by wayno » Fri 13 Jan, 2012 3:18 am
the outdoor retail industry don't help, they don't make it affordable for young people to get into the sport, ironically to get the most affordable gear you often have to go hunting outside of the outdoor retail shops. any young person going into a shop today must have near heart failure at the price of everything,
gone are a lot of the basic rough and ready gear we used decades ago. the bush shirt has given way to expensive merino. also young people can easily feel they don't fit in if they have to buy cheaper or older gear than other people, as it is when i was young all my spare money went getting decent tramping gear that my parents couldnt afford. it's a big commitment
nz in the seventies and eighties was a different country to the one it is now, as mentioned theres a lot more employers wanting people to work on weekends now, that wasnt the case in yesteryear, someone commented to me they have watched harrier clubs die since the introduction of weekend shopping
there are more sports now that barely existed or didnt exist decades ago, theres a lot more disciplines to choose from now in the outdoors and the casualisation of these sports allowing you to participate in one off events has taken away fit energetic young people into other sports that grab their attention and imagination more,
mountain biking, multi sport, adventure racing to name some of those sports. thats where their mates are so thats where they go. theres some really smart organised people running those sports, they know how to market themselves to attract the new young people along.
the young get fired up by fast paced sports on tv that grab their interest.
ever wonder why the west indies arent the best at cricket any more? exposure to american tv in the windies diverted the kids into sports other than cricket,
i've seen one club take off through facebook, redirecting younger people away from a main club, it was a less structured setup
just observing clubs it's obvious that there are far less young people in them now. i'm 43 and am often the youngest person at club meetings....
i've seen clubs that do little to nothing to encourage young people. they turn up and don't come back, they arent that interested in putting on trips for them that meet their needs and lack of fitness, some clubs are older people going as hard as they can as long as they can while they still can. theres little focus on the needs of the budding tramper, I used to turn up to do easy tramps and was told i had to do the fit ones like i was some kind of sissy at my age for not doing the harder tramps, which i would actually do sometimes and had proven i could outwalk almost all of the people in the club but that wasnt enough for them, but i also like easier tramps....
the attitude of a fair few of the older trampers can be off putting, they can be pretty tough minded and too much for a lot of younger people.
frankly to a certain extent tramping has a lot of old hard bitten people in the clubs running things their way,
other sports look at more how they can do things the way the new comers want.... they encourage everyone no matter what they want to do.
i remember reading about peter snell the first time arthur lydiard got him to do his toughest training circuit through the hills. peter had to walk back , he couldnt run it all.
he got back to arthurs place and couldnt stop himself breaking down in tears at the end.... but no one put him down, he was encouraged... i wonder what would have happened if people had poured scorn on him then, would he have kept trying to train hard? for those that don't recognise the name peter snell won three olympic gold medals in the 8 and 15 hundred meters and several world records in the 60's, not even john walker has run an 800m faster than him...
everyone has to start somewhere, and how you treat those starters makes all the difference to how your club will thrive or otherwise.
given people spend so much time together tramping and you can't really get away from each other sometimes for days on end, relating well to each other is critical to retaining young people in the sport. and given how much less free time young people have now given the need for students to work to pay for higher student fees, it probably takes more effort today than ever to compete for young peoples time in bushwalking. so what young person starting out in tramping will invest what little money they have buying tramping gear to get into a pastime with people they don't like and who often have more money to travel and afford better gear than them.
clubs need to think about initiatives for younger people. selling them gear as cheaply as possible so they can tramp in the first place.
i personally had to quit tramping for years because to make a living i couldnt find enough time to get into the bush , and often didnt have the spare money to travel very far.
Last edited by
wayno on Fri 13 Jan, 2012 3:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
from the land of the long white clouds...
(no, not me, I was an Olympus user back then, Nikons were too heavy and too establishment to interest me) The point is that funding skewed Uni club membership back then, not sure that it is still the case?
I see more than enough referrals to pay sites such as backpacking light to ignore comments that direct me to them. Anyway taking this thread on face value here I go.
