The Club Experience, and only the Club Experience

[John Sturgess]

PLEASE: could posters on this particular thread confine themselves to discussions of what slalom clubs provide, or could provide, for their paddlers; and how this might impact on the number of active paddlers in their clubs.

The decline in numbers has been a matter for frequent discussion in slalom over the past twenty years. Two sorts of solution are commonly discussed: getting more people to try slalom (TV coverage; the Coaching Scheme; non-slalom canoe clubs; the Olympics); and making entry-level slaloms more attractive (fun events; provision of coaching; a greater choice of more conveniently-located events). These are important matters to discuss, but not the only ones.

However I have noticed recently a tendency for it to become an ‘either/or’ thing: people brush aside discussion about how the in-club experience could be improved in their clubs, and go back to structural questions: making these ‘Other People’s Problems’.

[Nicky]

Clubs provide the facity to start and nurture a talent. Gates, clubhouse (or car park!), kit along with support and enthusiasm...

Clubs provide knowledge of events. Those upcoming and best ones to start at and where to progress.

Clubs also provide peers to compete with/against along with mentors to set a good example. This allows new paddlers to see next steps and where they can go with this sport.

Clubs also provide equipment and other specialist equipment so that individuals don't have to buy one of each thing just to have a go.

Clubs also provide a group of people who are at their first event to be friendly supportive and get them on...

Lots of other things too!

But these are the main ones that come to my mind...

Nicky

[bankside]

Boats, paddles, spraydecks, bouyancy aids and helmets for beginners.
training venue;
volunteer coaching;
guidance on sources of information and events;
paddler support for achievers;
support for expereinced and aspiring coaches;
access to professional coaching;
help and advice for parents;
support to attend non-local events;

a culture that encourages particiapation, helps paddlers and coaches develop to their capability, recognises volunteers and supports parents and partners;
identifies and delivers funding and coaching;
acts without discrimination or favouritism;

[davebrads]

We are lucky at Manchester in that we have a good training site with three separate training sections, and a good selection of equipment. Our capacity is limited more by a shortage of coaches than anything else, though this would then put pressure on our other resources that we might have to deal with. We need more people that are willing and able to set aside their time to coach on a regular basis each week. I am sure that if we have the infrastructure to support more paddlers, we will be able to find the paddlers to fill the slots - we had half a dozen junior paddlers on our last baths beginners course, we should be able to convert half of them, and we have three more such courses over the winter. On the other hand we have perhaps done little to find these extra coaches; if we spent a bit of effort it is possible that we could find these people from current club members or parents.

[Jasper]

I have been involved in Canoe Slalom for only 4 seasons but this has been long enough for it to have taken over my whole life.

One of the main problems at the club I am associated with is trying to coordinate all of the paddler groups so as to provide sufficient amounts of access to the short piece of river we run training session on. Following on from the Olympic's we have received more applications from both juniors and adults who would like to give slalom a try than we can accomodate. new beginners groups currently take place on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights.

The club is very proactive in their pursuit of even more volunteer coaches and offers mentoring support together with limited financial assistance to make this initially daunting step as easy to make for someone considering it as possible. When I was first asked, I thought "How can I become a coach when my own technique is so poor?" However having now been doing it for some 8 months I have come to realise that what new groups need is a link to the club, access to its equipment, safety cover while on the water, enthusiasm, reliable communication and a point of contact when issues arise.

It is not too difficult for anyone to provide these if they can give up a couple of hours on one night each week. The pleasure you get from seeing paddlers that you are working with progress is better than any race results you may achive yourself.

[John Sturgess]

A request

I know that most posters prefer to remain relatively anonymous

However it would be helpful for this thread if you were to identify your clubs ...

[alldaypaddler]

Ok so I'm going to get told off for talking about the wrong thing but I do think it's relevant in some ways...

I started canoeing in London and what I found was actually that what put me off/held me back was the lack of slalom-specific clubs. General canoeing clubs are good at getting people to go canoeing but seem (in my experience) to not have enough of a link with discipline-specific clubs (not just slalom but all disciplines). So when I wanted to try competitions (at this point not even knowing about divisions or races or anything), my coaches only had one place to point me to - the one slalom specific club in the whole of London, Shepperton.

For anyone who lives in London, shepperton is barely in London. To get from my house to Shepperton on the train it takes 2 hours. That's like asking a junior (as I was at the time) from Stone to travel to Nottingham every time they wanted to go training, with no opportunity for local coaching sessions.

Now I know there is an obvious reason for this - the thames isn't exactly known for its rapids. but if local clubs could take up slalom properly (be aware of how it works and have the support to be able to provide training for young slalom athletes), to allow people to train in their own area (let's reference the excellent example of foreign clubs here), and then travel to shepperton or somewhere for whitewater training, then we could get competitors from a wider range of areas.

