Discussion: A "club" in name only

Too bad that disinterest and attrition are taking their toll in St Louis as well as other locations. I remember when SLOC used to have a core of dedicated people who all worked and played together....a real "club."

CAOC was the same way; experienced guys helped the newcomers, and everyone worked together to put on fun meets. No criticism; just complements...or no complements. Sure, some meets were better than others. But the primary purpose of the club was to have fun.

I think it takes at least one talented, fully-dedicated, and usually older guy to make a club work. SLOC used to have a whole cadre of such guys...what happened to them? CAOC used to have one of these guys too...and he was unceremoniously ousted by a wave of young adventure racers. And the heart went out of the club. It ceased being a real "club."

I've known the guy who put on your Saturday meet for maybe 15years. He's a good orienteer, and can be a hard worker. Perhaps he's missing that "club" feeling too....

You might want to reread my post there Clark. There's nothing wrong with SLOC as a club - it's functioning quite well. There just seems to be a lack of interest in competition. As recreation, the events are quite outstanding - but that's not what I go to meets for.

...it was missing a few things that one typically associates with competition like timing, punching, and results....

Well if I sacrificed a Saturday to attend a "meet," and the event had no timing, punching or results, I'd be a bit disappointed too. I can run in the woods anywhere, why make an effort to come for this? And that certainly doesn't reconcile with your "nothing wrong with SLOC as a club" statement

You've 15 club positions shown on your webpage...but how many of those people are still functioning? Last fall I joined SLOC at the Turkey-O and paid my dues. Yet I've never had any acknowledgment of this new membership. And I've certainly received no newsletter...which I always used to enjoy reading.

What are SLOC's income and membership trends over the past 10 years? How about the number of meets, A-meets, trainings, etc?

For my money SLOC has some of the best orienteering terrain in the US. You guys should be exploiting it by offering annual A-meets and O-fests as you used to do. I love the annual Turkey-O...but last year's edition was pretty anemic...didn't you sweep in less than 2 hours?

Is anybody overseeing SLOC meets these days, and making sure a certain level of quality is maintained? Helping these solitary meet directors, motivating them? Is anyone making an effort to bring in new members and get people excited about the sport? Are you sure SLOC is still functioning as a real "club?" Or just a loose network of guys who happen to enjoy running in the woods.

Sorry to hear about your lack of Contour Line,Chi. will pass that info on. I disagree with Eric, I don't think it is just the competitive aspect that needs work, and i think they are linked. I believe our membership base has been eroding, partly because of problems such as you describe, Chi. To help remedy that, it is my understanding we are going to send out renewal cards and switching to a year end renewal system. Thats just an example, but we are trying to adress them.

Since you brought it up Eric, besides Beaumont, I assume you are referring to the Goat and the fact that a month after the event the results have not yet been posted? I really really am not being negative here, I love the idea of a goat and an a-meet and the energy of you guys wanting to put them on, but i just have a feeling it might be biting off more than we can chew.

No, no, the Goat was fantastic. Yes, results should be posted, but I'm more concerned with the day of the meet experience. My other quarrel was with the bogus mass start at the Greensfelder meet.

I've put on 3 A-meets, including Team Trials and an National Championship event. All have been very well received. I'm not too worried about getting that one right because it's something I have control over.

I believe that SLOC was suffering some of the erosion noted, but I think that trend has been reversed on Mark's leadership. In the past three years we've developed 4 new meet directors, including one who set courses for an A-meet and another who is determined to establish an annual goat event. That sounds very healthy to me, even if there are a few rough edges.

The Contour Line hasn't been a regular publication since about halfway through my tenure as editor (which was 10 years ago). I would much rather focus on keeping the website fresh and just send out reminder cards every quarter. The younger base of competitors which represents the future of the club does not rely on snail mail for information. Having an active page on Facebook (such as ICO) would be far more effective at reaching folks and considerably cheaper.

As for the competition thing, like I said, it's what I'm after and I realize that I'm in a very small minority within SLOC. However, I think that's part of our problem. SLOC used to have 20-30 nationally competitive orienteers, including numerous age-group champions. Now we have 2, and one of those is in Italy. We have nobody running M-21+ or F-21+. I can understand a meet director not taking the competive side all that seriously when there are only a handful of folks who care, however, by calling something a meeet and then not treating it like a race, we risk alienating folks who could be developed into serious competitors. David Frei, Dave Welsh, Bill Langton and the Sonas could all be nationally competitive if we fostered a culture of viewing local meets as a preparation ground for A-meets, Right now, they are an end to themselves and, in many cases, not a particularly satisfying one. A simple switch of title to "training event" for the races that aren't treated as being competitions would solve much of the problem. We don't want people thinking that meets like yesterday is "all there is".

And then again, maybe an A meet, like hard training' would stimulate rather than swamp the club. But, imo, only if we set some good groundwork. Like you said the younger gen want a more instantaneous spontaneous and evolving culture.

I thought that introducing e-punching was a step in that direction, but it can't be stand-alone. It has to be publicized, built up and delivered. I was planning on skipping it for the upcoming Cliff Cave event, because we don't have the ability (yet) to apply it to complex situations. (btw, did you see the thread on meet management software - should we be considering acquiring one of those programs?)

We all know that you, Eric, could put on an A meet, but for it to enable and inspire local orienteers, it has to have the right build-up, involvement of new orienteers, more continuous support, publicity, delivery and reporting, so there is a continous development story in it.

Beaumont with the BS Champs is always an 'exception' as a SLOC event. Dave Fisher, Beth & Ed, and the Boy Scout leaders do a great job in creating and executing a system to get that many scouts to have a good experience.

