LORC surveys clubs and racers
Dec 17, 2020
Prior to its December 2 zoom meeting, LORC (Lake Ontario Racing Council) conducted a survey of clubs and participants to help determine a direction for the organization. The survey was conducted by a team of George Brown College students in Sports Management under the guidance of Secretary Treasurer: John O’Dwyer.
O’Dwyer explains that, like many sailing organizations around the globe, LORC has run into participation and aging issues. Looking forward the organization feels it needs to assess the needs of clubs as well as current and potential racers to determine a mans to coordinate racing in the GTA area and nearby to establish a three-year perspective.
Some key responses
Clubs – 49 invitations sent, 20 responses received; Racers – 438 invitations sent, 153 responses received
The findings showed that racers see advantages in a Central Repository for Information (67%, 73% during COVID), High Level competition, Registration and Scoring. Certainly noteworthy is the age profile of respondents.
Some of the information harvested will undoubtedly prove useful in creating future programs.
A few selected (by CYOB) comments from the survey:
• Often 2-day regatta is too big a commitment that involves logistics of getting from and to the host club by car on sat night / Sunday am. Perhaps have more one day regattas and have the on-water location be due south of Toronto island, which would allow GTA clubs to come for one day and sail home at the end of the day.
• Promote racing, train race committees, make it fun, change up the racecourses. keep communication coming. Running good regattas Top notch Race Committees Providing incentives for first timers and new racers to get involved
• Encourage more participation among the less hard-core racers who prefer a variety of fun race formats accompanied by fun social events
• giving special treatment to J105 class 🙂
• Focus on coordination of regional schedule for all events including those within the LORC and outside the LORC umbrella. There is no excuse for conflicting regional events with the limited participation we have seen in recent years
• Courses, Seminars off season on Zoom. Make sure you link us in with the best people around the world … Dave Perry, Canadian, US, and UK Sailing Coaches, Round the World racers etc.
