Training Log Archive: barb

I love getting emails like this:

My fellow Cambridge Youth Program Directors and I are planning some adventurous activities for February Vacation. Navigation Games was mentioned as a potential partner for one of our workshop activities. Young people at the Moore Youth Center enjoyed a visit from Navigation Games last summer, and Greg Green at Russell echoed that sentiment for the young people with whom he works.

Any chance folks from Navigation Games are available during the week of February 20th-23rd? We are looking to create an activity for about 15 young people that lasts roughly one hour.

I set out and picked up controls for a cell-phone O. Very gratified to get 8 CRLS students to participate, with an additional 4 last minute cancellations. It was fun.

I enjoyed talking to Anaka and Anna, both really into science and (in Anna's case) math. Anna thought her younger sister Julia might be interested too.

Line-O set by Keegan at Nobscot. I went backward and he went forward until we met. He was slow and careful and used his compass a lot to go feature to feature, as he does in a corridor-O. I suggested afterward that next time he focus on his positions relative to more distant surrounding features.
I used the sun quite a bit.

C • Sun! 3

Coming soon: notes from the Youth Initiatives meeting. Exciting stuff!

Hi peeps

I had a lovely chat with Mary Jo today. It's a long shot, but I'm hopeful she and Carl and Andrew and Jo will join me and Ethan and Vilppu and Keegan and Carl and Linda and Sarah in Arizona in February.

Will be fun.

Navigation Games and OUSA Youth are building up speed. On the OUSA side:

The Scout Committee will have pretty broad scope across organizations. There was a great idea for putting on World Scout Orienteering Championships in 2019. It's on that awesome and growing new map.

JROTC/ROTC will focus on outreach between clubs and unit leaders.

We need more people for schools committee.

We have 15-20 OUSA club reps, but need the rest of them. I've asked Christy to do that recruitment. Once we have a partner in every club, we can share ideas and best practices for serving youth and families.

Navigation Games:

Ethan continues after school teaching.

We are about to launch a big recruitment effort involving Willy Wonka like Golden Tickets which become available one a week in the course of an orienteering race in nearby park.

What should the Golden Tickets buy? A party? Tuition grant? I know. CRLS orienteering gear. Designed by Ethan Childs himself.

Talked to City Councillor Kelley today. He was really pushing several concepts: reaching kids other than privileged white kids, and focusing on urban navigation.

What I love about our in-school programs and our goal of getting every kid in Cambridge to orienteer, *is* that we are reaching every kid. However, that is mostly just for introductions to the sport; we'd also like that demographic to choose orienteering as an activity for after-school club or team. We had a tough time connecting with these kids in the summer.

We will meet in the evening of Feb 7th and do a bike tour of several youth centers. The youth centers have evening programs (hangout space) for youth aged 14-20. Craig said that he hasn't seen any white kids there. The boys play basketball, and the girls watch them and socialize. He thinks this is likely the best way to reach this demographic, through the youth centers.

C • Interesting concept 1

Walked home from Boston

To school for the O meeting

We have this great opportunity to form an orienteering team at the high school, but we are having trouble recruiting. It's a great opportunity because we have the support of the athletic director, and he is encouraging us to make it a real varsity sport - with serious training. I think it's pretty cool to have the opportunity to work with kids on orienteering 5 days a week. But students can only do one sport at a time, and some of our prospects choose other sports while others are not up for the time commitment. We need to find a way to recruit onto the team.

One idea we had was to form a less-intensive but really fun club during the winter to play orienteering games and prepare for the Junior Nationals. We can include the athletes who are doing other sports on a club. If they can bring their friends and others onto the club, maybe some of those new people would want to keep orienteering on a team. Not sure the athletic director is a fan of this idea. Also, forming a club is not easy. There is a process and a wait list, and our mid-year request is out of order. Another possibility is to have it be winter training for the sport, but I don't know if that would exclude the kids who are current athletes, and whether it would feel as open.

We can also talk to coaches of other sports that are over-subscribed.

The timing of Junior Nationals is awkward for us, coming at the beginning of the spring sports season. This means we can't train up an orienteering team and then go to Nationals. Instead we plan to focus the team on a series of local races, that would be built up in future years, if this whole thing keeps rolling, into a Boston-area interscholastic league.

C • CRLS 2

Today we are talking to 5 candidates to come and volunteer with Navigation Games.

C • Woohoo! 4

Walked to work and back - very cold and very windy, post-blizzard.