This seems very centred around London. But then - London's population is greater than the whole of the West Midlands. Almost as much as the whole of the midlands put together. And how many athletes come from London club(s) compared to S&S? This obviously isn't an issue only in London. It'd be nice if we could have clubs perfectly arranged around the country. But London is what I know - and I know there are tens-possibly hundreds of canoe clubs who if given the support may be able to put forward young athletes.

Going slightly off-topic but when we look online or in the yearbook to see who the person to help with this would be... the slalom representative for London is invariably 'vacant'.

[John Sturgess]

alldaypaddler

Not off topic at all

It would be possible to set up a strong slalom club (almost) anywhere in the country: it depends on there being one or two people who (a) want it enough and (b) know what is needed. Three of the four strong clubs in Great Britain last year either did not exist five years ago, or did not exist as junior slalom clubs.

So what do the four ‘strong’ clubs have in common?
• A proper coaching structure: paddlers attend the same coaching group, with the same coach, each week. So a sporting occasion is also a social occasion.
• The club puts pressure on paddlers (or rather, their parents) to go to a reasonable number of races: in fact in some clubs it is a condition of membership of coaching groups (see Breadalbane CC website).
• They go to the same events, usually with coaching support: so again a sporting occasion is also a social occasion.
• They have targeted recruitment policies, usually focussing on particular schools or groups of schools, so that they achieve critical mass within each starting cohort.
• They now have critical mass within their junior sections as a whole, so that paddlers can change groups as they develop at different rates (but NB this is an outcome rather than a method: three of the four top clubs, and several of the second tier, either did not exist five years ago, or did not exist as slalom clubs).

The remaining 6 clubs in the British Top Ten display some, but not all, of the features above.

The effect of the above on the sport as a whole?
• The Top Ten Clubs have 62% of all the Core junior paddlers in Great Britain; just the top 4 Clubs have 42%.
• The Core junior paddlers of the Top Ten made up 60% of all Div Prem-3 slalom entries: just the top 4 clubs accounted for 37%.

[bankside]

CRCats, Strathallan, Forth and Aberdeen all have, effectively, slow/flat water slalom training sites (apologies to Alva) that have been developed over the years where paddlers learn baisc / core slalom technique. Look at the success that graduates from these clubs have achieved. The clubs focus and slalom and focus on slalom skills. Those clubs make regular trips : at weekends to white water on the Tay (Stanley and Tully) or the Tweed (at Fairnilee) or the Dee to learn and develop white water skills; in the summer to France and sometimes to England and Wales too . It is all part of a paddler development process managed through the club and national coaches.

Breadalbane is a special case where nearly all coaching is provided via the SCA. Without that support (one coach at 80% time plus one apprentice coach and two parent paddlers) the club would not be so significant.
Are the Welsh clubs supported in the same manner?
Is that a model that can be adopted by Canoe England?

[slink]

slow/flat water slalom training sites (apologies to Alva)

Not at all...unless Alva is flooded, it's definitely a slow/flat water site...the pumps are on order, but still haven't arrived

Breadalbane is a special case where nearly all coaching is provided via the SCA

Not just Breadalbane, This is the case at CR CATS too, probably 99%+ of coaching is provided through an SCA paid coach. Stirling CC use Alva regularly with only volunteer coaches, members are gradually appearing higher in the divisions, but historically SCC has lost paddlers as they reach div 2 to CR CATS and the paid coaching regime.

Is this a problem?
Probably not. Once the paddlers reach Division 2, they are hooked. To progress further, they need to start thinking about a more strict training regime, and for each group of kids Johnny Brown provides at least 2 sessions a week at Alva plus 1 at 'Tully etc, so allowing the kids that regime. As a volunteer club, SCC cannot compete with that level of coaching input, although we'd love to be able to change that. The "top 10 clubs" may be skewed to look like those paddlers are all with only 1 club and get everything they need there, but is that the case? In some cases, yes - look at Breadalbane's website, you'll see that their members get river trips, sea trips, gym sessions, swimming sessions, rescue training (including the parents), and they have access to a coach that's highly qualified and experienced in many aspects of the sport, rather than just slalom. The top paddlers at CR CATS are supported by the SCA and sportscotland (in fact, all paddlers at CR CATS are supported by the SCA by virtue of them using a paid coach), and actually the club currently provides little, except for equipment for the beginners and the Alva site - essential items of course, but is it really a "club" in the sense of the discussion in this thread?

