Discussion: Helping the Junior Team and a Developing Executive Steering Committee

We need volunteers to help out with the Junior Team. We are looking for people to help in the operation and fund raising of the Junior Team. Presently, the Junior Team does not have an Executive Steering Council (ESC) as other teams have and the USOF Board is trying to organize an ESC for them. If you are interested in working with promoting the Junior Team, please let Peter Goodwin pgwolfe66@gmail.com know of your interest. It is hoped that the committee can be “up and running” before the end of the year so that fundraising and team support can be governed and run by the committee.
Our Juniors need the support of the USOF community and people to help them do their best.
Peter Goodwin
VP Competition

The Strategic Plan (16June2010strategicplanfinal.pdf) states, on Page 8:

One flag – One logo - One team – Team USA
• Create common national team uniform, marketing and fundraising materials.
• Establish a single national team committee with agreed-upon goals, spending plans and shared revenue sources

Further on Page 31:

The truth of the matter is, Orienteering USA (and its national team programs) is too small to fracture itself further. It is self-defeating.

[...]

Create one Team USA panel with administrative, coach and athlete participation from each team. Led by a member of the Board or the Executive Director, this panel would be tasked with exploring the similarities and differences between the current team programs and would make recommendations regarding unified strategies, income generation and spending going forward.

So let me see if I can sensibly interpret this plan:

1. Work on creating a Junior Team ESC that is separate from the Senior Team ESC. People who will volunteer for it will be involved in a multitude of efforts, most of which parallel what's already being successfully done by those who work for the Senior Team.

2. Then, starting in 2012, work to merge the two ESCs.

I fail to see how this is not tantamount to further fractionalization and duplication of effort. Why is what the Senior Team is already doing, mostly successfully, not good enough for the Junior Team? If the Jr. Team doesn't have a good structure, it'd seem far more in the spirit of the Strategic Plan for the Jr. Team to work within the already existing structure of the Sr. Team, thus achieving unification earlier than stated in the Plan.

The formation of a Junior Team ESC, at this time, is intended to ease the workload of the Junior Team Administrator. By doing so, it is also hoped that more can be accomplished in the near term, as opposed to waiting for 2012-13.

Is there a reason that the plan can't move forward a bit earlier?

As GuyO says, the intent of developing a Junior Team ESC is initially to ease the workload of the Junior Team Administrator. However, there is also talk about having one person involved in all the steering committees, most likely a person from the Board Executive Committee. There is need to ultimately have "one team" but there are also a number of areas of interest in the orienteering community. There are people passionate about the various teams and will be more interested in fund raising for a particular team. Initially, the "form" of the Junior Team ESC will copy other successful ESCs.

At this time, the plan for getting all the teams working together is still in formation but it hoped that it will be a more centralized system before the 2012 date. The exact form and timing is in question and we must avoid "just another layer of bureaucracy. We need to make sure that the needs of the teams are met and that there is communication between them so they are all moving in the same direction. The ultimate plan for team governance will most definitely be result of input from many sources. Interested parties should be a part of the process.

Merging all the ESCs into one group will not be easy given the range of opinions in our community however I do believe it is possible in the time frame given in the Strategic Plan. The faster ideas and opinions are expressed, the faster the process will move.

I nominate everyone on the senior team ESC to be on the junior team ESC.

So I would like to fastly re-express the idea that the Junior Team and the Senior Team should be organized as parts of a single whole, run by the same ESC, reporting to the same BOD person, using the same support, training, and fundraising infrastructure, and accountable to the same standards, and this should happen as soon as possible. Given the Strategic Plan, I believe other options fail common sense.

Brilliant, Carol. ;-)

Agree with PGoodwin.

Currently, the Junior Team is the only US O-Team without an ESC. Therefore, merging the teams without a Junior Team ESC in place could put them at a significant disadvantage during the process. It would also be an enormous burden for the Junior Team Administrator (JTA).

