Discussion: Young runners appreciation. Is it fair?

Recent discussion about young runners performance lead me to the following thoughts.

It is quite often that our most talented young runners choose to run one or even two classes up and therefore get kicked off by current ranking system from where they belong - podium!

Look here onto performance of those who are actually younger than 20 years and originally belong to M-20 group

Top 3 are running blue all the time and are ranked 7th, 22nd and 27th officially. But they are THE BEST in their age group and doomed into darkness because they chose competition over ranking. Is it fair?

Flip Age class drop down if you wish to see other examples.

Uh... Everyone knows that they're the best. I don't think that any of them care that they're not getting official recognition. (Besides, I don't think most people pay too much attention to the rankings, US champs are where the podiums are at.)

Dear Young Runners,

I appreciate you. Now please run even better and beat all of the M/F21s so that you can appreciate yourselves, too.

Hugs,

Cristina

Them's fightin' words, Cristina. Especially since you just overtook Holly in the last rollover of the rankings. ;)

Most of us aren't racing for medals or to be appriciated. A medal in a competition class of 5 or so people doesn't really mean much. While it is nice to win a medal, they start to stack up after a while.
I believe I speak for most orienteers when I say that we race because we enjoy it as well as because of the challenge.
I'd prefer to race on a more challenging course and come in the middle of all of the elite runners, than run a slightly less challenging couse and get a medal for beating tweo or three people.

I believe the idea is to run the red course to make JWOC, that's where the real recognition is at.

Krechet, as the father of a young runner who has recently been running up, I think your rankings do a good job of telling them where they stand. Thanks. I just regret seeing how much better my son is than me!

I understand the voices of fast and humble runners here, but I'm not ready to hear simple "I appreciate you" from official bodies.
After all, the point of bureaucracy is to distinguish (or not) no matter what distinguished thinks about it, isn't it?!

Our Top M-20 are not mentioned, even though we kind of know who they are.
Above mentioned Holly was running half season Red - half season Green, what is the reason? Isn't claim for proper place in the history still valid and appropriate?
Our two top F55 Ellyn Brown and Penny DeMoss are far from the top lines, and I can continue these examples...

BTW, That also means that other less fast people are mentioned as winners in corresponding categories.

dawgtired: :) he still is not very good at advanced courses. You have a chance to hold leadership for 5-10 years :) look at Fergusons of BAOC.

I guess I am dumber than I think. He is ahead of me in your power report and your ranking summary. Maybe I don't understand your system. Or maybe you are looking at my other son. No matter, I was just trying to make light conversation!

Krechet, I'm a little confused about what you're trying to get at. Why does it matter that they get official recognition or not? I guess my real question, and forgive me for being blunt, is why do you care? I don't really see how this affects you directly. What would you have happen so that they get recognition? Do you want to force everyone to run their age class, no matter how good or bad they are?

Like Holly I have run half green half red courses. At one point my Red racking points were miles higher than my green ones. And i shouldn't be running either of those courses if you go by age categories, I should still be stuck on Brown. The reason I run up is because green is right at the distance I run for high school cross country so i know i can run that distance and i'm fit for that distance. Also if i don't run up I can't qualify for JWOC. Qualifying for JWOC is really the goal of most of the juniors. I could care less if i get gold medal after gold medal at an A-meet if there are only 3 people in the age category. The real recognition is being able to race for our country!!!! And thats where the half red, half green comes from. Many of us did not want to mess up our green rankings when it got close to selection time so we decided we would run red; being able to not touch our green rankings and getting better training for JWOC and learning to race longer distances. Plus it is fun to see where i place vs. Sam and Christina and other F21+.

Thats just my thoughts on the matter...

@inglis
I guess my real question, and forgive me for being blunt, is why do you care?
Well, I do not know... Maybe because I have 2 and 4 yo running around the house and ready to do everything in the world just because papa hugged them or said that they are great and beautiful? And I like telling people how good they are?

Or maybe because 20 years ago I was also fast and humble and didn't care about the A's in school but rather was spending time on my engineering/physicist projects.
And now looking back I see how my wise teachers were still giving me nice and timely, even though not very loud, appreciation.
Maybe I feel like I must do something to give it back, not very loud but nice and timely?
Or might be that I'm just getting older and boring and like to play with numbers and all this has nothing to do with orienteering but rather with trying to govern the world of O with ranking system I invented and now trying to advertise?

Pick whatever you like and enjoy :)

I definitely do not want to force anybody to run color assigned by their age class. Rather opposite, the whole drive behind the O-scores was to accommodate such people and give them nice ranking adequate to their performance without punishing them for running various colors during the season.

@Acampbell:
At one point my Red racking points were miles higher than my green ones.

:) Talk to Tundra about the stability of the system! Most probably normalization to top 3 was playing stability games with you ...