I think the traditional club structure is great as an introduction and support structure to get people hooked. If a club is lucky enough to have access to a good site (and I do class Alva in that!), then that goes a long way to being able to foster improvement, but as John Sturgess and others have pointed out, without coaching support to provide quality training (and at events), the club struggles to foster the improvement from good to great as the paddler progresses through the divisions. I think CW have recognised this when you see the support that Seren Dwr get at events, perhaps even more than the SCA, although I don't know how their training is managed.

Of course, I'd rather that CE don't adopt that model! But sitting in both a recreational club that does some slalom (Stirling CC) and a slalom only club (CR CATS), I see significant differences, most of which come from having a paid coach, as the kit etc is very similar and we use the same training site. We see a clear distinction between a club scenario and a professional coaching scenario up here - so to link it back to John's original topic, it seems to show that clubs are good at getting people in, providing the kit, providing early advice and training, and supporting paddlers at early events, but to get that paddler progression to top end, a club either has to have a very dedicated volunteer / pool of volunteers (who are not just keen and dedicated, but have the experience and can give the time to run several sessions a week plus support at events), or access to a paid coach. The coaching standards may not even be that different, but it's the contact time and consistency that counts.

So - the CR CATS model. The club provides kit and infrastructure, the SCA provides the majority of the coach (Johnny does often exceed his contracted hours so you do need a keen, as well as a paid coach!). Club members are selected by "testing" at local schools by the paid coach - some paddlers do join "voluntarily" once they have become involved in slalom elsewhere, but that's not the core recruitment process. Most of those later joining members come from other clubs to benefit from the coaching regime - some travel for over an hour each way, sometimes twice a week to attend training. The club runs an annual slalom, applies for grants etc to maintain the kit and infrastructure, but has very few (as of this moment, 1) volunteer coaches. Club activities are minimal, the paid coach works out and provides the programme, the club manage the site and the fundraising.

The proof, however is in the results...

Steve Linksted
Stirling Canoe Club & CR CATS

I would like to add that Gary & Jane at Strathallan are volunteers, and put in a huge amount of effort with their paddlers, currently without the support of a paid coach. Their paddlers join sessions at Alva & 'Tully (and some are now enrolled in the SCA/sportscotland supported development and/or performance programmes), but it is down to the dedication of a couple of individuals (who both have full time "proper" jobs) that the club is appearing in the top few of the rankings. This shows it can work with volunteers, but you need to find someone very special!

[HaRVey]

Hi John/All,

Where is this list of top clubs? Where is your research?

(I ask, because I would like to see it, not because it doesn't exist before anyone asks, i know John is a statistical hoarder of information)

I wonder, whether there is any other ways of interpreting your data??

I wonder if S&SCC are top of the list?

I wonder if it is all due to coaching by club members?
(Andy neave recieved several mentions at the Oscars, but he is like Jonny Brown in Scotland, a wealth of knowledge which has a limit with in a club environment. Andy would probably be the first to acknowledge this, and he is very aware of when a paddler needs to go off into the real world, and do some independent learning, and often this coinsides with ODP Level/GB Canoeing. Our location makes this transition a 'relatively' easy one, its still an hours drive to and hours drive from training at HPP, once or twice a week for most paddlers.)

I wonder if there is any link to the number of events that the Clubs run?
S&SCC run 3 x mini slaloms, and 4 x Div 3/4 Days, and 1 x Prem Championship and 1 x DIv 1 Event.

Do the facilities on site have any bearing on Club success?
Lots of people talk about the canoe kit, but if there is also a social aspect and gym facilities does this have any impact on those people who want to make use of the club.

S&SCC also has a River, and a canal, and a Gym and a Football pitch, effectively, on site. This leads to a number of session options that would not otherwise be possible. Trentham canoe club is also only 5 miles away, and hence alternative disciplines, such as marathon, sprint and polo are also accomodated for canoeists in a region whihc is both compact and also centrally located making travel to events more convienient.
Also they do not have a white water course, so our paddlers are often good technically but lack confidence on the white water. When Stafford and Stone Paddlers become good or 'Prem' paddlers, they have often long since been paddling at Nottingham weekly, and in some cases have already moved to that location, they are simply by that stage Club members by association, and friendship groups, and the club specifically benefitting them in a much more limited manner.
Perhaps to formally raise concerns on their behalf regards GB policies, or too vote at the ACM on motions that will benefit them and their sport.

Does a club require a 'CORE' mass? Do clubs need to be a certain size to sustain themselves, and the level of involvement in the sport?

Lots of questions, rather than answers.
I can see many good clubs/organisations particularly in SCA/WCA that appear to be making excellent progress in the last 3-5years, with this respect. I would hope that in the next 3-5 years a similar resurgence in slalom numbers should occur, as paddlers start to setup home in London.
Maybe they could each adopt a slalom club to propel into the slalom lime light.

