At late our club has been attracting several younger members, and we had the
opportunity to ask one of them today what attracted him to our club.
Initially he was his interest to get involved with the sport, and he looked
us up on the Internet - we did not ask him how he knew about the sport.
Secondly he was impressed by our site; he called it "cool".
He was then able to contact the club by e-mail using web site links, got a
prompt reply, this impressed him. He then made his way to the airfield on
his flash motorbike and took a TIF "with a real nice old guy" and he was
hooked.
Quite clearly this Ducatti riding new member is not turned off by older guys
having fun.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher
H Thorpe
Sent: Thursday, 24 March 2005 11:12 PM
To: 'Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.'
Subject: RE: [Aus-soaring] mining past glider pilots
Nick Gilbert wrote:-
<<<<
"Go to a parachute centre sometime. I visited one to have a chute repacked
outside Sydney one day. It was a Friday afternoon and there must have been
60-70 people there, with very few people over 30. Can you imagine how
uncomfortable and out of place most (i will not say all. I know some damned
funky older instructors) 50-70 year old gliding instructors would be in that
environment?"
"It is not a matter of blame, bad attitude or ageism. It is simply lack of
common ground. The amount of time you spend not flying when you are learning
means that you need something other than the gliding to make you come back.
Sitting around for 2 hours in between flights, talking about Lawn Bowls
(thanks for that one Peter) does not float my boat. Luckily I was born into
the sport (thanks Dad)."
"I don't care what anyone says. Gliding IS a cool sport. We just need to
make
life at the gliding club interesting enough to keep them coming back until
the sport hooks them."
>>>>
Nick seems to be stating that young people need other young people around
them to provide "comfort" and "common ground", and so they do not feel
"out-of-place".
While this maybe so, very few clubs can immediately provide this level of
support given the scarcity of young people in gliding at the moment.
The question of the youngsters on this list is, therefore, what is it that a
club can do that will make life at the gliding club interesting enough to
keep the younger people coming back?
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