Junior and Youth Age Divisions for GPSTC

Akim,

I thought this had been resolved when Nebs kindly spent his valuable time reprogramming the site to include age filters as per the previous thread www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Gps/GPS-Team-Challenge/?page=1

In case you don't remember here's a recap;

Red thumb away mate and don't feel restricted to just using your login. Might as well give yourself some greens whilst you're at it.

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KA360 said...

Thanks but following the introduction of age filters some issues were raised and Nebbian agreed to go ahead with adding age divisions for the Juniors:

Nebbian said...
Decrepit, note that the filters are inclusive: if you go 12-15, then 15-18 then you count 15 year olds twice. Also note that you are probably counting the same kid twice if they have been a member for a couple of years and they are in the higher category. You might have to set the year to 2013 to get a good feel for how many kids are actually in the comp (which will still count the same kid twice if they turned 16 in 2013)

Nebbian said...
Sorry Akim, I thought the committee decided that the age filter was all that was required. Do we want another age category as well? What should it be called?
...
This isn't a massive deal, I can write a script to do this, but it's not completely straightforward. I hope this helps you understand

Erm... I really don't think that I did agree to go ahead with adding age divisions. I think I explained some technical issues that might arise.


In the end it's up to the committee (who are doing a stellar job btw, thanks guys!)

mmmmmm, interesting,
sad to see a member dealt with so disrespectfully by the almighty committee,

the age filter may very well be the most pointless and useless thing implemented in the world ever, and still rates as the committees finest moment,

great call with the national gps free race at green Is, beautiful place,
ummmmm, any real flat banks with solid wind, what about a monstrous weed bank, no,
yeah, interesting choice,,,,,,,,,,,enjoy,,,,,,,,wusses

Oh well here we go.

I'm on the committee. My feelings on requests for change to the GPSTC are as follows:

Firstly I am personally happy with the format of the GPSTC. What I like is the teams based approach to scoring and the challenge is about as simple as possible to join and participate in. These are some of the keys as to why the GPSTC brings windsurfers together.

I am also mindful of any request taking up a lot of Ben's time to program the back end of the site. I know from experience in IT some simple changes require a huge amount of work to achieve.

So when a request to change the Challenge this is my base line. I have a fairly conservative line, if its not broken don't fix it.

With the request to having more age divisions. I am personally ambivalent about it. It might increase the complexity of the Challenge but not by much. More divisions may enhance the inclusiveness. However on the other hand a simple request like this would probably not be that easy to do. We don't pay Ben to do this work. So I am not pushing for more divisions as such and feel the age filters are as reasonable compromise as anything. If a 14 or 15 year old really wants to find out how well they did against their peers, they can.

If an argument could be made that having more junior divisions would dramatically increase the numbers of teenagers taking up windsurfing and really enjoying it, then yeah, why not? Perhaps we should pay for the changes to be made.

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KA360 said...


Filters just won't work for the kids. Ranking (just like that available for the combined adults, women and under 13s) is important and the current junior division just has too great a range to be useful/meaningful. Most kids also don't totally appreciate all the technical components of their sailing yet and alpha scores, hour and 5x10 are usually lost on them. Even 2 second usually has to be translated into km/hr. They appreciate PBs but their speed is low compared to the majority of scores on the website and this is not very encouraging.

So for kids it's all about PBs and individual overall ranking. I don't think GPSTC will continue to be used by this age group if we don't fix this up. More than half of the people affected are in the ACT Gustbusters team this year. It would be sad to lose their interest.

Help me out here. I am not understanding your issue.

I just went to the Individual Rankings and found the age filters extremely easy to understand and use. And I am a 'Senior'!

I can't imagine any teenagers not being all over it.

I even found that in the 'Legends' age group, Mal Falkner is whipping me this year in the 62-65 age group, and Decrepit is whipping us both in the 60+. I will need to dose up on anti-age pills and pull my finger out!

And Herby is killing it in the 73-129 age group!

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sailquik said...

Help me out here. I am not understanding your issue.

I just went to the Individual Rankings and found the age filters extremely easy to understand and use. And I am a 'Senior'!

I can't imagine any teenagers not being all over it.

I am not saying that they couldn't use the filters. I am trying to make the point that the kids relate to the rankings and PBs and the rest is meaningless. Kids love to compete and that doesn't mean it can't be fun. Not that this should be part of the debate but they also don't like playing soccer without keeping the score.

Secondly, why shouldn't there be a division that relates to you if you are a junior? Why is there a special division for women?