How about introducing this, to your club structure...???
Augsburg have a policy, where by the GER Senior/U23 Teams get coaching from the GER Staff. 25 athletes
The Senior/U23 GER Team paddlers all must run at least one session per week to maintain their funding. upto 100 athletes
Each directly coached paddler by a GB Senior/U23 Team member must coach a novice group. Possibility for 400 athletes
A few novice paddlers and some volunteers run new beginners sessions. Possibility for +1000 athletes?

With this pyramid of coaching, there are several sessions everyday, all coached by different people. Each person has a requirement to pass that knowledge on further, and benefit from the experience of someone better. Is it any wonder Augsburg are the most succesful club .... 'Of All Time?'



Maybe this could be a brand new idea for Canoe England/GB Talent Manager/England Canoe Slalom Committee (they have said they want ideas of how to benefit the sport), why don't we run a camp where CE and volunteer coaches from clubs turn up, all the paddlers from Prem, Div 1 and Div 2, turn up too and pay a nominal fee (£10 per day). CE Coaches get paid and use it as their working time. Volunteer Coaches get expenses and benfit from working with top paddlers and coaches...

Prem paddlers get coaching from CE coaches.
Prem paddlers get off the water/Stay on and coach (volunteer coaches help where required) (Top prem poaddlers coach top half div 1) (Bottom half prem paddlers coach bottom half div 1)
Div 1 paddlers (with Volunteer coach support where required) get off/stay on and coach (top half coach top half div 2/bottom half coach bottom half div 2).

Lets be novel and call it a 'World Class - England Camp' ?! Maybe when it works we'll have 2 or 3 per winter? And when it works really well, we'll invite GB Canoeing paddlers and staff to attend too, so they can also benefit, coach, and see the talent we have in our sport emerging.

Any one else/other clubs think this might be good idea?

[John Sturgess]

Reply to slink

Yes Peter - the coaching can be provided in various ways - the important things is that it is provided, and in such a way that each paddler has his own coach

Paid coaching is one way of doing it, but as you say, that is not how Strathallan operate; and the paid coaching by Canoe England coaches who are attached to clubs does not always produce the same results in the terms of 'start, say, succeed': it is a question of what is seen to be the key function of those coaching appointments.

However ultimately - as I discuss in another thread - paid coaches cannot handle the sort of expansion that the sport needs - and nor can any plan that depends on getting top padlers, or even paddlers, to do the coaching: in the one case the money will never be available, and in the other paddlers will never be available in those sort of numbers.

So you come back - as all successful mass-participation sports do - to volunteers; and specifically to volunteer parents.

And that in particular helps to solve the problem of coaching at races: because parents are there, as they are at training sessions, to bring the children, and take them home afterwards. And talking to parents bankside, I am constantly impressed by the fact that simply by wathing they know far more about slalom than they think they do!

[John Sturgess]

reply to Robin:

e-mail me on john.sturgess@gedling.gov.uk or ECSTCoach@jsturgess.freeserve.co.uk and I will send you any figures you want: there is nothing secret about it (and the same applies to anybody else)

I used Top Ten/Top Four Clubs not as a measure of quality (tho' I think it is) but simply as a statement of where they come in order of the number of Core junior paddlers that each club had on the ranking lists in 2012.

Top Four:
Stafford & Stone 31
Breadalbane 24
Holme Pierrepont 22
Seren Dwr 16

Rest of the Top Ten:
CR Cats 11
Tees Tigers 10
Llandysul 10
Strathallan 9
Manchester 8
Bradford & Bingley 8

Important Point: This year the top four clubs have in those terms got bigger, and a large proportion of the other clubs have got smaller; which is why the total of core junior paddlers in Great Britain has shrunk this year from 234 to 219.

Why does this matter? Because my figures show that by and large paddlers who do 9+ races per year (Prem: 7+) stay longer, and therefore make more progress - or make more progress and therefore stay longer - or both. Paddlers who do 3 or less races in a season either do not return the next year; or do 2/3 races the next year and then do not come back. The only exception to this is paddlers from clubs that start during the summer, do their first race in the autumn, and come back the next year to do 'proper' seasons; and my figures take account of that. Paddlers who do 4-8 races during their first seasons are not likely to step up to full seasons the next year, although some do.

Does a Club require a Core mass? in my view, yes: and I think that the figures prove this. But the first requirement is a critical mass in each entry cohort, so that paddling both at training sessions and at races becomes a social as well as a sporting experience. There are also organisational implications: each paddler needs to be part of a compatible group; but without a critical mass the club does not have the scope to re-arrange groups as they develop at different rates. This would be les of a problem if our ranking system did not limit the choice of races that each paddler can attend ...

But that is moving into the realms of Other People's Problems - so I will not expatiate here - and that is also the reason Robin, why I am not answering your other points on this thread (see my introductory post).