Myth #2 Debunked, Part 10
You're losing your touch and your not jumping as well as you use to. You start to realize that you are not going to stand a chance at making the World Cup or Olympic team. Etc, etc, etc. Now what.
Well, now you follow in rich ski jumping tradition...you quit jumping. If your like most, you sell your equipment and walk away from the sport. If you was good enough at one time, you may find that you land yourself a job coaching the sport, otherwise you get swept under the rug as another 'has been'. It happens to jumpers each and every year.
As this concept continues to build bigger and bigger each year you lose more and more adult jumpers. You find that you can't attract new adults into the program because there are no other adults to attract them to start jumping.
If there were no kids involved in ski jumping, you would have a hard time attracting kids to get into the sport. Anyone out there wants to be around people their own age. Kids hang around kids and adults hang around adults. You have no adults out here ski jumping, and you can't attract any new adults because their is no magnet to draw them in.
This creates several problems.
1. Lack of funding.
Where does the funding come from that allows new facilities to built or makes way for improvement to current facilities? Corporate America.
How many of the working age adults ski jump? Very few.
How much of a day in/day out basis does the sport of ski jumping have a presence in corporate America? Almost zero.
How do you get your voice heard so you can get funding? By having people working for corporate America talking about the sport all the time while at work.
So what is so hard about this. Get adults to get more funding. The kids aren't working for corporate America, the adults are.
2. Lack of acceptance.
How much trouble do you have getting through to adults to allow their kids to jump? Probably far more than you think. When I was growing up in NW Ohio my mothers favorite saying was, "It's too dangerous." That's what she said about anything I wanted to do. I ended up giving up on trying several things I wanted to do as a kid, simply because I knew my mother would never allow me to. How many potential jumpers out there find themselves in the same situation.
When you don't have the parents out here jumping you run into all kinds of road blocks because the parents do not know/understand the sport. The reality is that many of the kids that are out here jumping right now are multi-generation jumpers. I can name many right here in the east. If one of these families move out of the area then you can count on the next generation disappearing from that family line as well. You need to get new family lines started to replace those lines that are disappearing.
You need to remember that the kids don't get themselves to the hill, they don't pay their own training fees, they don't pay their own entry fees, they don't sign their own liability waivers. Kids, just like money, don't grow on trees. Yet at the same time, all you see out here jumping at most of the jump hills are kids. What gives? It all comes back to "When you quit competing, you quit jumping."
The easiest way to get the parents to understand the sport is to get parents out here ski jumping. Put the focus on growing the adult base and the junior and senior base will take care of itself.
How do the kids get involved in cross-country and alpine skiing? Their parents take them out and 'force' them to learn the sport. Why does this not happen in ski jumping? Parents are out here jumping, that's why.
3. Lack of help.
Most of the juniors that are out here jumping, don't have a drivers license. They have to rely on their parents to get them to and from the hill. When you want to do hill work, whether it be to make improvements or make snow, trying to get kids to come out and help is almost impossible. On the other hand, getting adults to come and help is quite easy. If the adults are active jumpers, they will help. They want to get the work done so they can jump. I'm speaking this both from what I saw this past fall while helping to make the necessary improvements on the 50 at Storrs Hill and what I saw this past weekend while making snow in Newport.
It was the adults that did most of the work on the 50. On a rare occasion one of the kids would come out and help, but not very often. I found that all of us were talking about how we couldn't wait to start jumping the 50.
This past weekend I helped make snow on the 30 meter jump in Newport, New Hampshire. This was a slightly different story. Pretty much the old crew that always did the hill work has split up. Two out of the three 50+ year olds have retired and you don't see them much around the jump anymore. Both of the 'retirees' are actually in their 70's. The one stopped judging at the end of the 2004 winter and the other has run into family requirements. The one remaining worker, the Sunapee coach, told the kids quite simply, that if they wanted to jump on their home hill this winter that they was going to have to help make snow. The coach made a signup sheet with 4 hour slots that the kids could choose as to when they wanted to help. The only thing that really helped was the fact that most of kids have their drivers license. They could get to the hill on their own, even if it was at 2AM. You still do have to deal with legal curfews though.
Their was several adults that came out and help to make snow over the weekend. I even saw one at a meet on Sunday morning that asked why we didn't contact him to help make snow. These adults are former jumpers that have kids that jump currently for Sunapee High School.
Why does all this matter and how does all this work into the equation for growing the sport of ski jumping? I'll talk about this tomorrow.