Thirdly, the filter doesn't give an accurate result - see comment by Nebbian about the filters counting the same kid twice which is reproduced above. If your birthday is half way through the year and you check the result at the end of the year your result will be counted as an achievement when you were in the older age group although you achieved it when you were in the younger age group.

Fourthly, Ben had said it wasn't a massive deal. (Don't take this to mean I don't appreciate his hard work or that I can't be patient - I have been trying to get this issue addressed for years - my first email was over three years ago.)

Lastly, to all those who don't want "to fix it if it ain't broke", I would say that it IS broke for the ones this issue relates to.


Could someone please tell me who the committee members are?

I'm on the gpstc and didn't we do this to death last time or do we just chop up the age groups into each year you were born IT'S A TEAM EVENT .......get over it

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needsalt said...

KA360 said...
So for kids it's all about PBs and individual overall ranking. I don't think GPSTC will continue to be used by this age group if we don't fix this up. More than half of the people affected are in the ACT Gustbusters team this year. It would be sad to lose their interest.

Why would it be sad?

Do kids really need to see that they're beating someone else to stay interested in windsurfing? I'm not sure they're the kind of people I would enjoy sailing with as adults. I want to sail with and be inspired by people like izaak. People who just love windsurfing.

...

Windsurfing is just plain awesome. So is Robby.

Aside from all that, as has been expressed 1000 times before, I thought GPSTC was about team fun? GPS Speed Surfing is always there if individual performance is your thing?

There's no 'I' in GPSTC

OH MY GOD! You have got to be kidding me! Why are there ANY rankings at all then?

And if it wasn't for GPSTC individual ranking you probably wouldn't even know who Izaak was!

And also, isn't Robby Naish famous because of his performance - that is you know him because he was a winner?

And while we're at it, kids don't get to contribute to the TEAM score and don't get jelly beans.

Since when is healthy competition such a bad thing and enough for you to decide you don't want to sail with someone you haven't even met? If that's a major problem for you, you might get a bit of a shock to find that quite possibly a lot of the people you DO sail with are trying to beat someone else on the individual ranking table (hope I haven't disillusioned you). Our Olympic Heroes are all trying to beat everyone else too!

ANYWAY, I don't think it is necessary for everyone to be patronising. We should all be able to enjoy what we do in our own way regardless of what other people are thinking.

Justice is not being served here and that's the bottom line. I would love to hear a decision on this from the whole committee. I would also be interested in the opinion of the parents of the three other children in the Kiddie category who will be affected in due course. And I wonder what the two kids from overseas who are winning that category think? It would be nice if someone cared about the people affected more that they care about themselves and I would really love to be able to keep using and recommending GPSTC as a great motivational tool for the kids. One that can be used in many different ways (one of which is to aim to see your name go up in the rankings). To me it's pretty clear cut. We have rankings in the GPSTC. One of them doesn't do it's job really well and needs to be fixed up.

First I would like to say there are probably as many ways to enjoy the GPSTC as there are members, not necessarily right or wrong, just different.


I have children in the kiddie and junior divisions who I expect will sail when the weather is warmer. My son will be 13 and at the younger age end of the Junior division. I do not expect he will beat 17 year olds.
Neither do I think this will be my year to beat Jacques, Hans, Slowie, Sailquik, Brad, Izaak, Kato, 25, Lao Shi, .........or many of the hundreds of other excellent sailors in our brilliant competition. I will have a smile on my face as I try to improve and as I try to beat my own previous top 5s.

I will encourage my kids to do the same, and one day if they want it enough, maybe they will be near the top of the rankings. I just hope they get as much enjoyment from windsurfing as me and my friends!

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sausage said...
Firstly to clarify a "committee" implies that there is an incorporated association, of which the GPSTC is not. The GPSTC was and still is the brain child of Nebs and Hardie who we should be forever indebted to for creating one of the greatest competitions and bringing the windsurfing community together. Whilst we are referred to as a committee I see our role more akin to an advisory panel. There's no mandate and we deal with issues as they arise. We also raise funds to keep the site functioning because there are ongoing costs. Thankfully the kitty is quite healthy from our last t-shirt fundraising drive.

No one is forcing you to be a member of the GPSTC and if you are so aggrieved by the way the current rankings unfairly cater for everyone except your kids then don't participate. Set up your own challenge, design and programme your own site, pour your own money into maintaining it, spend your free time banging your head against a brick wall trying to appease all the people who feel that the competition unfairly favours others.

So is this the advisory panel's answer? You're not going to do it?