On the other side O-scores F-18 rating shows that you were stable over the season with your better races being Browns at USMAOC meet (100+) and with tendency to perform worse at reds than at greens. Which most probably means you still lack power to run Red at full speed. Sprint is your high side also

Have fun

@krechet
The ranks also though compare with the other people that ran my course. So yes the rankings should say that i'm best at Browns (especially at West Point since that was the Interschoolastics and so was racing against people who don't normally come to as many national events and also I hadn't run brown in probably a year, so the distance felt really short). And it should come up as "worst" at reds since that would be me running against Sam and the top junior guys. Also if you look at my Green and Red they aren't that far off. So does that mean that i should keep trying to run red? I'm a bit confused as to what is being said here...

When the juniors run up, they are often recognized by those that are better than them. Especially when we have a really good run, and they see what we are capable of. Being told we did a good job by one of the top runners in the country is meaningful enough. Also, it's fun to do well against the best people. It helps motivate us more and helps us improve a lot more.

It is nice knowing that we are recognized by the community. Most juniors run up because we want to improve and we feel as if we will get more out of running more difficult races. I think the best thing to do would be to recognize the juniors on their efforts to improve rather than their performance.

Feet's post here is worth reading.

@ Acampbell:
And it should come up as "worst" at reds since that would be me running against Sam and the top junior guys.

The numbers are absolute and do not depend on who are your competitors. Crowd is used for statistics only, it can be bunch of turtles or cheetas, they are needed to evaluate the GV of the race only.

Your better scores on browns and sprints (probably) are due to the higher speed during the whole race, comparing to Red/Green where you are (probably) tired at the end.

So does that mean that i should keep trying to run red?

As to what you supposed to run - I'm no one to say, you do not ask your stopwatch this kind of questions, right?

Like stopwatch is evaluation your time, these numbers are evaluations of your running+navigation speed, that's all.

As to what you supposed to run - I'm no one to say, you do not ask your stopwatch this kind of questions, right?

Earlier, the "stopwatch" offered "is it fair?".

I'm too stupid to understand the point of this thread, but I will offer this -- I think a compelling reason to run up is that courses in the US are too short/easy by international standards. Anyone serious about competing in Europe better have trained for and run the most difficult courses the US has to offer first, IMHO.

I'm too stupid to understand the point of this thread
OK, how about this:

I think we should appreciate more (offer one more set of medals? / publish on the web page?) those who run up the course and are actually the fastest in their age category.

It just came to my mind, maybe subj line "is it fair?" was treated in a way that it is unfair to run different course?
Sorry if this is so.

I meant unfair to forget about our best fast runners because they chose competition instead of blindly following the rules and run the course they were assigned by age...

One more time:

I think we should appreciate them, publish them and medal them or do something even greater so sport grows and other follow their steps. Am I clear now?

If only we had a ranking system that actually made sense for comparison of performances across, then maybe we might want to do this, but we do not. krechet's system is not such a system. Since we cannot compare reasonably across courses, it is irrelevant what we might do if we could. End of story.

You want appreciation: go win a race.

You want training: go run the most appropriate course for that purpose.

You want both: tough.

"You want both: tough"

Nope not tough- Go train!

I like people finding places to say the last word.... Freud comes to mind :)

I must emphasize that top runners are not a target of my system, as the best are the best and can compete with the best.

Others might appreciate. O-scores system allows local ratings to be published so people across the country can (unreliably, according to feet) compare each other.
here are local club ratings (women, flip age class to get men)
BAOC, GCO
SDO, LAOC
DVOA - which has their own rankings very much analogous, just not including so A-meets and other club events, only local
QOC
NEOC, CSU, UNO
USMAOC, EMPO,WCOC, HVO
COC, SAMM
OK, PTOC

Flip Runner club to get the rest of the local club ratings.

The gist of it is that one cannot reasonably compare different orienteering courses. This is based on the fact that some courses have lots of climb, some don't; some are fast and open, some are thick and slow; some are technically challenging, some aren't; some have lots of controls, some have very few controls with longer legs; the list goes on.

Because every orienteer has different strengths, every orienteer will do better on different courses. Orienteer A might consistently beats orienteer B on technically challenging courses while orienteer B beats orienteer A on long distance courses with lots of trail running. We therefore cannot say in any general way whether or not orienteer A is better than orienteer B. Any system that tries to compare orienteers in any overall fashion is pretty much useless and can be discarded. Basically it comes down to there being to many variables.

In the end the only person that can properly judge my skill level and ability is myself. I know what my strengths, weaknesses, and goals are and can compare myself to others based on that. Any system that rates sprints and middles as weighted equally doesn't matter to me because I know that I'm a better technical orienteer then a runner and that's the way I'd like to keep it. I'd therefore prefer a system that focuses on middle courses...

