The State of Club Running
The State of Club Running was a project developed by club running volunteers to assess and address the current issues faced by NIRCA and collegiate running clubs in the United States.
Summary
At the end of 2019 (and beginning of 2020), SCR produced two documents:
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The State of Club Running 2019 Report: a full report detailing the current state of club running and NIRCA, and offering recommendations for club finances, membership, leadership, competitions, and NIRCA. Many recommendations and explanations were adapted from the responses to our initial questionnaire sent out in May of 2019. The intended audience was primarily any club leader or general member, with the additional hope that NIRCA would consider some of our suggestions.
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The State of Club Running 2019 Development Guide: a guide primarily geared towards new or less-developed clubs, offering advice learned from the evolutions of other successful clubs about many of the possible struggles likely to occur in a club’s development. Three developmental stages are considered: Commencement, Growth, and Maturation, and action items to take within each aspect of a running club: Finances, Membership, Leadership, and Competitions, are provided.
You can find both documents on the State of Club Running Internet Archive Page.
The SCR 2019 staff comprised me: Raymond Tana – a graduated President of Penn State Club XC, and Brendan Warren – an officer of MRun in 2019.
The graphic designer behind all SCR 2019 logos was Domenic Feola of Penn State Club XC.
Motivation
The original motivation for the State of Club Running was described as follows:
NIRCA does not do much to analyze its clubs, nor to effectively encourage much conversation between them. As such, there is a severe lack of relationships between clubs beyond competitive; and there is hardly any data on our demographics or internal structures. Moreover, teams across the nation are all quite unique, making the most of their preexisting environments in order to make their clubs successful. No one conference, discussion, blog post, or run could speak to all of them. But we know that there are many shared problems and shareable solutions between these clubs.
Every contactable club was contacted to fill out a questionnaire that gathered information about demographics, travel, finances, leadership, volunteering, athletics, and more. The questionnaire was built with the goal of obtaining all of the information believed to be useful when transferring solutions from successful clubs to struggling ones, as well as useful when analyzing the patterns within NIRCA that could expose any unfair treatment. In particular, we want to tackle inequity in regional opportunity, as well as prevent more clubs from extinction. We also want to show NIRCA that there is a great amount of untapped knowledge stored within the leadership of its constituent clubs.
Obviously, we are very excited about this project, and cannot wait to see how much we can tackle before the end of 2019! We are doing this for everyone’s benefit, and we hope to help every current and upcoming running club, as well as improve NIRCA’s relationship with them.
The Full Reports
State of Club Running 2019 Report
State of Club Running 2019 Development Guide
A Personal Note
written Nov 10, 2019
In the middle of my trip to Colorado in 2019, I met up with CU Boulder’s running club President, Caelan Denley. We had 16 miles worth of time to talk about many of the issues faced by his club, ranging from finances, to participation, to NIRCA involvement, and more. Having the opportunity to investigate so personally into another running club was something I had only been able to do once before at the NIRCA Winter Conference of 2017 in Boston, MA, where many running clubs’ leaders met to discuss current issues within NIRCA. Coming from a really developed team at Penn State, my worldview of club running was widely expanded after hearing about many modern issues that we had taken for granted.
Beyond this Winter Conference, NIRCA does not do much to analyze its clubs, nor to effectively encourage much conversation between them. As such, there is a severe lack of relationships between clubs beyond competitive; and there is hardly any data on our demographics or internal structures. Moreover, teams across the nation are all quite unique, making the most of their preexisting environments in order to make their clubs successful. No one conference, discussion, blog post, or run could speak to all of them. But I know that there are many shared problems and shareable solutions between these clubs. With my newfound perspective, I set out to connect clubs and learn from them better than ever before.
Using a list of teams that have participated in NIRCA at least once before, I scoured the internet and social media platforms to find some working email addresses or DMs that would allow me to contact the current leaders of every collegiate running club in the U.S. Roughly 400 google searches later, I had compiled a list of 230 addresses to send to. I discovered that many clubs had become inactive in just the past few years, and that Club Sport departments are generally terrible at updating their websites. Regardless, on May 27, 2019, I sent out an email begging each club’s participation in an infantile project titled The State of Club Running (SCR). I liked this name on its own, but later decided I liked pronouncing the acronym as “soccer”, referencing just how common it is for long-distance runners to come from a soccer background.
All I asked was for them to fill out a questionnaire that gathers information about demographics, travel, finances, leadership, volunteering, athletics, and more. The questionnaire was built with the goal of obtaining all of the information I believed could be useful when transferring solutions from successful clubs to struggling ones, as well as useful when analyzing the patterns within NIRCA that could expose any unfair treatment. In particular, I wanted to tackle inequity in regional opportunity, as well as prevent more clubs from extinction. I also wanted to show NIRCA that great amount of untapped knowledge stored within the leadership of its constituent clubs.
Not knowing the quantity and attitude of responses I would be receiving, I was worried that my questionnaire would flop. I was also worried that many teams would deem this kind of NIRCA oversight unnecessary or harmful in some regard. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the positivity I received from many clubs’ leaders. One officer of a Floridian club explained how the lack of other Florida teams makes it very difficult when searching for affordable competitions, even for their well-established club. This leader specifically requested that a section be included addressing the creation of new clubs in less represented areas. This idea really hit home for me, and it was inspiring to see another leader do their best to kickstart new clubs within their state. That kind of local advocacy is absolutely necessary in order to succeed in this national effort. It was a little sad to see that this leader had not felt empowered or heard enough to bring this up to NIRCA before, so I was further encouraged that this report would evoke some lurking issues.
Another club leader: a graduated President another large running club, offered himself towards this project. His ideas and motivations were immediately trustworthy to me, and I enthusiastically accepted him onto the team. Fearing sounding too prophetic, I should add that I later discovered that NIRCA was founded by the two ex-Presidents Greg Haapala of Michigan and Tommy Otterbine of Penn State.
By the start of June, I have started many preliminary analyses and inquiries as the questionnaire deadline approaches at the end of July. I have written some Python and SQL scripts to store our data and do some calculations on them. For instance, I can calculate regional demographics such as by sex and by undergraduate vs. graduate presence. I can also calculate the average location of teams within NIRCA (surprise surprise: it’s very east and pretty north). Both my partner and I have a fair amount of computer science experience, so this part is very fun. I am excited to get the opportunity to develop a report that can speak to every possible problem, statistic, process, and opportunity that we and every responding club leader, can brainstorm.
I worry that the final set of participants will not be reflective of the entire nation; three weeks after my first mass email, I have roughly 25 schools’ responses, but they are primarily from the well-represented regions within NIRCA. I would hope that more Pacific, Heartland, and Southeast teams decide to participate. I will send out a “1 month” reminder of the questionnaire, as well as a “1 week” reminder as we approach the deadline, but it is likely that I’ll consider extending it as I have a large trip planned around the same time period (so what good will closing the form do if I can’t start my analysis immediately after?)
More to come!