With that, the club portion of the meet is often a bit of an after-thought. It's a good time to access Beaumont, but it really requires a 'club meet' co-director to work with Dave - share some controls, develop 2-3 courses, take care of club registration/timing/finish clock. BUT, we are stretched thin on meet directors right now, so it was easy to let this one 'slip through the cracks'. Dave and Ed did put out the tapes and controls. On the other hand, it might require less work for a fledgling meet director than directing a regular meet.

Actually labeling the Beaumont meet as club training has some appeal. Is there a low-labor version that would still appeal to club members? Inexperienced members/families could use the scout controls, but somehow put the focus on training - They'd be seeing a lot of controls that are not 'theirs' - draw them on the map? Experienced members perhaps could stay closer in - control picking exercise and/or woods sprint - with its fields, Beaumont is a great woods sprint venue. Or would such training require more leadership?

Agreed that Beaumont is a special case. All the more reason to label it as such on the event calendar.

I think there are a lot of things that could be done for very little marginal cost. A sprint course (or 2, or even 3) using just scout controls would be easy - just print up new maps out of the same OCAD file used for the scout meet. Beaumont is not a particularly good venue for setting a true Red course. I think that some sprint training would be both more valuable and more interesting. Would also obviate having to go deep into the woods for control hanging and pickup.

Great suggestion - use what's already there in a dynamic way. In other words, tailor the effort available to the resources available but have a complete effort. Take that as a metaphor for the club direction as a whole...instead of going through the motions to accomplish a 'resume', for example, 'we must have 14 meets a year', maximize each meet as an opportunity for people's growth and interest. Maybe having 14 meets a year is the answer, but lets have the discussion about whats best and how to accomplish it, and then decide, not just saddle ourselves with a lot of 'debt', effort that we can't sustain.

What was it about some people starting off the mass start that made it less competitive? True, it wasn't the competition as advertised, but still, it seems no one would have accrued an unfair advantage, and haven't individuals often been accomodated outside of the strict meet parameters so they could run?

Well, I didn't really want to open that one back then and I still don't as any comments I would make would be taken by some as poor sportsmanship and my point has nothing to do with who won the race, it's about legitamacy. Part of fair competition is enforcing the rules. If you don't think a rule is necessary, get rid of it, but don't arbitrarily waive it, especially after the fact (making an exception ahead of time and letting people know about it is somewhat different). Again, it's more a mindset: you play by the rules because this is competition, not recreation.

Not to belabor the point, but I think there's this feeling that enforcing the rules makes the event less fun. It might for the people who weren't following the rules, but it certainly makes it more fun for the majority who were doing things right.

I've entered roughly 1500 races in my life. I've been late for a start twice. One of those times was a bike race and after riding a couple unofficial laps of the course by myself, I went to the feed zone to hand stuff to my teammates. The other time was a 12-hour run and I just started late and finished at the time limit like everybody else. I finished third, 3 miles behind the winner. I might have covered that if the RD had given me an extra half hour, but the true winner would have been rightly pissed about that and I certainly would not have accepted the victory under such circumstances.

In both of those cases, I would have had more fun if I had made it to the start on time. But that is not the Race Director's problem. In both cases, I made the most of the day and the competition was not compromised in any way. There are often remedies that do not adversely affect competition that are, strictly speaking, outside of the rules. In staggered start events, we often switch start order to accomodate a missed start. We accept punches in the wrong box, as long as we can determine that all the punches are there. You could make a case that even these exceptions are a slippery slope, but they are pretty well accepted and everybody understands up front that they are generally made. Compromising the format of a race, on the other hand, is not something to be taken lightly.

What i think is a big deal is no big deal to another, and so forth. guess we'll all just have to be aware of our particular points of view and work with that. Speaking of race formats, what do you all think of this idea for Cliff Cave on May 16...

Details: The O? meet portion of the event, will have one course for all, the Spiral of Fear, and will be scored like a Score ?O? in that there will be a time limit of 45 minutes to complete it, with a penalty for going over the time limit, but it will be a point-to-point course with staggered starts.

You will be scored by how many controls you complete in the allotted time. You can head for the finish at any point if you are running out of time. There will be age group and self-selected beginner, intermediate and expert categories, so you can compete against those with similar abilities. Results will be posted on the website shortly after the meet.

The course will spiral in ever increasing curves through the park, so at various intervals you will come closer to the finish and then move away again. So you?ll come close to the finish, so you can bail, and then further away again, so every control takes you further from the finish, and you have to gauge whether you can go out to the next control and come back in time. Its sort of putting the focus on the normal contingency you plan for a score O. The question is, can you risk going out for more controls without running out of time, or should you play it safe and head for the finish? Or should you try for just one more?

That sounds interesting. The only possible problem is that the trail network is so convoluted at CC that even "simply" bailing to the finish can be problematic for beginners. Losing 45 minutes on a single control is not unheard of on that map. Probably less of an issue if you are starting at the bottom than at the school. Presumably the technical difficulty would also increase with the later controls?

Interesting idea Rudy.

In order to overcome Eric's problem, how about a Double Helix of Fear...or simply The DNA of FEAR: two spirals on either side of the Start. One spiral would be composed of easy, low-point controls for W, Y runners, and the second helix of harder, higher-point controls. Runners could enter either helix...or both.

BTW, this format has been successfully used for several years by the Mission: Adventure Race (albeit with a much longer time limit).

Good feedback, thanks. I had the spiral starting small inside the sinkhole area - the last controls seemed to want to be longer legs to increase the fear factor, speed progressively displacing finesse, therefore making them more alluring. The looping past the finish worked great, but beginners were not in the equation. Maybe the beginners just do the County training w/ Mark, and this is for intermediates/experts only, since we do have the 'dual' event?

DNA of Fear, you should be a race promoter, Chi. One can tell that Robert Service is in your 'dna'.