After Gunner saying in another post that we do too much and looking at the sports calendar produced by wing sports officer there are 26 inter sqn, inter wing, inter region or corps events. In my wing because of the distance to RAF Cosford most inter wing sporting event need an overnight stay at Cosford. This can and is a huge burden on sqn and wing staff supporting these events. When I asked the sqestion who organised the calendar, the answer was we have to follow what HQAC put out as the dates for corps events or inter region events and Senior is before Christmas and junior is after Christmas for team events.
Could it not be organised differently so to minimise the number of weekends, eg have the team sports like senior football the same day as junior football or cross country the same day as athletics? I is nice for the senior bods to turn up for corps event and bask in the glory of the competition but sqn staff and cadets this may be their forth weekend away from home and family.
Yes, just have a Corps “Olympics” weekend.
OK, it might have minor issues in stopping sports prodigies from competing in lots and lots of events, but for most people I’d imagine that they only do one sport at Corps or even region level.
Combining them would undoubtedly hugely simplify admin and logs.
I don’t think it’s that easy to combine events like cross-country and athletics, given that athletics is a summer activity and cross country is done in the winter. My youngest daughter ran 1500M and cross-country for a local athletic club and they never coincided, to the point where you could combine meets and given many people do both, not really practical.
The team sports have for many years been combined. The fact that they are before and after Christmas is neither here or there in my book.
I’ve assisted at many inter-sqn events over the years and bloody good fun they are, maybe not for the professing sportphobic staff, but you can’t please everyone.
The cadets I have had over the years who have competed at Region or Corps, just I and my ilk 35 or so years ago, had a great time. Overnight stays were then and still are part of the fun side of the Corps and getting further away from home, even better.
I find that cadets who get involved in sport and represent at Region/Corps are ‘into’ sports and invariably have supportive parents, and, the staff that get involved are that way minded as well.