Help needed ASAP-uni club

[gunit 0]

Right, i wanna set up a skydiving club at my uni- Leicester Uni, England. However, my worry is that it is too late in the year to set one up- it will only be set up next semester which is only 2 months long, half of that time is exams. Then there is the summer break which is over 3 months long and Langar requires a substantial retrain if people havn't jumped in over 3 months, and pay for the retrain as well. This could affect members decisions to stay on, as they would only have time to make their first few jumps before summer break and they might not want to jump elsewhere in the summer; so when they return they might not want to pay to start again-help!

Apologies if ur out of breath thanks to the wonderful punctuation!

[SkydiveMonkey 0]

Not much point now - might as well get the club set up to start proper in september (just as the weather gets bad ). Hasn't Leicester already got a club (or had one?).

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[gunit 0]

Nah, no club-it sucks and means i have to work my ass of to get one set up, but hey at least ill get all the girls cos of it and loadsa money.............

[mr2mk1g 10]

Contact Flick at [email protected] or my mate Iain at [email protected]. They are the club mentor and president respectively of the British Collegiate Skydiving Association and are there to help in exactly this situation.

Good luck with your club, its the start of the season as far as skydivers are concerned but Uni's are just winding up. You will not find you get much interest this year but it might be a great time to get a couple of like minded people to gether, have fun through the summer and get yourself ready for Freshers in Sept as this is THE time for recruting.

I hope to see your club competing next year.

And take a look the BCPA website - some useful info their including a guide to starting up and running a Uni club. http://www.bcpa.org.uk/

[mattk 0]

I'm in exactly the same situation at Liverpool University. It would be a lot easier to set up if you could find a few of existing skydivers at uni to spread the administative burden and build from there. There's bound to at least a couple of skydivers knocking around that you don't know about. you can put up a few posters now to start raising awareness for the next fresher fair

BTW, if anyone reads this who is a skydiver at Liverpool University get in touch with me ASAP

[gunit 0]

thanks guys, i appreciate the help. Im gonna start advertising it next semester and try and find some other students who are, or have been skydivers, to spread the work load so we can set it up for next year.

cheers

[yoink 321]

Quote

Right, i wanna set up a skydiving club at my uni- Leicester Uni, England. However, my worry is that it is too late in the year to set one up- it will only be set up next semester which is only 2 months long, half of that time is exams. Then there is the summer break which is over 3 months long and Langar requires a substantial retrain if people havn't jumped in over 3 months, and pay for the retrain as well. This could affect members decisions to stay on, as they would only have time to make their first few jumps before summer break and they might not want to jump elsewhere in the summer; so when they return they might not want to pay to start again-help!

OK.. first things first... calm down dude! Don't worry about it being the end of the university terms - I personally reckon that this is a good time to start people jumping.

The problem with starting in October time is that the weather goes downhill rapidly - chances are that a lot of your students will require retrains after the winter break anyway.
Starting now on the other hand allows your new members to take advantage of any decent weather we do get and hopefully be qualified enough to be able to make some jumps over winter.

As for people not jumping over the summer break - If they enjoy the sport, they will find some excuse to be around the dz. Some DZ's will accept students trained at other places dependant upon them having made a certain number of jumps - usually 5.
Try bringing them to some of the BCPA events coming up - they can meet people there and maybe arrange lifts and the like for during summer.

Feel free to ask for any more help, but do e-mail Flick - she knows a load about setting up clubs.

Will

[samhussey 0]

I just started a club at Aberyswyth uni, and just got back from our first weekend trip! I only started the proceedings around January, but now we have a pretty active social schedule, plenty of training and trips planned etc... The only downside is that we couldn't get uni transport, or any funding until next year, as we started too late in the academic year. But we should have a bit more leverage with the union then as we have loads of members (admittedly, most probably wont jump, but around half will by the end of the academic year) and by then we will have been around for a while too. I've also found that most of those who jumped want to meet up at the DZ during the holidays for a bit of a get together and a few jumps. Most of the members don't have the money for a RAPS course right now, but theres masses booked for courses at the start of next term when the loan payments come in, so you should aim to take advantage of these times as well!