Until next time
Keep the ski tips up,
Crash
Well, now you follow in rich ski jumping tradition...you quit jumping. If your like most, you sell your equipment and walk away from the sport. If you was good enough at one time, you may find that you land yourself a job coaching the sport, otherwise you get swept under the rug as another 'has been'. It happens to jumpers each and every year.
As this concept continues to build bigger and bigger each year you lose more and more adult jumpers. You find that you can't attract new adults into the program because there are no other adults to attract them to start jumping.
If there were no kids involved in ski jumping, you would have a hard time attracting kids to get into the sport. Anyone out there wants to be around people their own age. Kids hang around kids and adults hang around adults. You have no adults out here ski jumping, and you can't attract any new adults because their is no magnet to draw them in.
This creates several problems.
1. Lack of funding.
Where does the funding come from that allows new facilities to built or makes way for improvement to current facilities? Corporate America.
How many of the working age adults ski jump? Very few.
How much of a day in/day out basis does the sport of ski jumping have a presence in corporate America? Almost zero.
How do you get your voice heard so you can get funding? By having people working for corporate America talking about the sport all the time while at work.
So what is so hard about this. Get adults to get more funding. The kids aren't working for corporate America, the adults are.
2. Lack of acceptance.
How much trouble do you have getting through to adults to allow their kids to jump? Probably far more than you think. When I was growing up in NW Ohio my mothers favorite saying was, "It's too dangerous." That's what she said about anything I wanted to do. I ended up giving up on trying several things I wanted to do as a kid, simply because I knew my mother would never allow me to. How many potential jumpers out there find themselves in the same situation.
When you don't have the parents out here jumping you run into all kinds of road blocks because the parents do not know/understand the sport. The reality is that many of the kids that are out here jumping right now are multi-generation jumpers. I can name many right here in the east. If one of these families move out of the area then you can count on the next generation disappearing from that family line as well. You need to get new family lines started to replace those lines that are disappearing.
You need to remember that the kids don't get themselves to the hill, they don't pay their own training fees, they don't pay their own entry fees, they don't sign their own liability waivers. Kids, just like money, don't grow on trees. Yet at the same time, all you see out here jumping at most of the jump hills are kids. What gives? It all comes back to "When you quit competing, you quit jumping."
The easiest way to get the parents to understand the sport is to get parents out here ski jumping. Put the focus on growing the adult base and the junior and senior base will take care of itself.
How do the kids get involved in cross-country and alpine skiing? Their parents take them out and 'force' them to learn the sport. Why does this not happen in ski jumping? Parents are out here jumping, that's why.
3. Lack of help.
Most of the juniors that are out here jumping, don't have a drivers license. They have to rely on their parents to get them to and from the hill. When you want to do hill work, whether it be to make improvements or make snow, trying to get kids to come out and help is almost impossible. On the other hand, getting adults to come and help is quite easy. If the adults are active jumpers, they will help. They want to get the work done so they can jump. I'm speaking this both from what I saw this past fall while helping to make the necessary improvements on the 50 at Storrs Hill and what I saw this past weekend while making snow in Newport.
It was the adults that did most of the work on the 50. On a rare occasion one of the kids would come out and help, but not very often. I found that all of us were talking about how we couldn't wait to start jumping the 50.
This past weekend I helped make snow on the 30 meter jump in Newport, New Hampshire. This was a slightly different story. Pretty much the old crew that always did the hill work has split up. Two out of the three 50+ year olds have retired and you don't see them much around the jump anymore. Both of the 'retirees' are actually in their 70's. The one stopped judging at the end of the 2004 winter and the other has run into family requirements. The one remaining worker, the Sunapee coach, told the kids quite simply, that if they wanted to jump on their home hill this winter that they was going to have to help make snow. The coach made a signup sheet with 4 hour slots that the kids could choose as to when they wanted to help. The only thing that really helped was the fact that most of kids have their drivers license. They could get to the hill on their own, even if it was at 2AM. You still do have to deal with legal curfews though.
Their was several adults that came out and help to make snow over the weekend. I even saw one at a meet on Sunday morning that asked why we didn't contact him to help make snow. These adults are former jumpers that have kids that jump currently for Sunapee High School.
Why does all this matter and how does all this work into the equation for growing the sport of ski jumping? I'll talk about this tomorrow.
Until next time
Keep the ski tips up,
Crash
posted by Ryan Crawford at 11:10 PM
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