Just for the record Sausage, I have not appreciated the way you have been expressing yourself during any of this. Personal attacks, innuendo and put-downs should have had no place in dealing with this issue. And I am also referring to the last time this was discussed.

I don't know what your problem is but if you are the advisory panel's spokesman then I think it's shameful and I don't find it reflects well on the Windsurfing Community, GPSTC or those who associate with you.

If you're lucky, you may one day realise that it is a challenge to keep kids interested in Windsurfing and that lots of little things help to attract and motivate them. It is hard to compete with computer games and other easier activities. Events, competitions and activities all have their place in giving kids inspiration and keeping their interest.

It is my view that learning to Windsurf will give children a life time of pleasure and comes with countless other benefits. The effort to teach them is very worthwhile. My children already love windsurfing (only two of the kids are my own by the way). And in answer to Needsalt's comment, no, I do not have any deal hinging on winning an age division. My kids are not leading any category and I don't care whether they do or not. They have next to no chance of being a top speed sailor since they are lightweights like me. And my kids are already winners because they have been given one of life's greatest gifts.

I have been teaching lots of other kids apart from my own and some of them have entered the GPSTC. Some loved the challenge and kept trying to improve their sailing (and sometimes they measured this by seeing how close they could get to the friend that was just above them on the rankings). In one case, the GPSTC ranking helped to motivate the parents to buy the kid some gear of their own. We have a potentially great tool in GPSTC that could be developed with a relatively minor enhancement but it is with regret that I can see that we are too selfish to care about the kids. Every other kids competition or activity is divided into appropriate age categories - what I have proposed is obviously the consensus everywhere else and I simply shouldn't have had such a battle in this forum to have this understood.

I have bothered to bring this up again because last time there appeared to be some recognition of the problem after all the heated discussion which took place and I thought that it was something that was going to be worked on even though it could not be achieved straight away. Yes Kato, we did it to death and in the end it was established that the drop down lists offered as a solution had major issues and did not do the job. Nebbian asked me what the categories should be and I let him know what I thought and thanked him for agreeing to take care of it in time (as I thought that was what he was doing).

If the GPSTC is not the place for individuals then I vote that you get rid of all the individual rankings. Well? Why don't you put your money where your mouth is?
Don't be surprised if you continue to have low participation by kids in the GPSTC. I certainly won't be recommending it. I am very disappointed but if that's your final word then so be it.

I am on the committee and I have NO desire, repeat, NO desire to change anything. I TOTALLY 100% back Sausage with the way he has expressed himself about this topic. It has been debated to death and it is quickly becoming embarrassing that we are still at it. Next you will be wanting awards just for turning up and sailing, a la virtually every sport our kids play nowadays. Friggen cotton wool parenting makes me sick.

Karl, brilliant idea about the kids forming their own team.

If there is a single kid out there that gets discouraged from enjoying this amazing sport we have just because they aren't as high up the rankings as they (or someone else ) would like them to be then maybe that child or that someone else needs to have a good hard look at themselves and maybe take up a different discipline within the sport or better still drop out of the GPSTC and leave what is essentially a TEAM competition the way it is to be run by VOLUNTEERS who do a sensational job. I'm pretty confident that the majority of people within the GPSTC did not get into mand continue windsurfing just because of the GPSTC. We got into windsurfing for the thrill of the sport, NOT because we could fiddle the rankings to make us number one in our category. Love for windsurfing existed long before the GPSTC ever existed. I think this is something that has sorely been forgotten here.

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remo81 said...

sick_em_rex said...
I am on the committee and I have NO desire, repeat, NO desire to change anything. I TOTALLY 100% back Sausage with the way he has expressed himself about this topic. It has been debated to death and it is quickly becoming embarrassing that we are still at it. Next you will be wanting awards just for turning up and sailing, a la virtually every sport our kids play nowadays. Friggen cotton wool parenting makes me sick.

Karl, brilliant idea about the kids forming their own team.

If there is a single kid out there that gets discouraged from enjoying this amazing sport we have just because they aren't as high up the rankings as they (or someone else ) would like them to be then maybe that child or that someone else needs to have a good hard look at themselves and maybe take up a different discipline within the sport or better still drop out of the GPSTC and leave what is essentially a TEAM competition the way it is to be run by VOLUNTEERS who do a sensational job. I'm pretty confident that the majority of people within the GPSTC did not get into mand continue windsurfing just because of the GPSTC. We got into windsurfing for the thrill of the sport, NOT because we could fiddle the rankings to make us number one in our category. Love for windsurfing existed long before the GPSTC ever existed. I think this is something that has sorely been forgotten here.

