Personal Handicap

The value of using personal handicaps depends upon the culture you have within your club.  IF the good sailors are prepared to get involved and help newbies then racing will thrive and every one is a winner - bigger turnouts, new members improve and competition increases.

IF the good guys stay in their own little clique then there is no incentive for new racers to stick with it as they'll never beat bloggs and bloggs won't want them there as they don't know what they are doing, a bit catch 22 really.  Turn outs drop and whilst club membership may be healthy, examination of the key indicator, actual numbers racing, will present a different picture.

There are some very simple checks you can do.. look at the number of new members who joined each year and see how many are still there in 3 years time.  At our club we take on average 30 memberships in learn to sail each year.. over 10 years that's 300 people, yet club memebrship is no where near that and on average the retention of a new member is less than 10% year on year, ie if 30 join this year, only 3 of those will renew next year, 2 of them will renew the following year and the year after it's down to one.

Seeing as we get an extra 30 members the following year though, the retention and drop out largely goes unnoticed as overall membership levels are generally static or show a slight increase, until you look at the on the water activity closely and realise how few are sailing and that the majority sailing are hardcore club members who have been there for some time.

It can be hard to get people to recognise this but without the right culture at the top, trying to change things at the bottom by using PH's will at best be a stop gap measure.

Get it right at the top and a most improved personal handicap over a series or special event is an excellent boost to the ego as it rewards someone who may have finished 20th but has really excelled themselves as they would normally have finished 40th.. and lets face it it's nice to get a bit of recognition from time to time :-)

If you have a system, as in golf that your handicap is reduced by good performances quicker than it gets better by bad ones this should even out, as a single race does not a series make. There are bandits watever system is used, and we all put up with it, but perhaps a system where the alleged bandits get pegged back a bit every time they win is better than the status quo, unless you are that bandit. Also if you have a standard handcap series run on a parallel basis, the bandits wont necessarily have the incentive to turn in bad performances.

Anyway our proposal has been passed around our club, and we may see if it works in the near future.

Andy