This how to set up an off road mountain bike youth club guide builds on the how to start a mountain bike club guide and focusses in specifically on the nuance of youth club development in urban off road cycling. It is based on the experiences of setting up The Trax Youth club in lordship Rec, North London. Here are some steps and learnings

Think local

Youth clubs are much more locally specific than adult based mountain bike clubs. Adults wile travel on public transport, get into cars and rife long distances.Youth clubs need to serve the 1 - 3 mile radius of where they are based. For a youth club to be sustainable it needs to attract the local kids. Hence organise activities that are locally based be it in local parks or woods and have a central meeting point.

Parents are your life blood

take time to form relationships with parents, school and local community centres. these are your life blood.Get them involved as much as possible. Parents working with their kids in a club environment can be a very rewarding experience for all and is a core foundation to sustainability.

Club Equity and a Club all

Make sure your club is accessible to all regardless of ethnic or socio economic status or ability. Do this by researching on-line what is the mix in your 1 -3 mile radius. If it is 50% black British then target that group. Remember there are more women than men so work to be representative. Targeting can be done by talks in local schools and  community centres and making sure that your volunteer base represents the local community make up. the more representative you are the more rewarding and sustainable is your club. It also increases your funding and volunteer base.

Get affiliated and move to accreditation

British Cycling currently leads the way when looking at cycling youth clubs. They will have a regional officer who will come meet you and give you advise. They will help with process and your structure. Affiliation costs but is worth it. It also gives you public liability insurance and you can not operate without this. It also gives parents and schools more confidence. As a bare minimum all volunteers need to be CRB checked and you need one British Cycling Level II coach who is first aid qualified. Move towards the Go Ride status which is the next step up. You need a Welfare officer to look out for Welfare of the kids and trained in Child safety, British cycling Level II coach training an approved constitution and child protection policies and set procedures which we discuss in a second.the next stage is up is Sports England Club Mark. All really positive stuff

Use professionals to set you up

This is optional is generally funding dependent but we used really good experienced CTC coaches (Ian Warby and friends)  to get us going. They coached and we
shadowed and assisted. This was invaluable in seeing how session structures worked. You could invite friends made from other clubs to come and help out initially or even go visit them and volunteer in other clubs to learn.

Volunteers

There will  be a whole feature on this but core is remembering this is a two way deal as well as lots of fun. You need to offer training and experience and reward and you need to ensure no one volunteer takes on too much, gets co-erced into doing stuff they don't want or gets exhausted. Match people to opportunities not the other way round. Make sure you have clear job roles (examples to be attached in separate article). a list would be Chair, Secretary, Coaches, Assistant Coaches, Welfare Office,Ride Leaders, Treasurer, Membership officer, Publicity officer, Fund-raiser and General Volunteers. And no you don't need all these to start with. A Volunteer Co-ordinator is a great role too. Give them training be it coaching, first aid, volunteer co-ordinator so curses, equity in coaching, a club for all and safeguarding and protecting children. These are core ones to spread around. Reward through recognition and certificates and if you don't think you have been saying thanks to much you haven't been saying it enough. Let me emphasis being representative of your local community, getting parents involved and CRB checks again Don't ever skimp on the safety of your children. Make sure each volunteer does a little then a lot will be achieved.

Age groups and managing youth

If you have a good number of coaches (5 - 10 is a good number) then you can run groups for different abilities and maybe ages. NB age is not a factor for ability always yet a 16 year old may not be keen to be coached alongside a 6 year old. We started with age 10 - 16 and most where 12 - 13 and then as confidence grew and we say the demand for the 9-10 year old age group we moved to 8 - 16. NB it's harder to attract 15 and 16 year olds its better to get them young and move through club as they grow with the club. Essential to give kids rules a structure and increasing responsibility especially the older kids. We have two under 16's on our committee and work with some of the older kids to help set up the sessions. Never forget kids may need structure and skill development but they also need to have fun. It's important to understand the motives of all the participants it could be social, self esteem, skill based, competitive or a mix of all these. Any one style will fail. be flexible and varied.

Typical Session structure

We started off with Saturday morning sessions that were 3 hours long. This was a bit exhausting for all concerned so we moved it in our second session to two hours which worked out great. Important is to think of the club in two contradictory ways 1) it is drop in. if you miss sessions it doesn't mater. this deals with reality. 2) think of the season as a set of progression that ends with a big event be it a big ride or a race and make sure all your sessions give the right skills to get you there. Once you do the British cycling level 1 or 2 course you will have tons of resources and more confidence to plan sessions. There a few here on the site but do the course. A typical session could be:

9.30 Risk assessment pre-brief
10.00 Welcome, sign in and chat to parents
10.10 Bike and clothing check (get kids involved)
10,15 Warm Up
10.25 First session generally skill based
11.00 Break for friendships to form
11.15 Second session - more game and endurance based
11.50 Warm down
12.00 Sign out and parents collect kids.
12.15 Debrief clean up

Rides

It's core to do regular rides as a youth club. These tie all the skills together, open the eyes to the wider world out there, build enormous self esteem, create the friendships and the memories. CTC offer great Technical ride leader courses. As these often ovolve urban to rural transport investign in your kids having a safe route and bike ability is well worth it.

Processes

I've attached some forms like risk assessment, membership and parental consent, accident forms and so on. these are core to how you run a session. They are not a nice to have nor are they just forms.

Other youth clubs

Make friends and talk to other youth clubs especially other sports ones. It's the same set up and you will accelerate your learning curve enormously.

Fees

We don't charge and no it does not make the kids not respect the club and it does make the club more accessible. It is likely we will down the line charge. Whatever you charge it may be easier in urban setting to do drop in fees as well as an instalment method and make sure it is flexible for different individual circumstances.

Meetings

Hold monthly club meeting not youth club meetings ie. bring both elements of your club together. Make sure meetings are not always in pubs or you restrict kids and family membership from being there. We maid this mistake and learned the hard way.

Finally

Enjoy it's the most rewarding thing I have been ever involved in and the folk I work alongside are amazing. It's a team community effort to make these things happen. The learnings here are not just mine they are just being shared here. They come from the insight, creative thought and amazing team hard work from The Trax. To acknowledge just a few of those that contributed like Mario Schmoltzi our Head coach, Shazima Tejani our Secretary, Yaa Adjei our Welfare officer, Bola our Treasurer, Sakine Ukar our membership and publicity officer, Dave Morris from the Friends, Bill Wright from British Cycling, Ian Warby from the CTC and Luisa from the council as well as so many of the volunteers, parents, friends and community groups. The list goes on and the point of the list is hopefully self evident.

Attachments:

Rec Risk Assessment_v1.0_20100627.doc	[ ]	61 Kb
The TRAX guest entry form_v1.2.doc	[ ]	18 Kb
The TRAX member registration form_v1.2.doc	[ ]	20 Kb
The TRAX parental consent form_v1.2.doc	[ ]	20 Kb