USPA helping college clubs?

[VTcnix 0]

I wrote this email to my school's listserve, but out of boredom I thought I would post it here to see if anyone had any thoughts. I know that there is already a thread on the decline in the number of skydivers, but my email deals specifically with the idea of increasing the number of collegiate skydivers. It's extremely long, but I didnt want to take the time to edit it down

"So, I know that I am a month behind, but I just recently finished reading the September Parachutist. I noticed that both the Capital Commentary and letters to the editor had to do with the decline in number of skydivers. Chris Needles points to the aging of the baby boomers, whereas the letters to the editor point to the increasing cost of the sport.

I looked up the numbers on uspa.org and, from the data they have available, this is what I found:

In 2000- 34,217

In 2001- 34,322

In 2002- 33,664

In 2004- 32,057

In 2005- 31,276

So, there has been a short term steady decline in numbers of jumpers (at least in jumpers registered with USPA). However, it is hard to draw any firm conclusions since the only data I could find is for the past 5 years. (I’m just going to take his word about it)

So what can be blamed?

Is it people getting older?

Is it the rising cost of jumping?

The increasing wussy culture of society?

The decline of the economy?


Chris Needles states that the solution to this problem is for the skydiving community to support and foster the collegiate skydiving clubs.

From the 5 year data that I found in 2002 students made up 5.3% of all skydivers, in 2005 they comprised 5%,… not a huge change (although, since the total has gone down, the total number of college skydivers has also decreased). However, like I said, it is hard to draw any conclusions since the limited range of the data. So I am guessing their goal would be to increase this percentage of college skydivers. Pointing to the fact that most schools do not have a skydiving club, his idea is to encourage the starting up of new clubs in these schools, and to encourage the growth of already established clubs.


That sounds nice and all, and makes for a good capital commentary, but I am interested about what USPA’s plan for doing this is.

The first thing he says that they can do is “raise the visibility of college skydiving” by (1) help clubs become group members by making membership desirable and affordable (2) help with details on how to sell the club program to school administrators. First off, I don’t think that the cost of USPA membership dissuades college skydivers from skydiving. Our club used to pay for the cost of membership for members and it really wasn’t a huge selling point. In fact, we got rid of the program and no one said anything. I think that the biggest problems for college clubs are making themselves visible and convincing people who are already living on a tight budget to foot the bill for the huge cost of training. Advertising costs money and takes time/effort. If USPA would like to help clubs, they could start by providing clubs with advertising materials such as t-shirts, posters, flyers, banners, free parachutists etc. They could donate tandems for clubs to auction off or help clubs to organize events to promote skydiving on campus.

The second idea, of having USPA aid clubs on how to sell the club to school administrators seems to have some promise. USPA should seek out a council of representatives from every school program to discuss what routes each took to build the programs they have and what methods each use to build their membership. From this council they could appoint members from different areas who would be responsible for mentoring people at other schools interested in starting up a club.

USPA could go beyond just working with school administrators to start up clubs, and could also aid clubs in their ongoing negotiations with school administrators in such things as funding, starting up collegiate teams, and having demos on campus. Our club has been unsuccessful with these things, and would probably have benefited from USPA’s help.


The next area that Chris Needles touched on is that “dropzones need to get involved” He says that DZs need to view colleges as a new source of talent and a new source of business. I think that this is important. The club’s relationship with Adrenaline Air Sports has been the reason that we have been able to grow into the club that we are. The tandems that we bring out to the dropzone has been our #1 steady source of income.
I am a firm believer that clubs need to have a home DZ. It fosters the sense of community within the club and helps to connect the collegiate jumpers with non-collegiate jumpers. While I think it is important that people travel around and experience different dropzones, I also think that it is important that young jumpers become involved with their local dropzone community. There, new jumpers will get to know experienced jumpers and that will be beneficial in developing their skills. Jumpers will also become deeply entrenched within that “skydiving family” and will develop long-standing connections outside of the club that they will be able to rely on for a long time after they graduate. Dropzones should not only support clubs financially but should work to build a cohesive community between the club and DZ.


