Getting Parents Involved in Orienteering
June’s Community Conversation brought together members from across Scottish clubs to share thoughts on supporting and encouraging newcomer families. This theme follows on from the May discussion on creating welcoming environments at events. (May Community Conversation) Involving parents is usually key to retaining and developing new juniors, and supporting a balanced orienteering demographic. How can we best support parents to get involved in our sport?
What gets families coming – and coming back – to local events?
Mary Williams, the SOA’s Development Director, kicked off the session by outlining insights gathered from chatting to newcomer families at local events. Clubs can be good at enticing them along, but what makes them come back and become club regulars?
Typical reasons for coming to events included doing something together as a family, and being outdoors, away from screens. Fun and adventure were key for kids (not so much badges and competition). For parents, social opportunities were important
(above exercise and map reading skills) – including opportunities for kids to do things with other kids. Highlighting in event publicity that participants can go round as a pair or small group (so bring a friend), might be helpful.
Structured activities get interaction and so momentum, so if possible have a focus rather than families just going round on their own courses then heading off. Building in a specific welcome briefing or introductory skills session can work well and enable
newcomers to get know to each other a bit, as a start to feeling part of something. SOLWAY has tried simple ice-breaker activities that people can do together (e.g., relay games using cones) – good for adult beginners as well as juniors!
What do different clubs do?
FVO has held ‘Wee Series’ blocks for families, as regular beginners’ events with a welcoming coaching environment. Typically families did the activities together (rather than having separate activities for adults and children). At the series end, Juniors then encouraged to transition to the FVO juniors’ Stars programme.
GRAMP+MAROC have done similar, with family-oriented newcomer coaching session Sunday mornings once a month, and hope to run these again in future.
Building relationships in safe environments such as club nights can be great (SYO exemplifies this), although geography is a challenge: not many Scottish clubs have a central base area.
Maximise Interaction
Building in fun-factors periodically can help engagement – e.g., with themes for local events (pictures at controls, dressing up etc), encouraging interaction by sparking conversation. Games at festive events might include for example giving each runner a length of spaghetti to take round, and see who has the longest at the end.
Interaction comes very naturally around refreshments – drinks and cake always bring people together in positive ways! Informal play such as kick-abouts can be useful too. The ESOC juniors’ O-zone has been very successful, planned by kids in a couple of core families. Local events tend to get a lot of kids – so invest in those to build up participation and interest, with a view to then building progression into regular orienteering. Links made at local events can be built on when encouraging newcomers to sign up for bigger events, e.g., the Juniors’ Inter Areas weekend and Area training days. These can also motivate further involvement through providing a longer period to get to know people, and consolidate links made locally for transport-sharing etc.
Interaction comes very naturally around refreshments – drinks and cake always bring people together in positive ways! Informal play such as kick-abouts can be useful too. The ESOC juniors’ O-zone has been very successful, planned by kids in a couple of core families. Local events tend to get a lot of kids – so invest in those to build up participation and interest, with a view to then building progression into regular orienteering. Links made at local events can be built on when encouraging newcomers to sign up for bigger events, e.g., the Juniors’ Inter Areas weekend and Area training days. These can also motivate further involvement through providing a longer period to get to know people, and consolidate links made locally for transport-sharing etc.
Fewer Events, More Coaching and Club Sessions?
A debate point is whether clubs should perhaps re-balance their programmes, and have fewer events but rather more coaching. What do you think??
Getting involved in orienteering can feel out of reach for newcomers, given the very visible technical skills involved in planning and organising events. However there are many other ways to contribute that don’t need orienteering expertise, so highlight these! Organising travel, food, accommodation etc can be a great way into feeling part of a club community and building confidence to learn new aspects. For the final FVO Wee Club session, participants will be planning their own exercises (with mentoring support, and in simple areas). Hopefully this will bust myths that planning is only for the very experienced!
Many thanks to Mary for introducing the session, and to everyone who participated for their contributions.
Future Community Conversations
The next Community Conversation will follow a break for the summer period, on Monday 7 September, on permanent Orienteering Courses, with further information to follow in due course. Visit the SOA Community Conversations webpage ( Link to the webpage ) to sign up. A Zoom link will be sent out nearer the time. Contact Nikki Howard (nikki@scottish-orienteering.org) or Katherine Ivory (marketing@scottish-orienteering.org) for any queries or suggestions for future topics.