The past couple of weeks Val and Clive have been on holiday, so Roy and I, and Paul and Liz, have been organising Westel's sessions.
They have had a theme:
# a group of competent adults take themselves off, paddling between the weirs or up to Walton Bridge, for example. Most of these are much the same people each time.
# one or two lone adults go off and individually do their own thing
# a few individuals show up for coaching (adults or juniors). But they rarely re-appear - sometimes they've been before, but maybe weeks or months ago.
All of this is fine and pleasant, and brings in boat money. But two questions come to my mind:
# why do adults with club keys like to come paddling at the time of club sessions? They clearly don't need the coaches. Is it the chance to bump into other paddlers and form a spontaneous group that is the attraction? If so, maybe we should announce a couple of other times - a summer evening, and a time on Sundays - when people could come down and see if there's someone to accompany them paddling?
# Some kids, and some novices, are using Westel much as they might use, for example, a coffee shop, a leisure centre or a cinema - i.e. a place to drop into from time to time to undertake a specific activity. Is this what Westel is for? We do achieve a high level of 'customer satisfaction', which has its own rewards. But are coaches going to stay happy to give their time, freely and without charge, to support this endlessly?
Andrew Wallace
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Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI guess part of it is to do with "being a club" or "being a club member".Turning up on Saturday morning represents going to a club session, as you say, so that we bump into other members and have a sociable Saturday morning with like minded people. Otherwise we become less of a club and more of a boat store.
I think there should also be an Adult Improvers element to it - paddling with you or Valerie or Clive, even if it is primarily a sociable trip up to Sunbury or wherever, is a chance to get picked up on one's technique or expand one's knowledge, and progress towards two star awards etc.
But a surprising number of people are also turning up on other days or doing other things - Andy and Charles have been leading expeditions to other venues recently, and twice recently Gabriella and I have returned from an early Sunday morning paddle to find Laura and Andy about to set off.
I'm not a parent, but from onbservation of the kids who come to Westel and stories I hear from colleagues who have children, it seems inevitable that kids will drop in and out - my friends daughter has done a bit of paddling, sometimes plays netball, sometimes basketball, sometimes goes swimming, plays a bit of tennis in the summer because her grandparents are members of a club and so on - it seems to depend partly on what her friends are doing at the moment, partly on the weather, and a host of other variables! If you add in Guides, Scouts and homework and the finite amount of time and energy (and parent support) it is not surprising if they seem a bit fickle.
But a good topic for debate and future coaches' meetings. One factor that seems to be important at other canoe clubs and in other activities is the element of competition. My friend's daughter plays in netball matches, in a team. When we introduce people to kayaking do we think enough about what it is we are teaching them for?
I hope that the "adult group" that comes to the Club on saturdays will eventually be subsumed within a touring party. However, I also hope that any such group does not lose contact with the Club in a physical sense and that the idea of "being in a club" is not diluted. As for youngsters using the Club as a form of drop-in centre, I only wish I'd had such a social outlet/refuge at that age! But if the coaches are dispirited by aspects of this then maybe we need to enlarge our pool of coaches in order to spread the load. I don't mind helping out if need be.
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