Discussion: Woohoo!!

:)

Great news :-)

Nice!

You're doing wonderful work!

Excellent! I will be showing that to the new superintendent at my school. An attempt by parents of my orienteers a few years ago to get official recognition failed (mainly due to the board feeling they would then be obligated to provide financial support eg uniforms, bus transpo, etc that are available to other teams).

Awesome!

Presumably, it will be a club sport, thus avoiding the entanglements of state-sanctioned interscholastic sports?

Thanks all! Yes, a benefit of having it be a school sport is that the school provides financial support - coach, bus, etc. At our school, there are more kids who want to do sports than can be accommodated; many of the sports cut athletes with try-outs. So they are open to formation of new sports. We were told that orienteering would try and be fit in the current budget, but if we needed more we'd need to cultivate the school board.

I'm not really sure what the definition of "club sport" is, but I suppose I will learn.

Congratulations Barb! This is so exciting!

So great, so cool, absolutely exciting!

I don't think there is a worry about becoming a "conference" sport which have to follow all the state school sports rules and grouping into regions and sections and whatever. In WI, for example, if you are a CC runner, you cannot participate in foot races (half marathons, 5K runs, etc.) outside of the school or conference sanctioned races; if you are a soccer player, you can not participate in club soccer matches; etc.

Interesting. What is the reason for not allow participation in other races? Is it to not overload the kid?

The rules are not equal between states and sports. Soccer clubs in MN have an agreement with schools to not run programs, scrimmages, etc, during the HS season. With cc and xc ski races it has also something to do with not participating in certain races where one can get a prize or something. This is the last HS season for Thomas, and he has not tried out for club soccer.... so I guess I won't try to figure this one out, never understood it all in the first place.

My use of "club sport" was only within the interscholastic context, and only meant being different from "conference" sports, as described by Andrea. AFAIK, no USA interscholastic O-leagues are under the umbrella of "conference" sports -- and WIOL guru, Bob Forgrave, has said this is the way to go.

!!! :-) !!! :-) :-)