BUDS, BUISC, KINGS... The competitive side.

Another important aspect of LUSSC is the competitive side. A problem we had to face at the start of the year was that a lot of the best competitors were leaving. This meant we had to work hard to build up our teams and get as many people trying out racing/freestyle as possible!

Our strategy....

• Promoting our training sessions every Tuesday and Wednesday for racing and freestyle was important, and making sure people felt comfortable enough to try it out as it can be quite intimidating if you're new - we did this at freshers fair and at sign up sessions every Monday and Friday
• We used our grant funding provided by the Student's Union to make Wednesday sessions free and Tuesday sessions subsidised - this meant that more people would be able to come to training sessions as well as money not being a hindrance to people not going
• Creating a Womens Team - one thing LUSSC hasn't been able to have is a Women's team due to the lack of women interested. This is one thing we were determined to develop
• Developing freestylers - freestyling needed to be more accessible to everyone and our best freestylers had left, it was imperative to train up some new ones!

Brendan Jackson - Freestyler

Our Successes....

• To our two biggest competitions of the year, BUDS and BUISC, we managed to take 16 people to compete and everyone performed well
• For Kings, we managed to bring a womens team and also have some reserves! As well as this we built up a very strong mixed team and have performed strongly so far
• Brendan, who started freestyling this year, took part in BUISC for his first freestyling competition and performed extremely well
• We have more racers than we've ever had before, which is fantastic and means that we have reserves if people cannot compete. People that were new to skiing have also being trying out the race course which demonstrates a determination which we love to see in LUSSC!

LUSSC Womens Racers!

Competitive reflection:

• We have developed our teams to include a womens team and a 2nd mixed team, as well as this many LUSSCers are happy to try out racing even if they are complete beginners
• We feel that we have managed to create a friendly atmosphere which is so important when developing team members and means that people are more likely to persevere in achieving top racing/freestyle skills. 
• It was a challenge to ensure that we could recruit enough people to fill our teams, especially as the first competition was only a week after Fresher's fair, however, with the use of promotion at Freshers fair, social media and a taster session at our training venue we managed to spark enough interest
• A challenge that we didn't foresee is that due to the fact that we have a lot more competitors, we can't accommodate all of them racing. This means we needed to make sure we were giving people a fair chance at competing. The ways we did this was the use of a rota, and holding race trials so we could find out the fastest racers. It meant that we were doing it in a fair way as people couldn't dispute race times.

Career Future:

Competition in the classroom is healthy in small doses i.e. getting children into groups and the group that completes something the fastest and correctly gets a prize! It keeps children motivated and adds an element of fun into learning. I feel that I would be able to allow a good amount of competitiveness into the classroom, and having dealt with it in an intense situation such as putting people into sports team, I feel i would be able to manage the situation well.

LUSSC Ski Trip!

LUSSC has two trips to the alps which are a highlight of being in LUSSC, therefore, a lot of planning and organisation needs to go into it to make sure it's a success!

1. Ski Companies

One of the most important things we needed to decide was what ski company we were going to book our trip with. There are multiple companies that offer competitive prices to universities. The companies we considered were:

• Ski Alpine
• Off the Piste
• Wasteland
• Outgoing

What LUSSC is looking for:

• They can accommodate the amount of members we want to bring on the trip for a competitive price
• As LUSSC is one of the smaller university groups, that we will have the same access to facilities and will receive the same attention as the larger groups
• Support on getting members onto the trip and having a contact that we can reach if we have any problems.

To evaluate the companies, the holiday rep and myself went to meet with them all. Ski alpine seemed the most personal service, however, Outgoing had more competitive prices. We wanted both of those for our ski trips so negotiations had to happen! Using the prices we'd been offered with Outgoing, we managed to get the prices down with Ski Alpine and ended up with a contract that would benefit our members immensely. 

2. Leading up to the trip

Promotion of the holiday:

• We incorporated promotion of the holiday with freshers fair, that I talked about in my last post. This was the best way to get new members to join and also to promote it to non members. 
• We took flyers to halls and had a ski alpine representative up for the duration of freshers fair to advertise Ski Alpine as a company and get people onto the trip. 
• The same rep also joined us on our first social which had approximately 150 people attending.
• Using social media such as Facebook and email, we could update all our members on the holiday and advertise the booking date.
• We created a video to show people what the trip last year looked like which gave people an idea of the trip

LUSSC's Homemade Video:

We managed to book 96 people onto the trip which exceeded 55 from the Christmas before. The increase in promotion as well as the great deal we managed to get meant we managed to exceed our expectations!

Reflection:

• Time management: Promoting the trip was a lot of hard work and very time consuming. Keeping the committee motivated to keep on promoting was essential. Making rotas meant that we all could put in the same amount of time and work this around our other commitments and rotas will be used for other purposes.
• Negotiating: Evaluating the different ski companies was essential to make sure we had the best contract that benefited members. Meeting with all the companies meant we knew what was on the market and could negotiate. This will be passed on to the committee next year so they are also able to find the best contract.
• Social media: the facebook group as well as email meant we could access all the people that signed up on freshers fair and could make a bigger awareness of the trip. This allowed us to get a large number booked onto the trip.

Career Future

Another aspect, for teaching, I have developed is my 'classroom management' skills. If i can control 100 university students on holiday in the Alps, I feel more confident that I can control 30 pupils in a classroom! As well as this, we had multiple issues on the trips such as illnesses, injuries, and small problems like people losing things. All of which I had to deal with and as well would be common problems in a classroom!