Sounds like a Dictatorship here. Once the committee has spoken their word is to never again be questioned...

If you don't ask you won't get. BTW I think that it would be a good idea to have two under 18 divisions. How is a 10yo ment to be able to compete with a 17yo. Next you will be saying that women can compete with men???

How many times should it be brought up and how many under 18 age divisions do you want, there is already an under 12 and a 13 to 17. Also there is no dictatorship, there is a small committee of unpaid volunteers and a wide spread of GPSTC participants who are happy with how it is.

Akim, this topic was discussed at length last year, and as you know I agreed with you about the junior age divisions. Nebbian replied that it would be technically awkward to present the results in that form at this stage and instead offered the age filter so that anyone can check their rankings in whatever division they choose to create. I think this is a reasonable compromise. There are people at the other end of the age spectrum who have been asking for an over 70 age division too. The age filter really should satisfy anyone wanting a smaller age division. As there are no individual trophies or certificates anyway, and it's just about personal pride and bragging rights, the individual sailor is the only person who needs to know where they rank.
I am not on the "committee" but I think their decision to go with the age filter is a reasonable one, especially as they are not the ones who do the programming!
I do believe suggestions for improvements need to be raised from time to time, and I am sure the committee will deal with them as they arise, with input from this forum. The age ranking issue has been dealt with. It is not the perfect solution but perfect solutions which satisfy all rarely exist.

Congratulations on the work you are doing with the youngsters in your club. You are to be commended for it.
Apply the age filter and let the kids know where they rank in their "age division". Give them certificates or whatever you think will make them feel proud of their achievements.
We do not want you and your youngsters to leave the GPSTC or start a new comp. Such talk is quite counterproductive.

Obviously there hasn't been enough good wind lately. Everyone is getting grumpy.

Chill out guys!

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sick_em_rex said...
I am on the committee and I have NO desire, repeat, NO desire to change anything. I TOTALLY 100% back Sausage with the way he has expressed himself about this topic. It has been debated to death and it is quickly becoming embarrassing that we are still at it. Next you will be wanting awards just for turning up and sailing, a la virtually every sport our kids play nowadays. Friggen cotton wool parenting makes me sick.

Karl, brilliant idea about the kids forming their own team.

If there is a single kid out there that gets discouraged from enjoying this amazing sport we have just because they aren't as high up the rankings as they (or someone else ) would like them to be then maybe that child or that someone else needs to have a good hard look at themselves and maybe take up a different discipline within the sport or better still drop out of the GPSTC and leave what is essentially a TEAM competition the way it is to be run by VOLUNTEERS who do a sensational job. I'm pretty confident that the majority of people within the GPSTC did not get into mand continue windsurfing just because of the GPSTC. We got into windsurfing for the thrill of the sport, NOT because we could fiddle the rankings to make us number one in our category. Love for windsurfing existed long before the GPSTC ever existed. I think this is something that has sorely been forgotten here.

firstly, thank you to the committee, and volunteers, I love windsurfing especially gps style sailing, may I ask;

If you're on the committee and have no desire, repeat, no desire to change anything, then;
a.) could you explain what is it the committee does,
b.) maybe the committee or gpstc hierarchy could show a little respect to the effort others have put into sailing, and the commitment they have shown to gps sailing instead of dismissing everyone elses ideas ,
c.) can the gpstc royalty explain why they dismiss members passion and focus as misaligned as its just for fun,,,, fun like driving fifteen hrs to get awesome gps results, fun like sailing sub arctic conditions to get better results, are you basically suggesting we shouldnt even wear a gps, are your great results just a by product of splashing around? Is it just tooooo weird to except that people are focussed, are passionate, and would like to feel like their contributions to gps sailing and the gpstc could be a little more respected, especially by the gpstc hierarchy

I dont mind the way the gpstc is now and has been in the past, in my opinion, at my age, the age filters have no value,
to suggest that my focus and efforts towards gps sailing, which is fun, have been nothing more than a man splashing around aimless is disrespectful, especially from the gpstc committee,,,,,,,,,,,enjoy,,,,,,,,,,,wusses

I do thank all that make the GPSTC work. It is a great thing.

My problem is that KA360 has been slammed by all on here as he brought the topic up a year ago. If it wasn't for successful campaigning year after year women would have never got the vote.

Just the same every year when the topic is raised of what changes to people want to see in the GPSTC, I always put my 2 cents in and ask for a 500m division. Knowing that it will get shut down. But I am still entitled to say.