The JTA's involvement in the merger will be critical. She has been in that position for 5 years, and, therefore, has the best "institutional memory" among the involved parties regarding administrative functions and fund raising.

At the risk of being overly blunt, if I were on the senior team ESC and was told that starting in January I would also be steering the Juniors, I might just resign. The senior team ESC stays busy enough just managing its own affairs. Or, said another way, the senior team ESC is already challenged trying to find members, trying to steer and trying to bring progress to the senior team.

The junior team comes with its own set of issues and concerns beyond just putting on training camps and fundraising. In my opinion, the current senior team ESC would be stretched thin trying to address these.

Thus, while there is certainly a fair share of overlap and good collaboration and communication is necessary, I don't believe combining the ESCs is the obvious best solution, interpretations of the strategic plan not withstanding.

It can and almost certainly should be an expanded ESC, I am not advocating doubling the workload of the current ESC members. Ultimately this is not about what to call the group in charge, it is about "agreed-upon goals, spending plans and shared revenue sources" per Strategic Plan. If two independent groups vie for the same limited resources of volunteer time and donations, it is not the best situation as the Plan noted. It would be far better to coordinate, starting at the top.

What I fail to understand is why there was this protracted consensus-building effort to arrive at the Strategic Plan and now there are steps called for that seem to directly contradict the Plan. If the Strategic Plan is incorrect, it needs to be modified. There is no point proclaiming something that is not quite supported by the membership, and then continuing to plod away in a different direction. At the risk of being blunt, I do recall the 1997 Long-Range Plan with its "focus on growth" and the more recent (2006) "Focus on Juniors". (Of course, I am not a USOF member, so I don't pay for the circus and nor should my opinion be paid particular attention to.)

Is there anyone on the Senior Team ESC who is not currently, or has not in the past been, heavily involved in fostering high-performance junior orienteering, or at least can be counted an avid booster of the Junior Team? I am sympathetic about the need to recruit additional members so as not to overburden the existing volunteers, but I also think we should be looking at a closer horizon for unification, at least of these two teams, which have fairly similar competitive programs and needs. Saying that this would put the Junior Team "at a significant disadvantage" makes it sound like the teams are in an adversarial relationship. If there are any two teams that are closely allied, it is the Junior and Senior Teams.

I appreciate the comments. However, what is the best model for joining all the teams? If all teams are to be under one roof, just bringing the Juniors and Seniors together is not appropriate. Should there be one or two people from each team (ski-o, trail-o, junior, senior) who are on a larger overreaching committee? Should it just be one independent person who serves on all the committees? How should it be developed? Each team does have different needs. The seniors tend to stay more stable in their nature, the juniors have only a maximum of four years on the team so they are always being replaced so the parent advocacy may change in a similar time frame. (This is not always the case but in some instances, it is.) The two teams, therefore, do not have the same needs. Ski-O and Trail-O also have different constituencies. Getting all of this on the same track is not an easy task. Also, we must realize that volunteers tend to work hardest in the areas that they have an interest. This is human nature.

And, lets keep the discussion going..... I sure don't have all the answers.

As the JTA as Guy put it let me put my two cents in here. Peter G., Guy, Eric and Tom all are correct in what they are saying. Not that the others are wrong I just think they don't completely understand the differences of working with two completely different age groups. Asking the Senior team ESC to suddenly work for both groups is grossly unfair to the committee and teams. The teams have different needs and problems. My passion is the juniors but there are others who's passion is the senior team, ski O team or Trail O team and you will get the best work and most out of people that are working with their group of passion. My passion for the juniors has gone well beyond the years of my children being juniors, ( My youngest will be 24 shortly) and the passion of others for their team has reasons of their own. There are way more people in our O community than the need for people to work with the teams and if just a few people would give of their time for a year or two to work with a team then all of the programs will go forward and grow.

