Discussion: Supporting USA junior team travel

We have at least one junior that is looking for support to travel to a training camp, and there are likely to be more in the future. Some of you have extra frequent flyer miles that might help in this case. Instead of making a one-off plea, I decided to set up a list of people who have FF miles available, and a list of athletes in the Junior National Program who need support.

Here is the form

If you are a team supporter and have FF miles you'd be willing to use to help athletes get to training & competition, please fill out the form.

If you are a Junior National Program athlete looking for travel support, please fill out the form.

Then I will be in touch to match people up. If you are interested in helping to administer (or taking over administration of) this matching service, let me know.

Thanks!
Barb

Has the 2017 Junior Team been announced yet?

It will be announced in Sunday night's e-Newsletter.

Barb>> What e-newsletter is that?

Oh - I may have gotten confused. Erin said it would go in the newsletter, and in the same email he said the announcement would go out Sunday night - perhaps those are separate things!

Alex is including it, I also thought she said 'newsletter', maybe the Orienteering USA Newsletter?

That's why I was surprised - I an writing the newsletter, and it certainly isn't going out this Sunday. But Barb's explanation makes sense.

OK, so exciting results so far. One person offered miles (me), and one person asked for miles (Isabel).

Doesn't Izzy have tons of miles herself from past travel?

That is another thing worthwhile suggesting to all juniors: to get their own miles accounts for whatever thing they fly, early on. There are the airline alliances, etc., so one can sometimes earn miles where one did not expect it. Even if you end up not using any miles, say from accounts that one does not fly often, things may accumulate in one account or another. Especially if one ends up flying international, even if only once for a JWOC, that does give a decent boost to whatever mileage program.

So what if some will expire because of not being used, if the accounts are free.

The suggestion to get and use frequent flyer accounts is good. Over time free flights (or hotel rooms, such as for layover, or other stuff) do accumulate. With one airline, miles don't expire, and for another, all that's required to stave off expiry indefinitely is to spend or earn some miles every few years, something that's easier than it sounds even with quite light travel, from personal experience.

Agreed