quick review fall planning meeting 2010/11/20

Quick Review

Fall Planning Meeting2010/11/20

2/16

The Eastern Conference

The Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference

(ECCC) coordinates and oversees collegiate

cycling races and teams in northeast US

Colleges & universities in Delaware, Pennsylvania,

New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut,

New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine

Currently supports track, mountain bike, cyclocross,

and road racing seasons

3/16

Student Athletes

All ECCC racers are full time students

Undergraduate or graduate

Nearly all teams are club sports of their institutions

All events are organized by volunteer, student

race promoters and their collegiate teams

These are the people that make it happen!

4/16

National Collegiate Geography

ECCC is one of 11 regional conferences

5/16

ECCC Geography

6/16

ECCC Clubs

Still at 69 teams in ECCC, same as 2009 This number pretty steady for several years now

Lost a good number of small but notable teams

Picked up a bunch of other very small teams

7/16

ECCC Riders

Almost no growth in annual licenses in 2010 Still steady at 22--24% of all collegiate licenses

AtlanticEastern

Inter-MtnMidwest

North CentralNorthwest

Rocky MtnSouth Central

SoutheastSouthwest

Western

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8/16

General 2010 Changes

February meeting definitely smaller, but remains very useful for MTB, Cyclocross focus Few road teams attended; not sure that's a problem

Non-profit incorporation

Conference surcharge ($1/mass, gravity start) Not operating at a (personal) loss anymore

Should bank ~$3000

General expenses low, MTB self sufficient

Detailed statement over the holidays

9/16

Road 2010

Combined D1/D2 team rankings: Still awesome! Certain team not as awesome as their swagger?

Much more consistent race day schedules

Aero restrictions quietly passed into non-issue

ECCC News Network

Road promoter's guide

Women's category changes!

– Per-event average of 75, max 100, min 38

10/16

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

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Individual Starts Mass Starts

Road Starts

Road participation fairly steady Note: One more weekend in 2009

Note: Many weather cancellations in 2007

11/16

MTB 2010

Super D, ClusterHuck, Team Relay all returned Super D not as popular as pure gravity events

Team Relay needs evangelizing, lower costs, but is super well received by teams that do participate

Intro Clinics struggled due to coach availability Still very popular & successful though

Continued streak of excellent alumni scoring

Lift ticket fees self-controlled by promoters

Slalom run pretty well, still extremely long

12/16

MTB Starts

MTB participation grew this year Haven't previously tracked the same amount of data

But two races this year broke the attendance record UNH and UVM just under 200 unique riders 1300 starts over 5 weekends in 2010 Essentially a little less than half as big as road

Gravity is super healthy More consistent, average as large as cross country

Women's MTB is high quality, low numbers

13/16

Cyclocross 2010

Seems smaller, but have to wait for numbers Slightly difficult to compare seasons at this point

Definite different focus in scheduling Fewer very high profile, expensive events

Several more collegiate promoted events Seem to do ok by incorporating non-collegiate fields

Sounds like nationals will have several simple schedule adjustments to make it easier

14/16

Track 2010

Track going nowhere without coordinator to make a real season happen Coordinating schedule, lining up race promoters

Timely season standings

Evangelizing

Faces intrinsic challenges schedule-wise Bad positioning re. summer breaks, start of school

But it seems like riders are out there

15/16

2010 General Recap

Joe's informal take: Basically held steady in many respects

But on a much more sustainable, consistent basis

Huge improvements in women's cycling

16/16

End

Questions/comments: Joe Kopena

jkopena@usacycling.org