Obviously it's impossible to create a system that caters to everyone, so I'd suggest everyone pretty much tries to judge themselves however they see best.

Along the same lines, I care more about how I'm improving than about how I'm actually doing at any one time. As such I can compare myself to others relative to how I've compared to them in the past, taking into account the different qualities of the different course.

In the end I agree with Alison - it's not the ranking or the medals that matter but the training and the improvement

Jeff, you are absolutely right!

"n the end the only person that can properly judge my skill level and ability is myself."
"ny system that rates sprints and middles as weighted equally doesn't matter to me because I know that I'm a better technical orienteer then a runner and that's the way I'd like to keep it."

"Jeff, you are absolutely right!"

Hemmm.... try getting Boris to shadow/coach you. Or someone else who knows what they are doing.

And try doing some technical sprints. Or even just running faster.

And ranking systems work on an 'on average' basis, they don't predict results for individual races.

I disagree with Neil completely; a valid ranking system is nothing other than one that does a good job of predicting performance in a future race.

no... a ranking systems tells you that on average one runner will perform better, but this includes different terrain-types, distances etc.

When predicting WOC-winners, one doesn't just look at the world rankings and say Hubmann will win every race, because we all know TG will win the middle. And the Czechs will do better in continental terrain. And the Irish willl suck if there are any trees on the map.

Unless you meant, 'in a generic future race', with no prior knowledge of terrain, distance etc. in which case I'll agree with you, even if you disagree with me completely :)

Of course I agree with that - apparently our previous disagreement was one of language.

The point at issue here is that somebody wants to use a ranking scheme to say whether person 1's performance on course A was better than person 2's performance on course B. To do that, you need a valid ranking scheme, so that you can compare person 1's real performance on course A to what you predict person 2 would have done on course B. (And vice versa.) My claim is that, for exactly the omitted-variables reasons you mention, plus a bunch of other reasons specific to the particular scheme krechet has in mind, that this is an exercise in futility.

However, I am working behind the scenes to test krechet's scheme against the USOF one rather than just rage about it on Attackpoint, so I don't want to say for now just how good or bad a job it does.

What it comes to predicting performance, ranking can predict how well one performs at his best when everything goes well, you are Irish and there is no trees on the map. It can alternatively predict a lame average. Do you like athletes to try to do solid safe runs every time or encourage them to be super fast couple of times a year?

I must say I am glad we have had quite different kind of ranking system here. We count only 3 best races during spring/summer and five races for rest of the year. So you could run ~30 races and only 5 best are counted.

I think system like this would have made it almost impossible to me to both run lots of races and also race at elite classes. For pollen allergy astma issues I used to be very slow most of the season but I was decent when health was OK. By running races when not healthy I would most likely have got quite bad ranking and would not be qualified to elite class (~ top 60 / entries). Also national champs qualificarion start time is based on ranking, so I would always had to start early. So I may have had to choose between getting good ranking by racing only when healthy (only couple of races per year) or giving up and racing lots of races but not in elite class. Or skipping last control every time to get disqualified if that takes race out of ranking.

Neil: I realise that a good coach could help predict strengths and weaknesses and could be very helpful. A ranking system will not.

Gertting back to the original theme of this thread:
Neither a ranking system or medals is all that meaningful to me. Imrovement over past performances and knowing that I'm running better than I was before, as well as personal praise from better orienteers :) is.

As long as many questions were posted about feasibility of the rankings , I started another thread about what features you would like to see here

Let's get back to the original question - how to reward/recognize the performance of younger runners, no matter what course they choose to run on.

Perhaps we de-couple age and course. Give out awards for each age group on each course - lots more prizes for all!

I do have one serious thought about younger runners running up. Just like some high school or college age basketball players who are not yet ready to turn pro, do some kids run harder courses before they are ready? If so, does it delay their development?

I don't have any direct experience or opinion either as an athlete or coach - I'm just throwing it out there for discussion...

Perhaps we de-couple age and course. Give out awards for each age group on each course - lots more prizes for all!

What do those who makes and distribute the medals think? The idea do not seem to be too unreasonable to me. It will be extra 4-6 sets of medals only, given that we already have about 30 of them...

I think if you want to run your age group, run it. If you want to run a harder course, then you run in a harder age category. You want a medal, run open white. Or train harder. I really think we do not need more categories. Losing builds character :)

We reward them by acknowledging their success in person. To me, a personal congratulations from someone means more than a drawer of metal. Look at the results. Email the young runners who you think deserve recognition. Let them know that someone is noticing.