Also beside the passion for a team or age group people will have passion for certain areas within the team structure. We are not asking people to do fund raising if they hate to ask people for money or if they hate selling things. We want people to be interested in what they are volunteering to do.

Since the beginning of 2010 Linda Kohn for the senior team and College O team, myself and Donna Fluegal ( trail O, I think) have been working really closely on fund raising for the teams and we have been successful so far in raising a good amount of money for the teams and we will continue to do so and even after the junior team has a ESC because this is an area that the teams should work together in.

The key word here is myself. I am doing it ALL for the Junior team and have been for the last 5 years as the JTA and years before that as a parent volunteer. Don't get me wrong there are many parents and others that have been working with me over the years but they are not responsible for the final out come or any problems that arise, I am. I'm tired and burning out quickly. I want and need help. When I took on the position of JTA my real passion was getting a Development Team or feeder program for the teams going. It has not happened? NO! Why? NOT because my passion has gone but because of the fact that I am only one person and taking care of raising funds, organizing training camps and taking care of the JWOC team, takes all of the time I have available to work with the juniors. I'm not leaving the juniors team. I'm asking others to join me in working with the juniors so that the Development program and other ideas for the juniors can get off the ground and running and to keep the present things of the junior team going well and to move them forward as well. Once this happens then we can start the discussion of merging with the other teams in the areas of common needs and ideas.

So lets move this discussion towards getting a good ESC going for the juniors to better the program for them rather than whether you think it is the wrong thing to do at this time. The BOD has determined this is the way they want to go so let us support it and the juniors and stop second guessing the board decision. We will never all agree on things but we can work together to get things done for the betterment of our O community.

Janet, I can't speak for the others on this thread and, believe me, I completely understand the need to have people help you out with the Junior Team. I think the question is whether it would make sense to combine forces rather than build an ESC from scratch now, just to have to reorganize again in a couple of years.

I know that the Senior Team ESC is also very busy. But there's some overlap between the teams, areas that currently aren't communicated well, such as uniform purchase, training camps, fundraising efforts, etc. I also understand that the Senior Team ESC structure is written into the rules, so maybe we can't do anything too quickly.

I do hope that the Junior Team ESC, if it is going to be a completely separate structure for the next couple of years, at least works very, very closely with the Senior Team ESC, almost like one group. There's a lot of duplication of effort in US orienteering, I'd hate to see this be another example.

Time for me to chime in...I see the need to involve as many people as needed to do the work of the ESC. Janet's problem is that she has done all (or at least most) of the work of an ESC herself. I see the creation of a Jr. ESC as a way to increase the number of volunteers from 1 to a number that can deal with the work on a reasonable basis...and be able to do all of the work that needs to be done. As far as combining the teams under one banner, well that just makes the whole process easier. Here's how I see it: VP in charge of Teams (Peter Goodwin) on the top line, a committee made up of ESC chairs from each team (Foot-O Natl., Foot-O Jr., Ski-O , Trail-O) that reports to Peter, seperate ESCs that deal with the business of their respective team. It's under one roof, it let's volunteers work in the area of their interest, it decreases duplication of efforts since ESCs communicate with each other on common topics such as uniforms, fundraising, mutual support.
As far as the job description goes, a Foot-O National Team ESC member is expected to help set policy and take on one of the jobs that need attention (ex. uniforms, training camp coordination, finance management, team trials organization, rules maintenance and other issues as needed).
The Jr Team would have some of the same issues/jobs but the overlap can be accomodated by communication through the chair committee. Let's get something in place...we can change it if it doesn't work.

Linda has noted jobs that need attention which I assume are done by various senior team ESC members. It looks to me that many of these would be Jr Team jobs.
In the interest of moving ahead toward the Strategic Plan of integrating all the Teams under one ESC (or VP or Competition Committee) we should figure out which jobs are special to which teams and which can be shared easily (such as uniforms could be shared, well maybe not for Ski-O I guess, but one person could handle this I think), then what jobs are unique to a Team? Is any one job so big that it should be split between 2 ESC members? In any case I would hope a reasonably sized committee could be formed to do all the jobs for all the Teams.

