Thanks for bringing this up, Mark!
I've mentioned all of this stuff elsewhere on AP, but given another platform, I'll talk about it here, too.
Trend #1: The age of the average orienteer in the United States is increasing. We're generally keeping existing orienteers, but we're having trouble recruiting new orienteers.
Trend #2: The interest of orienteering is the United States is
decreasing.
Trend #3: The interest of similar-ish events (too many to list) in the United States is
increasing.
Trend #4: The amount of marketing/publicity/media coverage about orienteering in the United States is almost zero. (
We found in post-race surveys that racers had not done a wilderness race because #1, they didn't know these races existed.). This is directly related to Trend #2.
Trend #5: The amount of marketing/publicity/media coverage about similar-ish events in the United States is definitely not zero. This is directly related to Trend #3.
So we've got an aging, intimidating sport with waning interest, yet essentially we're very similar to a whole bunch of mega-popular events. Both the City Chase-style events and orienteering require finding specific locations in the fastest time possible. Both the mud/obstacle course-style events and orienteering require running through whatever terrain gets in your way. The big differences are that these more popular events amp up the physical challenge and remove the maps.
In order to bridge this gap between orienteering and the other events, we need to have 'tweener races. Mark's got a perfect example of one in Grand Rapids. Sure, it's selling out a bit (
We really didn't want to do this, but the ends justified the means when you see your sport dying at the expedition level.), but it's getting people in the door. In Seattle, we feel that getting involved with the Road Runner Adventure Runs is selling out a bit, too, but we're seeing increased interest. The common element in these 'tweener races is that we're giving participants a chance to navigate with maps. In Grand Rapids alone, they got over 1200 people using maps in a race who hadn't done so before.
If Orienteering USA wants to generate more starts, I think we need to look more closely at how we can create more of these 'tweener races. The A-Meet Coupons are nice, but that's only around 20 new participants per event. Grand Rapids had 60x the number of new participants! 60! (Granted, Grand Rapids is in a market without any of the existing City Chase-style events coming through, so they aren't competing with anything).
We're never going to get 1200 new people to an A-Meet, but as the Grand Rapids event proves, I think there's potential for our own national series of adventure runs or urban adventure runs. Or maybe we can partner with an existing series and provide maps, since that's our expertise.
I think we just need a bunch of people in the door. Sure, many of them won't make it through to the wilderness events, but I think we'll get some. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds in Grand Rapids.