Discussion: Open call: junior development in clubs

Tomorrow JTESC will hold its fourth open call, Wed June 5th at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific time. The focus of this one will be on junior development within clubs. We ask that each club have one representative attend the call. Dial 213-342-3000; the access code is 135506 (follow with #).

Agenda:
* Four specific things we'd like to ask clubs to start doing now
* What does your club need? What can you offer other clubs?
* A preview of the junior curriculum that Erin Schirm will be developing

Erin Schirm has been hired by OUSA not only to coach the JWOC and junior standing teams but also to build the base of junior orienteering throughout the country. His vision, and our vision, is that a few years from now, clubs will have programs for kids to meet regularly to develop orienteering skills through games, socializing, and fun ways to learn about navigation and developing healthfully as a human being. We envision programs like youth soccer where participants pay, or in low-income areas, we obtain grants, so that clubs can pay staff in a sustainable model. We see this as one way to revitalize our sport in the USA, and grow the number of families who participate.

Barb, could you post something about the number of maps and type (i.e. urban park or interesting o-terrain?) that Adventure Running Kids uses per season (or class sessions, whatever it's called)? What's the average distance between the mapped locations and their participants?

I'd also be interested in seeing similar data for WIOL and COOL.

For a comparison, OCIN's TROL league has 12 to 14 events over a season from approximately Thanksgiving (USA - end of November) through late March. All but one are within a 50 mile radius of the Hamilton, Ohio courthouse. We mix Saturday and Sunday events, although we try to go heavier toward Saturdays. Each event is on a different map and we try to spread them around the region. The last two years we have added an "away" meet at the Ohio Valley Interscholastic Championships near Louisville, KY (about 100 miles away), but TROL attendance has tended to be light at that one.

All of the 2012-13 COOL events were in the Bay Area, although that covers a lot of territory. The distinction between urban park and "interesting o-terrain" is difficult to make when one of the urban parks is Golden Gate Park. The UC Berkeley campus was probably the most urban. McLaren Park is an urban park with lot of interesting features and a complex trail system. Bayfront is the simplest terrain, as it's basically a restored landfill. The other four events were in more traditional orienteering terrain.

I've got start/venue data for WIOL from 2005-2013, which is 8 events per year for 8 seasons (61 total events, since some were canceled for weather hazards).

The 61 events were held at 22 different locations throughout the Puget Sound region. The furthest south from downtown Seattle is near Olympia (67 minute drive), and the furthest north is near Mt. Vernon (80 minute drive). We've also got a potential future WIOL venue at Fort Ebey, which is about 2 hours of travel time from downtown. Because our season is in the winter, we really can't go very far east, and Lake Sammamish is the furthest that direction, just 20 minutes from downtown. All events are on Saturdays.

Of the 8 events in a season, we try to make sure that the norths and souths are pretty balanced. Also, the venues get more difficult as the season progresses. We'll start the season at venues where we are restricted to trails only, and finish the season at areas that offer the best off-trail stuff we can get.

I did a rough calculation of what the "expected" attendance should be at any given event, and all of the venues that we've used at least twice are within -10% and +15% expected for the kids. There doesn't appear to be much of a trend in regards to distance: -1% for Olympia and -5% for Mt. Vernon. And -9% for Island Crest, +14% for Magnuson Park, both of which are ~15 minutes from downtown.