Drop out rates for Uni Club Ocean Divers

[Rookie]

I was involved in running both Kayaking and Riding clubs at Uni. Every year we would get about 80 new members to Kayak, all paying the full joining price, at the Freshers weekend show. About 80% would make the first meeting, 60% the first training event, and we would be down to 40% after the first ourdoor river trip (instead of th nice warm pool), usually in Oct/Nov. Most of the novices got too cold, and frustrated at not being able to do it straight away, and would leave. By April, those that were left (about 15%) would stay on for the next few years, to run the club.Trips were subsidisedm ainly by those who paid, but never showed up. It was always sad to loose so many, but the club could not afford to function if everybody stayed. There loss was our gain though!Rookie

[fluice]

Originally Posted by garethwoodruff

So how is the uni club new intake going for other clubs and what sort of timescale do you go for before getting them into open water?

Cheers,

Gareth.

We've just taken on about 50 complete novices and about 20 people with PADI OW/AOW. This weekend and last weekend has seen everyone doing a full day of pool training. Then next weekend we've got a trip for the converts to do drysuit training and for us to check them out a bit. The following two weekends are OD practical weekends for all the completely new guys. So we're getting them in open water pretty quickly. Hopefully before it gets really cold.

We take our lot up to SD by Easter and we have an ok retention rate. We've probably got 20 people attending the dive leader lectures this term and all but two of them completed SD with us last year. We usually get half a dozen or so that really go the distance and are still in the club 3 years later. From the year I first joined (4 or 5 years ago) there are still 4 of us actively involved in the club which is pretty good going for a uni club.

[Brick]

We've had a bumper year this year - looks like 12-15 novices, which is a lot for us. Now we just have to work out who is going to train them! We made a very determined effort to get people interested this year, so hopefully this is proof that it's paid off. With a bit of luck, we'll get them to SD at Easter and then they'll all stay on for ever and ever...

[Brick]

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[garethwoodruff]

Thanks guys, thats interesting, I think the powers that be in the club are planning to train them ready for open water over the next few months, with the aim of getting them into open water early next year.

It seem like quite a few clubs go for a hit in a day, certainly for the lecture element of the course and by the sound of it the pool element and then aim for sports by easter. Sounds like a fast schedule.

I think we had in mind a grade a year, with plenty of RIB trips / quarry trips for expereince, I'm guessing people prefer to get to sports asap...

What do you think?