Hull Tournament - 2/3 July

If anyone still needs a lift I've got space in my car. Brandon & Paul are no longer going and Patty has fractured his collar bone so he's out to. (Get well soon Patty).

Ramz

I'm getting quite frustrated with the youth teams at the club and the ease with which people commit and drop out of their commitments...

The idea of playing at summer tournaments was raised back in February, whay do I find myslef in a position trying to find people to fill one team, when little over a week ago there were enough to fill 2?

At Liverpool last weekend, we didn't have a confirmed youth team until the Thursday due to people saying that they are going and then changing their mind and then changing their mind again and again and again.

This weekend, the club are going to Hull. We had enough paddlers last weekend for me to speak to the organisors of Hull to get an additional team entered so that I didn't have to dissappoint anyone and everyone could play. However, I have detailed a list below of all of teh youth players who at some point have said that they were coming without checking to see if they had any other commitments etc etc:

Calum
Russell
Brandon
Kris
Paul
along with a couple of tentative responses from other players. This is a full team.

There are several issues that I have with this. We need to enter teams suitably before an event so that the event organisor can plan games, which is a massive task and cannot be done last minute. When we enter teams there is a financial committment that we make usually between £75 and £95 pounds that needs to be paid regardless of whether people attend or not. The people who lose out are the people who still go and have to play in a weakend team with people they were not expecting to play with. This situation needs to change as it is completely out of prder.

The other issue that I have with this whimsical approach to commitments is the fact that these people take zero responsibility for the time and effort that goes into organising teams to get to tournaments. I sacrifice a large amount of my time doing these kind of things, cocahing the youngsters, taking youth and senior sessions and working with individuals who have requested specific advice. But it is a choice that I make as I enjoy it and the Liverpool tournament was great (when we had the team finalised) seeing the youngsters progress. What I shouldn't have to do is be making phone conversations at 11pm, sending emails and such like trying to get teams together for events a couple of days in the future. I shouldn't have to speak to parents who are completely dissatissfied at the fact that their child isn't too happy about attending at the weekend when they thought that they were playing in a youth team with people their own age, whan actually they are playing with adults who they don't know and haven't even met. This is unreasonable.

As i say, I choose to coach weekly club sessions, I choose to organise tournaments, I choose to coach at tournaments, I choose to get involved with both the adult and youth sections of the club. Over the last year, I have not been part of the GB squad, but in 2012 I will. If all of these issues are not resolved, I will choose not to do it as it will be at teh detrement of my sporting achievements and if I am to represent my country, i cannot take responsibility for other people's whimsical change of plan, or other diary clashes, the youth will simply not attend unless someone else deals with all of these issues...

As you can tell, I am not terribly happy with this current situation, but I will be endeavouring to ensure that the teams competing this weekend do well, play hard and most of all enjoy themselves. That is the principal reason why we do anything that we do.

Nicky

I support Nicky 100% in this matter, I also give up my time to coach the youth session on the priciple of building a youth team for the club. This coaching is voluntery and cuts into my training time giving me only half a normal Tuesday session, this sounds very little but is alot for me as I am currently competing in the GB U21 squad causing me to leave for many competition on a Thursday night and arrive back during the day monday leaving the Tuesday session one of my few nights a week to train but I am willing to do this for the future of the club however the lack of commitment from the youngsters dropping out from competitions leaves me wondering why should I and being lets just say unmotivated to coach.

This not only effects me but people you call your TEAM MATES who wish to win, this cannot happen if you do not play together and the players who don't drop out have to play with random other people. I was under the impression that you all wanted to enter division 4 national league however this instead of being nearly £100 is several hundered pounds and includes 4-5 weekends of comitiment that the club will be liable to pay for if people drop out this will not happen if you cannot commit to single weekend competitions you asked specifically for entries in.

I suggest that all youth players talk to each other about this problem and ensure that each other are actually commit to tournaments properly in the future, for those who do drop out you will be liable to pay the fees still as it is unfair to force other players to pay more because you have been unreliable.

I would say also that the committee would support Nicky and Matt on this. We expect our senior paddlers to commit and attend tournaments in just the same way.

Please read this thread which summarises it:

https://teestigers.forum.st/t284-comittment-to-competitions

This is not a new problem but it is a significant one. Nicky and Matt have devoted a lot of time and energy to this club. And I would personally value both their opinions very highly.

Nicky Don't know why Kris's name is on the list about just dropping out of Hull, Way back in early May Kristopher posted on the forum to say that he couldn't make Hull, plus a conversation with you and Calum way back then i also said he couldn't make it due to Washburn. He also cannot do London as we will be on holiday so please do not include him in the lists.

I don't want to get into a big debate bout this, but would like to say in Calum's defence that he has worked hard since Christmas organising the youth team. He has taken it upon himself to contact each player on every ocassion organising players, boats, kit etc. He had thought he could go to Hull as he thought he got back from France on the Saturday but didn't realise it would be the Sunday, as this information was not given out from the school till the week before so it wasn't a case of him changing his mind as he was looking forward to playing.