Be grateful you're not running a student club!
Besides the obvious.... trying to get students to be organised and prompt I've recently been discovering more difficulties with running student clubs.
When I was at uni, the sports centre attached to the uni was run by the student union for the students. Prices were stupidly cheap and a little more non-students could use the facilities.
Now I find the situation is changing with the sports centres being run as independent businesses. At the Leeds university I have an instructor card that I swipe to gain entry to the facilities, this expires at the end of term so AFAIK we wouldn't be able to train through the summer hols should we want to.
Non-students have to pay £4 to get into the sports centre, on top of any mat fee we charge. So £6 a session for non-students with poor facilities. There is a second university in Leeds, the sports centre told a student from that uni he had to pay the £4 entry as the public would, he didn't come back. So we lost a black belt, potential instructor. Hardly supporting the growth of a new club.
At Sheffield university they are getting tighter on who can get into the buildings where we training, I suspect for the same reasons at Leeds....money.
More recently in Sheffield we're also starting to get a new problem, another student club. Namely the Jitsu club, who understandably want access to mats for practising their throwing. Not a problem in itself, but when they decideto move mats about to suit themselves (make sure they have better mats to practice on) it gets irritating, more so as I believe the mats actually belong to Judo and we let Jitsu use them.
Of course that's irritating, taking control of better mats when the mats don't belong to them.
I've been practising sporadically with Jitsu and find myself getting annoyed each session as players don't wear shoes, or even one person that does always wear shoes on the mats. Mats are dragged/carried bent overhead etc etc maybe causing damage to mats that Judo bought.
I've tried a quiet word with one of their sensei (they insist on being called sensei) about the shoes off mats thing. He smiled and nodded but said nothing :(
I tried mentioning it to a couple of the senior Jitsukas, but much the same reaction :(
Maybe we (Judo) should wrap a strap round the mats and padlock it? :D
When I was at uni, the sports centre attached to the uni was run by the student union for the students. Prices were stupidly cheap and a little more non-students could use the facilities.
Now I find the situation is changing with the sports centres being run as independent businesses. At the Leeds university I have an instructor card that I swipe to gain entry to the facilities, this expires at the end of term so AFAIK we wouldn't be able to train through the summer hols should we want to.
Non-students have to pay £4 to get into the sports centre, on top of any mat fee we charge. So £6 a session for non-students with poor facilities. There is a second university in Leeds, the sports centre told a student from that uni he had to pay the £4 entry as the public would, he didn't come back. So we lost a black belt, potential instructor. Hardly supporting the growth of a new club.
At Sheffield university they are getting tighter on who can get into the buildings where we training, I suspect for the same reasons at Leeds....money.
More recently in Sheffield we're also starting to get a new problem, another student club. Namely the Jitsu club, who understandably want access to mats for practising their throwing. Not a problem in itself, but when they decideto move mats about to suit themselves (make sure they have better mats to practice on) it gets irritating, more so as I believe the mats actually belong to Judo and we let Jitsu use them.
Of course that's irritating, taking control of better mats when the mats don't belong to them.
I've been practising sporadically with Jitsu and find myself getting annoyed each session as players don't wear shoes, or even one person that does always wear shoes on the mats. Mats are dragged/carried bent overhead etc etc maybe causing damage to mats that Judo bought.
I've tried a quiet word with one of their sensei (they insist on being called sensei) about the shoes off mats thing. He smiled and nodded but said nothing :(
I tried mentioning it to a couple of the senior Jitsukas, but much the same reaction :(
Maybe we (Judo) should wrap a strap round the mats and padlock it? :D
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