My local USA Swimming club is considering hosting a kids triathlon as a new type of fundraiser for the club.
Does anybody have an experience, advice, or warnings they can share in regards to creating and hosting such an event?
Dreamer- and anyone else wishing to host a youth tri- USAT has many resources available for you. Please contact me directly and I’ll help you get the support you need. Thanks.
Scott Schnitzspahn
USA Triathlon
scott@usatriathlon.org
I helped a friend put on a kids triathlon last year that was a fundraiser for a local organization. It was pretty successful and we had over 300 kids participate. It is a lot of work, but very rewarding. There are lots of details to take care of, but I would just make sure that you try to keep things relatively simple for the 1st year and absolutely recruit as many volunteers as you possibly can.
There is a swim club in a nearby city that ran a fundraiser triathlon last fall. Some things about their race were great, others not so, here is my advice to them, some of it may apply to you.
Their timing was very good. They held their race a few weeks after all the other big races. This meant that once we were all in shape and had finished our A race, a lot of people wanted one last reace for the season.
They also managed to get a flier about their race handed out at other races during the year, so they had good exposure.
The transition areas were HORRIBLE. Being swimmers, I think they may not have had a problem with having no racks for bikes, but it was a joke to have nice tri bikes lying all over the ground in a small parking lot. So I would advise that you ensure you have racks, and lots of them. You can probably rent them from a local race director.
Have good written insructions on all aspects of the race with maps available before the race or on a website so everybody isn’t scrambling to figure out what is going on during race day.
Make sure you have working bathrooms or johns.
Try to make sure your distances are accurate, and that you mark turns well with chalk, cones, arrows AND volunteers. Espeically on the bike leg.
I think if you have a safe course that is well marked, and a really nice transition area, everything else will fall into place. Then market your race like crazy to loacal RD’s, at other races with fliers on windshields, to local running, biking, and swimming clubs, stores, or workout facilities. You can probably even get a writeup in the local paper and newsstation if you push for it, and can find a good angle. Maybe get local schools to have their crosscountry team compete against their swimming team. Or have local schools give incentives to kids for participating.
Good luck.
Why just a kids triathlon? Why not have an adults and kids division? I don’t have any figures, but it seems like for fundraising, you could have higher profits, and higher entrant numbers for a normal tri (read: adults) than one for kids.
we had a kid’s tri in conjunction with the Seahorse for a number of years.
key question is will it be a race or an event? i turned the Seahorse kids tri into an event. theres something about setting up a little kid for the “i gotta win” mentality that didn’t sit right with me. we had some 4 year olds…up to about age 12. we encouraged older ones to consider doing our sprint courseas individuals or as a team.
our tri club had some folks standing by to spend time with each kid to get a handle on what distance in each discipline would be appropriate. their parent or chaperone helped keep a handle on those distances. we used an outdoor municipal park pool for the swim, a neighboring street for the bike course, and the park track for the run. then each one got a personalized certificate showing their distance in each discipline. all got “I’m A Winner” ribbons along with their personalized certificate and all the other jazz.
I’ve been involved in organizing and running lots of age group swim meets. I’ve never worked on a triathlon but I have one observation for someone coming to triathlon from swimming. Swim meet organizers can take alot for granted from our competetors. At swim meets, 99% of the kids, even the 8 & Us, have been to a meet before and they know the drill like where to stow their gear, how to get to marhsalling, how to keep track of when their heet is coming up etc. There is a lot of behind the scenes organazation at a swim meet but we can get away without saying much more to the swimmers and coaches than telling them what time warm ups start. Once they know what time to show up, they know what to do next.
At a kids triathlon, I think you need to assume the opposite - that 99% of your competetors will have little or no clue how things are supposed to work and what they are supposed to do or where they are supposed to go. You’ll need to be ready for more communication both before and on the day of the event than you would need at a swim meet to keep it moving.
USAT does have help available
Also the Silicon Valley Triathlon Club puts on a 600 kid tri every year
Robert Jones the club President has a full “how to Manual” from 5 years as RD of the event. I’m sure he would make a copy availble to you
Eric Drew
VP SW Region USAT
Dreamer,
This is our second year for having a youth triathlon. We have it the day before our adult sprint triathlon. Last year we had between 50-60 kids this year we are well over 100 with almost two months before the race. We have approached the triathlon as promoting fitness in todays youth. People have gone out to elementary schools and spoken to PE classes as well as PTO meetings. We are offering training camps every saturday up to the triathlon to teach kids about tri's and to promote fitness. The kids run and bike around the track at or YMCA. We have the kids run to determine a fitness level(how many laps in 6:00 minutes). We talk about nutrition, transitioning, etc.....The turn outs have been great. The triathlon is in conjuction with the local YMCA and signing up for the race gets you a pass to swim on the weekends up until the race if you are not already a member. The race will be broken down in to age groups for starting. The distances are 100 yd, 3.1miles, and 1 mile. Mostly controlled in a local neighborhood on the bike and a trail for the run. Let me know if you need any help..........Lots of volunteers to keep everybody in sight!
Dreamer,
I have been the RD of a kids tri for the last 4 years. It has been a rewarding experience. The one tri developed into a youth tri series here as well (Greensboro, NC). In no perticular order I would recomend the following:
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Safety is the first priority.
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First order of business is to get the course figured out. For younger children under 8 be careful of hills and sharp turns on the bike.
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Get as many volunteers as possible, we have had a one volunteer for each racer per wave and we could always use more.
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Consider having seperate races for younger age groups then older. You do not want an 8 year old on the same bike course as a 14 year old.
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Make sure the people organizing the race have the same priorities (ie fundraising, participation, revenue, race growth, etc).
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Encourage early registration with a significant discount. Getting a good headcount helps a ton with race planning.
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Solicit sponsors. We did not the first year, and the funds we raise by race fees, are less then half the sponsorship fees.
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Have a pre-race meeting or orientation a couple of weeks before the race if you can. You can get the racers and more importantly the parents familiar with the course and give pointers to the kids prior to race morning. This is perticularly beneficial if you have a lot of first time racers.
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Do not underestimate how overzealous parents will get in the race, especially in transition areas (putting on the kids shoes, getting in the way of other racers) and pushing there kids bikes up hills. If you can rope off the transition area to keep parents out. Communicate this 1,000 times, but parents will still get in the middle of the race.
I did not find the USAT to be helpful in pulling the kids race together, but some of the other local races did. Just my opinion. If you send me an e-mail I will send you the race information package and any other information I can to help. With all this said it has still be hugely rewarding. The kids and parents have expressed appreciation and it realley makes you feel good to get the kids active. The first years is 5x more difficult then any year after that.
For prizes we have gotten fairly inexpensive medals from crown wards www.crownawards.com One of the other races in the series, awarded savings bonds. I thought that was a realley kewl peice of hardware.
Best of luck,
Rockfish gssheehan@aol.com