West Midlands Orienteering Association
Potteries Orienteering Club (POTOC) is a small orienteering club in an urban area where there is potential for expansion. Our aim is to tap into this potential for growth. We have low junior membership and will attempt to increase it through the strategies listed below. There is Government-backed encouragement to develop school-club links and we hope to exploit this to increase junior participation and membership.
Essential for the survival of POTOC is to attract younger senior members willing to contribute to running the Club. All developments should, if possible, be designed to help with this.
This Development Plan serves to guide the direction the Club will take, but largely avoids specifying dates or specific targets because development and growth are likely to be achieved irregularly and over several years. The plan should be reviewed annually in June.
Changes from the previous Development Plan are marked.
Membership stands at 42 seniors, 1 juniors and 6 groups which include 12 LBM juniors (juniors within a Group who have registered as Local BOF Members). [A junior is aged 20 or less at the end of the current year. Most juniors are within family membership units. The junior figure does not include juniors within group membership units.] Our target is to increase individual membership by 10% each year, and to increase the number of groups to include 5 schools.
The average age of seniors is 52. It is hoped that increased junior membership through schools and families will be accompanied by an increase in younger seniors (parents and teachers), more active in running the Club.
We will maintain our present policy of staging monthly events, mainly smaller local events but with a larger, district or regional event, annually.
The local events will continue to provide regular orienteering easily accessible from Stoke-on-Trent, both for beginners and for more experienced orienteers. The format of local events will be altered to make them more appealing to school and group juniors:
Our Lead Coach and his helpers will continue work already started in visiting schools to promote orienteering and POTOC.
We will use the PESSCL (PE and School Sport Club Link) mechanisms to advertise our local events -- and will give support and encouragement for any school to participate and affiliate to the Club.
Affiliation by schools to POTOC will be strongly encouraged by offering help and informal coaching at events, and by providing the venue at which schools can compete against each other at our local events: see Fixtures above.
In addition, pupils from affiliated schools will be invited to run for POTOC at CompassSport Trophy and relay matches, increasing the Club's strengths and providing pupils with high-level competition where they represent POTOC and have incentive to join BOF as LBMs.
We will assist POTOC members to become Instructors or higher-level coaches so that we can provide better support and development, particularly for youngsters. We would hope to attract potential coaches through affiliated schools and youth groups -- both teachers and parents.
We have committed POTOC to seek Clubmark accreditation -- which will be necessary for forming links with schools in the future. The chief remaining tasks are to provide 30 hours of coaching per year open to all members, particularly juniors, and to keep POTOC abreast of best practice by sending volunteers to appropriate courses every 3 years.
The local events count as coaching and with a typical programme of 9 events, contribute about 22 hours (9 × 2½). The Lead Coach will organise extra coaching sessions to achieve the 30 hour requirement. These sessions could use the new permanent courses.
Some Sport-Across-Staffordshire courses will need to be attended every 3 years. POTOC needs a register of what courses have been attended, when and by whom, so that we can ensure that we keep up to date.
We will aim for accreditation by December 2008.
We need to build on our current achievements (group membership up from 1 to 6, Lead Coach appointed, team of coaches) by providing activities that attract juniors to progress. Many measures are described elsewhere: see items under Fixtures and Mapping. Other developments will be:
To sustain growth in this area, it is essential that we also attract some parents/teachers/youth leaders associated with the groups to contribute with their time and transport - and some to become individual members of POTOC.
We have many local mapped areas. We may add to these from time to time.
Through the WM Regional Development Officer, we are applying for a grant to map small areas near schools (15 in S-o-T, 6 in Newcastle and 4 in Staffs Moorlands) and if awarded will organise this to benefit orienteering in schools. If this application fails we will try other sources.
Interested schools will be given help to map their school grounds.
We will maintain all our permanent courses. Users of POCs will be encouraged to attend POTOC local events, and beginners at local events will be encouraged to try the POCs. Use of POCs by schools will be encouraged for coaching purposes.
POC maps will be on sale at POTOC local events.
We will complete the joint venture with Staffs Moorlands District Council for POCs on three country parks that they manage.
We currently circulate schools and other organisations, such as libraries, Sports Centres and The Sentinel, with details of our activities -- notably the local events. We have an excellent website, www.sisyphus.demon.co.uk/POTOC/, that has up-to-date details of POTOC and its events and which has attracted many people to come and try orienteering. We will continue these forms of publicity, and our publicity officer will seek other channels.
Electronic punching will continue to be used at all local events. We will investigate the production of on-the-day results by using a laptop computer.