Finally, Chris Needles mentions Collegiates, saying that “wouldn’t it be great if we doubled the number of schools and quadrupled the number of competitors in each of these upcoming years?”. Our club has already discussed the problems with Collegiates. The one national competition that we have is dominanted by fully funded military teams. If there were separate divisions for military and civilian, those clubs that are not funded would be able to compete amongst themselves. Since Collegiates is located on the far end of one coast or the other tends to prohibit the participation of clubs that are located far away. It is already expensive enough to send the club to Florida, I do not want to think about what the cost is going to be to send them to Arizona. USPA could acknowledge this and perhaps hold one competition for those schools on the West Coast and one competition for those on the East Coast. Beyond that, I think that it would be beneficial for USPA to sponsor small division “meets” or competitions throughout the year. This would facilitate the intermingling of clubs and increase cohesion within the collegiate skydiving community. This would also help clubs to be recognized as teams by their schools and would increase their funding potentials. I sent an email to USPA last year detailing these complaints, and never heard back from them.


Anyway, I think that it is interesting to hear a representative from USPA acknowledging the importance of college clubs. They have played no role in our club, and it would be interesting to see how they could benefit us and the collegiate skydiving community as a whole. We have recently seen a drop in our membership and the number of tandems that we are bringing out. Hopefully this is due to a fluke and is not part of some larger trend. We were lucky to see huge growth in the past few years and now have a rather decent club. We cannot forget that this was a result of many people’s effort and not something that happened over night. We need to continue to strengthen the cohesion within the club and work hard to incorporate new members into that group. Most of the new members we’ve had over the past few years have stuck with the sport because of the friendships they formed. Remember those members that you recruit today will probably be those people you are jumping with 10 years from now.

(by the way, I'm from the VT club)

[Samurai136 0]

Hey, I'll wear the asshat....

Do college clubs generate more sport skydivers than tandems?

hmmmmmmmmm.......

"Buttons aren't toys." - Trillian
Ken

[TomAiello 26]

Quote

...help clubs become group members by making membership desirable and affordable...First off, I don’t think that the cost of USPA membership dissuades college skydivers from skydiving. Our club used to pay for the cost of membership for members...

Aren't USPA Membership and USPA Group Membership different things?


If USPA's goal was to increase the number of collegiate skydivers, I'd think they should try to create a scholarship program to fund college students going through AFF. It's the huge start up cost, not the ongoing marginal cost, that dissuades most poor college students.

When I was in college, a fair number of college students paid for AFF by packing, which worked well since the DZ was really very close to the University. I'm not sure how many places the two exist in such close proximity, though (by google maps it looks like about 6 miles, from memory it's a really long bike ride or a short drive).

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[ksjumper 0]

In my opinion, if they want better attendance at collegiates they need to move it to be held closer to or after Jan. 1st. The average civilian college skydiver has a hard time convincing mom and dad they they need to load up the car on Christmas night and drive across the country to go to a skydiving competition that starts 2 days after X-mas.

I had read in some board meeting notes that changing to a later date was considered but it didn't seem to happen this year. It's being held dec 27th to Jan. 1st. I think starting on on the 29th or later would work better. It would give the kids a chance to get the holiday relative work out of the way and perhaps get to florida(or arizona) with a day or two to practice before the meet.

I remember when I went to collegiates 16 years ago, we left kansas at 7am on the 26th, drove all day and all night to arrive at the DZ(clewiston) early afternoon on the 27th. We made a couple of jumps then had to attend the competitor's meeting that night. I really would have liked the chance to get a few more jumps under my belt before competition started.

