Ullswater Race Development Programme (URDP)
The start of a new sailing season and a new Direction for URDP that was approved by the UYC Management Committee in February!!
We (Lester Noble, John Robson, Dave Giles, Sue Giles and myself, Brian Moreton) were very pleased that the UYC Management Committee endorsed a proposal to reposition URDP to being an informal Coaching Programme open to all UYC Racing Classes that would be externally funded by sponsors and annual talks.
In the proposal we set out the following steps to developing our 2009 programme:
• Step 1, a focused questionnaire developed by URDP (Lester) and issued by Fleet Captains that would establish interest in URDP coaching.
• Step 2, analysis of questionnaire responses to define areas of maximum interest and against each how the coaching can be delivered by internal UYC resources like Lester and Dave and, also external resources.
• Step 3, presentation of the 2009 URDP programme to the UYC Management Committee at the start of the sailing season.
The URDP Questionnaire was issued early March. If you have not got one please contact Lester (ln@orangebikes.co.uk) or myself (bdm@link-projects.com) as we are trying to get all questionnaires in by Friday, 27th March.
In only 2 weeks we have already received many questionnaires and lots of positive feedback on the new initiative. For those of you who have given this many, many thanks. To those still to send in the questionnaire please find the time as every one provides an added insight.
We will be going to the UYC Management Committee on 4th April to seek approval for the programme. Some of the things we are looking at as part of this are:
• Annual talk, this year Paul Goodison, Laser Gold Medal winner Beijing has offered to do the talk. (Paul has still to finalise his ’09 sailing programme, so date it is to be confirmed soon.)
• Visibility for URDP, the programme will be displayed on the UYC notice board and the UYC website.
• Timing of Coaching, will be on defined Saturday afternoons AFTER the usual ACH/Island races.
• External Coaching, an example of this is Phil Evans (several times Flying 15 world champion) to do a Cruiser set-up day. This is because both Tempests and Cruisers have already defined “boat preparation” as a significant interest.
• Video Playback, providing dedicated camcorder, computer and projector to play back results of coaching or, generate URDP material.
As soon as we have final approval the plan will be to do an initial Group Session to kick off the 2009 programme. This (and other initial sessions) will cover some of the All Classes aspects before we move to specific fleet coaching for, cruisers, tempests, asymmetric, conventional and Laser classes.
Sorry if all of this is a bit like work formal structures but we need to go through this phase with URDP to get buy in to the proposed coaching and UYC Management Committee approval. Once we are through this we hope that “informal coaching and help” will be what URDP is known for. Hopefully this will extend into support to those that just want to get more enjoyment from their racing through to those trying to get to the front of the fleet and those that will represent UYC with pride at Open and National/International level.
Brian Moreton