Should we make more of an effort to increase the club size in Lawrence? If so, how should we go about it?

-- Dan (daniel.meenehan@umb.com), September 14, 1999

Answers

I would answer "yes" to the first question. But, the second question is more difficult.

In the past couple of years we have held a number of beginner events in city parks in Lawrence. We've used Centennial and Broken Arrow parks. The events have been aimed mostly at kids. I would say they have been successful. The only real disappointment was the last event at Broken Arrow. The only particpants were Rick Hermesch and two of his kids. The snow on the ground -- combined with the howling wind -- probably didn't help the turnout.

Events to introduce kids to O' are always good. But, I don't think they are going to result in bringing people into the club in the short run.

As far as I know OK has not ever organized formal "Intro to Orienteering" classes. Possum Trot does a couple of these a season. This October they are hosting a class at Ernie Miller and another at Burr Oak Woods. The classes are sponsored by the Johnson County Parks department and Burr Oak Woods nature center. PTOC usually has a local event scheduled the day after the class.

I don't know how successful Possum Trot feels these events are. My guess is they find them useful, because the club keeps having them. Are there any Possum Trotters reading this? If so, what do you think of these classes?

OK might consider having some sort of one-day O' class. The class could be a mix of indoor instruction and practical excercises on a map. The areas that are probably best suited to this sort of class are Clinton State Park and the Adams Campus part of Rockcrusher. We could probably use the basic approach and materials that PTOC uses (with modifications if we wanted).

Any thoughts?

-- Michael Eglinski (meglin@juno.com), September 14, 1999.

I think many of us dedicate several hours each day to the betterment of OK. I know I do, and so have spent some time thinking about how a club might gain new members.

We have held beginners' meets in the past and I think this has not resulted in a new member, but I could very well be wrong. I'm sure it has not resulted in a lot of new members! These are some possible reasons I can think of for this:

1. The beginners' meets somehow turn potential OKers off of orienteering.
2. The people who were attracted to the beginners' meets are different than the people who are likely to join OK and become fairly active.
3. The people who go to the beginners' meets would like to do more, but lose contact with OK after they leave.
4. OK doesn't hold enough meets to keep a beginner's interest high.
5. Beginners who are potentially new club members have a hard time breaking into OK's established culture.

I can think of some other reasons, but I'll discuss these for now.

1. I think that beginners' meets, especially if held in good weather, would be fun. I don't think that meets held in urbanized city parks give a good idea of what most beginning orienteering courses are like and have little to do with what an actual o course is like. I suspect that enough people are willing to drive 20-30 minutes from Lawrence to experience their first orienteering. That means there are a large number of usable maps. I personally think that it is better to hold beginners' meets on regular wooded maps.
2. I think that most of the people who are attracted to beginners' meets are different than the non-orienteers who might join OK someday. I think that most of the beginners have no interest in competition or orienteering fast, but want to orienteer as a pastime. We don't have many people like that who are active club members (although some clubs do). If beginners' meets are aimed at kids we need to realize that they are unlikely to have sufficient money or transportation of their own so we'd have to attract a (responsible) adult along with the kid. Kids might also change their interests from time to time and may feel strange if confronted by the fact of being the only kid in OK, but even that is nothing compared to the problem of transportation. Even if the kid had some kind of "soccer mom" who drove a minivan, how likely are the parents to be supportive of an activity with few other kids or other parents who are doing the same thing (driving minivans to orienteering events)? I don't think we're likely to recruit kids. OK has had some success recruiting Scandinavians. Perhaps we can find out how to contact experienced Scandinavian orienteers --- whoa, I should get back to discussing beginners --- I think we might be able to convert some road runners to orienteering. They would already have experience at participating in sports and be used to the idea that practice and experience leads to improvement and that orienteering would become more fun as they got better at it. They might like a break from boredom as well! I'm not exactly sure how one goes about recruiting different groups of people, but many times they will go to the same places and move in groups. It may be possible to intercept some of those groups.
3. I suspect that many people who go to beginners' meets would like to come back to do more. They have to know about future OK plans, so we'd have to have some plans to tell them about. That means work for a few OK members and that doesn't sound appealing since beginners' meets rarely seem to do the thing they are designed to do! Running beginners' meets takes time and effort away from running regular meets. It would be better if we could attract orienteers without a lot of effort.
4. OK doesn't hold a lot of meets, we go to other clubs' meets. Do we want to change that? Probably not, because of the amount of work (witness the fact that no OKer seems enthusiastic about such traditions as Quantrill's let alone a beginners' meet). I think beginners' meets would be more work since they require someone to provide instruction. Maybe OK gets along well enough without attracting beginners and we should concentrate on helping those few inactive OK members become more active.
5. All of that brings me to point 5! I think it is hard for beginners, or more importantly "second-time orienteers" to become active members. Some of us run in road runs from time to time. How many of us are active members of road running clubs? I bet that overall OK is not very active in the "running community". We can go to road races and get along just fine without the club or knowing the other people in the race. I think a somewhat similar and somewhat different situation exists for Lawrence orienteering. Second-time orienteers should be asked to help with the club. It means less work for the long-time OKers and a chance for new people to become acquainted with OK. Years ago I lived in central Ohio where a new club was forming. Many of the first group of officers in the club were inexperienced orienteers or complete beginners, but as far as I know they are now the core group of clubmembers. I think that by having to do a little work they became more deeply entrenched in the club culture (or more exactly developed the culture for the first time). I think the fear that some people might have that new people required to work will become overburdened and turned off is pure nonsense and should be subject to ridicule.

-- mook (everett@psi.edu), September 14, 1999.