Youth USAC Schedule and your team structure???

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Youth USAC Schedule and your team structure???

(6 posts) (4 voices)

Started 8 months ago by smokeNmirrors
Latest reply from ejw

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smokeNmirrors
Member

USA Climbing has announced that Youth ABS has now added a regional qualifier into the process of qualifying for Nationals. I'm not here to discuss this specifically (their reasoning seems solid) but to ask other coaches how you structure your team around the "qualifier seasons."

Regionals > Divisionals > Nationals is a two month long process. How does your team address the issue that the local competition season is only 2-3 months long which finishes with most of your team (at least ours) not qualifying for the next round. This leaves only a couple kids moving on to divisionals but still requiring significant coaching time. Do you have the non-qualifiers still practice? We've tried this with minimal success, attendance drops sharply. Do you charge the qualifier kids extra for the additional resources they require like coaching, gym time, coach travel? These extras can nearly double our team's expenses for the year, is that burden fair to place on the entire team?

I realize bigger programs can absorb these costs better. Being a small town, we strive to keep the sport affordable and believe the more kids in the program the better. How are the smaller programs making it work? Do the large programs have similar experiences in their growth?

Posted 8 months ago #
Herman
Member

I'm a little confused here.

I assume that you will just have a year round weekly training with different focusses throughout the year. these trainings will require time and effort, all the time, for all athletes. just devide the available time among all athletes.

In reality the stuff you do at the training are not so important as to preparing you for the comps. the stuff you did the year before are much more important.

So i would just do the same with all the team.
Even if you wanted to I don't really see a problem with ane half of the team focussing on something else then to others.

Wether or not the entire team should pay for the additional coaching time / expenses for the trip that only a few climbers are allowed to take? that's a good question. In short that is the choice between top sport and recreational sport. The classic answer is: If the recreational sport benefits from the top sport they should pay for it (to a proportional extend)

Benefits can be basically anything like enthiousiastic climbers, enthiousiastic coaches, Marketing value, press coverage, Additional knowledge for the coaches

Both small (you) and big programs (nation wide) will have to make the same choices. only the money involved is bigger.

Posted 8 months ago #
smokeNmirrors
Member

Herman, to clarify, we operate on a seasonal mode, not year round. We do an outdoor training session in the spring summer and a competition indoor bouldering session in the fall winter. I can totally see the benefit to year round training, are most youth programs operating like that? We've always stressed diversity in climbing and other sports when it comes to kids. Seems like everyone involved appreciates a larger break a couple times a year. I guess it really becomes a question of how serious we want to be as competition climbers.

I appreciate your justifications on funding top sport through recreational sport. I hadn't thought of it in that way.

Posted 8 months ago #
m.rougeux
Member

Having a small team (16 tops) I too have seen this as a problem even just going from Regionals to Nationals in the past. We’ll see how it goes adding one more round of qualifiers. I've tried both setups in the past and this is what I've found.

Having everyone continue up to Nationals: This seemed to be the best option for me in the past. I keep the kids on and have a workout for them or start getting them mentally and technically prepped for SCS season. Maybe since you don't do SCS you could spend time on skill development? You will see attendance drop but you can still use that revenue to help offset the coaching cost for those that qualified. This would only work if it was a contract EFT Oct – Feb or one lump sum payment as opposed to a month to month fee schedule that they could decide to not pay for those months and be done with the team.

Only those that qualified practice: I've tried this as well in the past and it had some benefits but overall the program suffered. This does allow for more individual training and coaching but puts fewer resources in your pocket and leaves your only option to pay for your trip to Div. and Nats. is to pass it along to the climbers that qualified or the gym. I've had a hard time with either of those actually coming through. Plus I've always had a couple kids and parents that want to continue on with their climbing which is overall better for getting them to the point where maybe they qualify next season.

I do two separate seasons- Fall (ABS) and Spring (SCS). I see a sharp decrease in enrollment for the SCS season and am working on changing that. I can't see moving to a full year round program but it seems like others are having success with that. I am hoping to add some summer program offerings for the team in the future to keep them engaged and psyched on the next season.

I agree with having two levels of commitment for the program. I'll be doing a comp team and a development team this year. At first I was looking at the two as standalone programs. Once I started looking at them as one big program the funding for travel to comps and Div. and Nats. got a lot easier.

Posted 8 months ago #
Herman
Member

Well, try to switch to year round training programs. All the youth programs that i know of (which basically are all dutch, german and austrian local programs and all of western europe's programs at the regional or national level) are based on a year round program.

Posted 8 months ago #
ejw
Member

Most American youth climbing programs run on cycles of the ABS and SCS seasons with a summer break through July and August, however some teams are trending more and more towards a year round program of training. We have three levels of competitive teams who train from September to June/July each year and the team as a whole is quite large, roughly 130 athletes (although only 70-80 will participate in competitions throughout the year). We typically run all the athletes through on the same schedule of training based on the ABS or SCS season. While some kids will not progress on to Divisionals/Nationals the majority of the kids continue with the same training regiment until the end of said season, keeping continuity in the program. As Herman referenced, you often have to look at the big picture in terms of training.

Posted 8 months ago #

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