOC level. Thanks

Erin

Another great idea from Erin. All major sports have their version of these development squads.

We're hoping that we will not only be able to send U25 members to WUOC but also WCup and other high level O meets to gain experience.

Before we do anything else, I hope we ditch the youth-soccer-like "U25" in favor of the closer-to-orienteering-standard "21-25" or similar...

I hope we don't.

I hope we ditch the technical jargon of 21-25 for the succinct U25 name.

Why 25, instead of 23 or 26 or whatever?

What's the problem, "something like U25" includes both 23 and 26. Could even include 33.

I hope we don't spend any time whatsoever arguing over the name of the team.

I think this is a great idea and look forward to being able to contribute in the future!

It could be worse. You could be arguing over those retro-look USA Olympic ice hockey jerseys.

I think you have a great idea to keep the 'nearly-there' motivated and training hard.

It's also a particularly easy time of life to fall out of orienteering, between senior year of college & potentially moving to a new place/new job/new community etc. Money is probably also tighter w/ first full-time job & paying rent for the first time, making it harder to choose to spend money on flying to orienteering either in the US or abroad.

So, having a sense of team & community & somebody who cares if you're training/orienteering or not could be quite valuable.

This is awesome. Thanks, Erin!

Erin, if no one else volunteers, get in touch. I am short on time but big on experience!

Always happy to be contacted outside of an actual position.

Back when I was in my early 20's, I was just breaking into the A-meet scene. Running blue, getting decent results, but not "national team" caliber...

Still, it was always fun going to A-meets and finding (at least a few) other people my age to hang out with. Obviously, no program can be everything to everyone. But thoughts about how less-elite young adults might interface with the program? Just thinking of people (like I was) who are maybe not training for WUOC, but would enjoy a national-level training camp with other young adults?

what blegg said. I think this is a fantastic idea, and I totally agree that the U25 (well, I think U30, but that's because I'm 29) demographic is most in need of financial and emotional support, but I also think that the point of this whole thing should be development. Not just for elite orienteering, but if you nab a 26yo who is just getting into orienteering and sees that it's not an exclusive thing, that there are channels to get better at this and train for it like a "real" sport, that's someone you've probably got for life, and hopefully his/her children and spouse, too.

I'm all for junior development, but as soon as they hit college, you've got them pulled in fifteen different directions and zero support to keep orienteering as the primary direction. We also have a serious lack of junior orienteers who are also runners, and this is a problem. Our rate of return on juniors who've gone to college and come back to orienteering after is pretty low in this country. Maybe I'm just biased since I'm one of those few who only "got into" orienteering after college, but I would have killed to have some training beyond what I could parse from hanging around the edges of conversations that I barely understood. If not for CSU (my club), I certainly wouldn't be anywhere near the national team, and I don't get the impression that other clubs do as much structured training, creating a real need for some sort of national development process for young adults.

Sounds like a big job for one person but would not be so much if shared by several people...anyone besides Becks who would be interested in taking on part of the job?

I also agree with what Alex was saying about Development. The current British development is mostly U25, but with some older extras who the coaches agree are on a different timescale to others. Eg. started orienteering later or took a career break to focus on it.

The new U25 team motto:

"seven years of college, down the drain"

:)

SO where does this leave the senior team, the over 25, or is it over 30? They seem to be getting little support these days.
Maybe look for a WUOC coach, working with those in college?

This is some Moneyball from the US as U25 are for sure a market inefficiency.

Why 25, instead of 23 or 26 or whatever?

Excellent point! The main thrust would to continuation of support after aging out of the junior program. This will become more and more important as increasing numbers of juniors get accustomed to current and future levels of enhanced support.

Perhaps we need a name with no age-reference at all (except for being 21+)...
"After Juniors" / "AJ", anyone?

(also thought about "Post Juniors", but I doubt anyone here would go for "PJ"... :-D )

Bullpen

re: bullpen
I would have loved to have had a bullpen on the final 3-4km of the Classic Final at WOC 1997. Getting close to hitting the wall. Arm is tired from carrying the map. Starting to make more errors... So the Canadian team manager comes in from the dugout and chats with me for a bit, takes my compass and then brings in Brian May off the bench to finish off the race for me.
:-)

Seriously though I really like the U25 team (and the name) idea. It really is a university age (or just graduated from university age) team/squad and is as important socially as it is for training/racing. Keeping a cohort of juniors together is important following high school and JWOC and/or large Euro junior tours. But equally important is to have a group that allows a young adult athlete to discover O (possibly through cross over from another sport) and make improvements quicker because of it.

How old were Ali C, Alex J, Brent L, Patrick G, and Will C when they were (re)introduced to O at and when they started training for the sport seriously? All likely in that 18-25 age.