For me I don't really care exactly how we doing it, I just want to see it happening. From the postings of Cristina, Linda and Coach maybe the way to go is to look at the overlapping areas and then look to see if it would be useful for two people, one from each team to work in that area. For example uniforms. Kat has been doing it and she has been doing a good job but a couple of the juniors didn't get the message to order their uniforms but it is wasn't Kat's fault. If it was any one's fault it was mine for not checking to make sure that everyone on the JWOC team ordered their uniforms. If I had had a person on a ESC for uniforms it would be their job to make sure that the team had their uniforms or we (the two teams) could decide that Kat was it for both teams and we could come up with a ordering process that made sure that all members of both teams ordered their uniforms. This is just an example of how we could go about developing an ESC for the juniors. There are areas that are different for each team and each ECS will have to have some of their own areas and that is fine. Again I don't really care how we go about doing it, I just need to have help and help that is willing to work with me for the juniors and this is what Peter is trying to do. I have to be honest, I don't know all of the areas that the senior team ESC deals with so I can't really say which over lap and which don't other than fund raising, training and uniforms. May that is where we should start. Looking at the areas that overlap and then talking to the person on the senior ESC to see if they are willing to work in that area with both teams or whether the juniors need to find their own person for that area. I don't know which way is the best or do I really care which way it is done, just please let us all work together and get it done. For the juniors and for me.

I like the idea floated by Linda. The idea of a central body composed of members of the respected team ESCs as a central group which works with the various teams may be a good working model. There are different needs for each team but all teams need to be working to the same goal and with the same general direction. They also need to communicate with each other. With communication through a central group, each team will benefit from the successes of the other teams and successes and be better able to avoid the problems. One "huge" ESC may not be the answer. One group of ESC representatives may be, I don't know.

Any thoughts?

Several Chiefs of Staff and a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs... not a bad idea.

I like it! Let's make it happen.

I still think this will lead to duplication of effort, and more volunteers needed overall.
I think if the jobs are defined, then most jobs will be seen as duplication from one Team to another.
I have yet to be able to think of any "different needs for each team".

It may not be different "needs" but different groups who are particularly interested in a particular teams. The senior team has different abilities (setting courses and such) that the junior team doesn't have in quite such full measure. Their fundraisers tend to be of a different kind (silent auctions, food, etc.). This doesn't say that they can't be under one roof but there are differences that need to be understood.

Some of the needs are logistical, like all of the work required to sort out the registration, housing, transportation, and food for WOC, JWOC, Ski-WOC, etc. It's all the same set of "needs", but it's probably too much for one volunteer to handle. A paid Teams Administrator could handle it all (and ordering uniforms, and making sure there are updated blog posts and articles, etc) but we're still talking about volunteers. So it's not so much that they are different needs, just that the workload is high enough that splitting it up between team-specific volunteers is necessary. That said, it would be nice if it were easy for those people to communicate with each other

different needs for each team

By definition, younger, less experienced orienteers need more assistance than more mature, seasoned ones. This pertains to travel, as well as training.

There is also the matter of retaining juniors. This is particularly critical for those in high school, where there is more pressure to engage in "mainstream" sports/activities.

Recruitment might be an issue for both the senior and junior teams. However, I believe it is more critical for juniors, because of the "pressure" mentioned above.

Is retainment more difficult for high school than college?

Is retainment more difficult for high school than college?

It has been my highly unscientific observation that, once Team juniors get to college, they stay interested in orienteering, even if they are not able to get to many events.

This thread seems to have wound down. Thank you for all your posts and don't hesitate to post more if you choose. We ultimately, according to the strategic plan, want to get all teams under one roof. The exact way that will happen is up in the air but getting a bigger group involved with the Junior Team is important. A number of people have spoken up wanting to be a part of it so things may move forward.