I totally agree with Samantha!!!! The most rewarding thing so far for me was when i got back from having a great run at JWOC and all the coaches and my teammates came up to me to say congrats. Or Particularly hearing Boris cheer for me from the coaches spot on the long course at JWOC. The surprise in his voice and the happiness (i think for seeing me so early) was awesome to hear and made me so proud! I also felt specially that he was still actually there! It was pouring rain, freezing and most of the other coaches had left.
OR maybe even hearing from Alexie right before the sprint race "If you run the race like you just did this model than you are going to have a great race. You didn't need me shadowing you." I have never gotten any high complement like that from Alexie until then.
OR everyone telling my congrats for winning the US champs. Yeah the metal was nice but having my coaches and other great orienteers acknowledge it was even better!

Couldn't agree more. Being congratulated by a coach, especially Boris, is reward enough. To me, medals are almost annoying, airport security doesn't like them, and unless they're labeled, don't mean much. The real reward is a compliment from a coach or the satisfaction of significant improvement.

Sam, what if everyone runs open white? haha

Oh, not this unselfish youngsters again....
Anybody selfish and greedy around here?

I agree with Sam, no one is motivated to improve by winning... losing gives you the drive to improve so that you can win next time.

As for being unselfish - metals truly don't mean that much. The only people that really know whether you've won or not are the people that were there/ They'll know you've won and will congratulate you on it (hopefully) regardless of whether or not you were handed a metal. There was a discussion earlier about whether or not metals should even be handed out. People seemed to be leaning to words not handing them out or at least reducing the number of metals that are handed out. It does seem like a waste of $28 000 a year or whatever ridiculous sum it ends up costing USOF.

OK now don't get my wrong I love having metals!!!! I mean it was awesome to walk into school after the US champs with a metal and everyone congratulate you. People outside of the O-ing community need you to show them a metal and it is a great feeling to have it around your neck. So i'm all for keeping the metals the way they are!

But i still do agree that if there is only 2 people in your age category the metal means less. That is one reason why i run up, or rather a good reason why i started running up when i was younger. I started running up so i had people to run against. This was even before i had JWOC in sight. Now of course i run up to make the JWOC team.

So what i'm saying is: Keep the metals the way they are and if juniors want to run up let them. If they really want a metal that bad they will go and train hard so that they earn the metal in that age group. And let me tell you it feels good getting a metal when you move up 1 and even better when you move up 2 and some how make 3rd place :) Better than if you got a metal in your age group!

I don't have anything substantive to add to the discussion (my general thoughts have been articulated very well by Alison, Jeff, Sam and others), but I believe it is my civic duty to point out that "metal" refers to the material, whereas "medal" refers to the award. I guess other interesting homophones include mettle and meddle.

I am completely for been allowed to run whatever course you want to run but won't running slightly shorter courses not teach you to run at a fast speed that you can mentain for the entire course? You build a habbit of running fast for the entire course so when you hit that JWOC final 2km your body is used to running fast, so because its jwoc you give in whatever you've got left...

At JWOC/ JEC / international, your going to be wanting to orienteering fast, but if you've been running up 2 courses and you develop a habbit of plodding along to just finish the longer course- your speed will vanish. No speed - no medals.

"Mettle" = something NOT in short supply among North American juniors.

the fact that juniors run up in North America is because participation is low but also I would argue because our development ladder is far too slow. A clubmate of mine often reminds me that when he started racing there was no white course and the yellow courses were more similar to modern day orange. So many juniors today run up to not only get a bigger challenge (participation wise) but also the thrill of tougher navigation and the off trail experience and enjoyment. As I've stated elsewhere an easy solution to this is to move to 3 year age groups (-10 white, -13 yellow, -16 orange, -19 green/red). This moves kids through the development ladder faster. I know, I know this isn't what is done in Europe and is non-IOF. BUT, our course difficulty is not like Europe or IOF either.

From a personal perspective....
I ran my first green course at 14, my first blue at 15 and won my first M21 COC medal (thank you getting the spelling correct) at 16. But just about that time I started working with my coach (Ron Lowry) who deliberately moved me back to red for many races to coach me to run fast (I was not fit enough to race fast through an entire blue course). So like c.hill states there are problems with 'running up'. But today with sprint, middle and long all of that changes. While many juniors are not strong enough for a long elite course there is no reason why there should be any difference in course offerings between ages of 17-45 for sprint and middle. If you want to compare these runners then put them all on the same course. Do we really need a 4.4km red and a 4.8km blue when the juniors and elites could all just run 4.8km? Seems like a simple solution (for those distances anyway). Similarly, kids under 12 are doing rather well on the joint white and yellow sprint courses. I should add that many sprints require skills far tougher for kids that are 'allowed' on typical forest-race white courses.

Finally, last year my daughter (11 years old) and I were fortunate to participate in barebones in Canmore. With possibly North America's largest junior programme they had kids under 9 and under 12 running courses far more technical than traditional kids courses I've seen in North America. Higher numbers on more challenging courses. Hmmmm.