Collegiates is a good time and whether you are in a college club or not, you should try to attend/compete. It's cool to hang out with the college crowd. Believe me, I still do.

ksjumper

Skydive K-State

[Spizzzarko 0]

Collegiates has been run by Bill Wenger in the past. He is a full time employee of the Airforce Academy, and the only time the cadets from the military academy's can get the time off is durring the scheduled holiday breaks. I don't know if Bill Wenger still runs collegiates, but I do not think that they will ever change the dates and times of the competition, because if they did then the military academy cadets would not be able to compete. If you look at the attendance of collegiates then you will see that the USAF and USA competitors make up the bulk. If those two pulled out then I do not think the collegiates would continue to happen. This is not what the military leaders of these academy's want, because of their continued wins in this arena. Think about it. The Commander of the parachuting squadron at USAFA presents to his boss and peers that under his command his cadets won first place in 4-way, style, and accuracy, at the collegiate nationals. The other commanders such as the chess team commander cannot match that. The parachute squadrons commanders boss then goes to his or her boss and says the flying team did a competition, and did ok, but MY jump cadets won first place in 3 different events and swept the collegiate skydiving nationals. This is major kudos for the military teams.

Now let's compare the military cadet who competes at collegiate skydiving nationals to the average college skydiving person. I will use an Air Force cadet as I have worked with them and have an intimate familiarity of their program, as an example.

The Air Force Academy first jump program is a class that they sign up to take like philosophy, or math. It usually last about a month long and they only come down to the airfield a few hours every other day. Eventually they get their 5 jumps and their basic parachutist badge. If they are lucky enough to be selected to the team then they will do one year of up grade training. Once they are Juniors then they will become parachute team members. The team (50 cadets) is divided into two elements. One being demonstration (jumping into football games and stadiums and what not) and the competition team. The competition team will compete in 4-way, classic Style, and Classic accuracy. At their disposal is a fleet of three twin otters. Not all three of them are used all the time, but they have those rescourses available to them. By the time they finish with their Junior year these cadets should have about 300-500 jumps. There are a few cadets that gradute with a 1000 jumps but that is the exception and not the norm. The airforce cadets do not pay for any of this with money (their hard work and dedication to the USAF is payment enough).

Now let's talk about collegiate competitor Snuffy from the Lambda Lambda Lambda frat at Adams College. Competitor snuffy probably may have 150-300 jumps when he os she goes to collegiates. Chances are he has not jumped with the team mates that they are competing with for much more than 100 of those jumps. The AF cadets usually go into competition with much more jumps together as a team. In addition to the jumps, gear, and travel to collegiate nationals competitor Snuffy must also worry about Books, booze, and tuition. So you can see that there is not much of a financial incentive to the collegiate athlete of Lambda Lambda Lamda from Adams College.

So if you really want to get down to it, I feel that Collegiate Nationals is biased towards the military participants. It is biased in the manner of support that the military competitors recieve, it is biased in the dates that it is held, and it is biased in the types of competition that are held (how many people do you know that are collegiate skydivers and are pouring them selves into a style suite and strapping on a classic acc canopy? How many DZ's are out there that maintain a classic acc tuffet?). There should at least be two classifications of competitors in Collegiate nationals in my opinion. Sure collegiates is a good thing, but it needs to be changed to meet the changes in the sport.

[jheadley 0]

Quote

Hey, I'll wear the asshat....

Do college clubs generate more sport skydivers than tandems?

hmmmmmmmmm.......

In the past few years, I'd estimate 80-90% of the AFF graduates from Adrenaline Air Sports have been from the VT club.

[VTcnix 0]

I think this was a great post. I do believe that collegiates should be at a time that the collegiate guys could attend. But i think it would be beneficial to everyone if there was a different "bracket" for civilian/military. As it stands, the military teams are really only competing against themselves and I know for sure that the college teams will specify "Excluding the military, we came in 2nd". Winning gold metals does not only benefit military teams, it is a huge selling point for college clubs when we approach the annual budget board.

[Spizzzarko 0]

I think it all comes down to the "Sprirt of Competition". There is a good discussion about this in the swooping forum if yall are interested called "Nick Batch swoops 600'". Seperate classes would be a good start, or just hold collegiates in conjunction with regular nationals would be good too. Some of the Academy teams compete in regular us nationals too.