Interview with Brodie Nankervis

Manager of Coaching Development, Participation Manager

Clare Hawthorne talking with Brodie Nankervis

CLARE: You seem to do so much, both as an elite orienteer, your role as national manager of coaching development for Orienteering Australia (OA) and in your job as a physio. What made you take on the role of participation manager?

BRODIE: It can definitely be hard to get the balance right! For me, the role as manager of coaching development had a big participation element. I didn’t set this position up for myself – I wanted someone else to do it! But I really pushed for it to be a position, because if we want to be seen as a serious sport we need to build our participation base, and we need to build from the bottom up. The good thing about the OA work is that I can be really flexible and fit it around my training, and it gives me more financial flexibility. But the other side and probably the biggest driver is that I see it as such an important part of where OA should be heading, if we want to continue to exist, but also grow. And we all want to grow.

How would you define “participation”? Is it just “bums on seats” at events, or is there more to it than that?

For me, participation means participating in a meaningful way, not just participating as a “number”. From my background as a physiotherapist in the public health system, I have a public health mindset that prevention is key. I really want to see sport as a vehicle for people to improve and maintain their physical and mental health. I know I’m biased, but I think orienteering is one of the best sports for doing that. Participation, it’s about people enjoying themselves and getting the benefits of participating in sport, both mentally and physically. We need to figure out how can we provide a product to consumers where they are going to have the best experience. Part of that is coaching – helping people to learn the sport.

What are you goals as participation manager? Are there specific objectives that you (and OA) want to achieve?

The initial goal, which I’ll probably spend a lot of time on, is actually setting up a participation strategy. We haven’t had a participation manager for the last 10 years in OA so we don’t have a specific participation policy or a framework. Whereas a lot of other sports do. I went to Sport Australia participation conference last year and I was sitting there with a participation manager from every single other sport – as niche as pétanque! I realised that we needed to set that position up. The goal is to create a participation plan for the country that will actually help the clubs, not just something that is on paper. There is room to move into different populations, and there are those that are more likely to engage with our sport, but I’d like to see participation in a way that can be as inclusive as possible. But it’s a bit of a balance between being general and inclusive, but also providing a targeted product that people are really going to go for. I think that balance will be interesting!

What do you see as some of the important drivers of participation, both for sport in general and for orienteering in particular?

There are definitely some key areas that we can take from both sport in general and other sports that have had explosions in their numbers, like trail running and mountain biking. One of the key ones is ease of access and ease of completing, and that’s one that is a challenge for orienteering in big cities. Often trail running can happen locally – people do travel but they often start locally, which is something we need to look at in orienteering. The mindset maybe needs to shift, in certain competitions, from needing to be the best possible terrain to being closer to people’s homes. At certain places in Australia, that does occur, but in other places it doesn’t. In Melbourne for example, there are things that happen in a local area but it’s not an overarching strategic move in that direction. Even local events, can be spread quite far away from where people live. That’s alright once people are hooked because they are going to want to go away and experience that cool new terrain. But I think it’s about building that sport closer to home for people to start with.

Another key driver is the social aspect of participating in sport. That’s something that trail running does really well. I think that’s something they’re really proud of: the community, and how everyone supports everyone; and everyone is there to have a good time and experience nature. Essentially that’s what orienteering is as well, it’s just making it clear that we are selling that side of it too. Often in trail running, the events will have a hub where there are food vendors, there are other activities on and there is a bit more of a community feel to the event.

Which you see in Europe for orienteering as well.

Brodie: Yeah, I think so, and it is a size factor as well. It is harder to do that when we have small events. Increasing our participation numbers is only going to help. I think there are little things about clubs working together, working as a club to try and highlight that social aspect. For example, MFR at the Victorian Club Relays today, we could have all just driven in different cars, but we decided to use some of our club funding to hire a couple of minibuses. So we all went on minibuses together, raced the relays and then went to a brewery for lunch afterwards.

I know the schools do that well, with the Schools Champs for example, that’s why kids keep coming back the Schools Champs.

Right. The biggest hook in Australia is the Schools Champs. Why is that? Because of the community factor. It’s so much fun, why wouldn’t people keep doing orienteering? They’re hooked. I remember when I was in Schools, those were some of the best trips. So it’s about how do we create those opportunities? Because the Schools is a great way to do that, but we can only get so many people through that area. How do we create that similar feeling, that similar hook in other areas?

Do you think there’s room in orienteering to create more community friendly events, like being able to do it as a pairs event, or get all the controls as a mini-rogaine? Is there a way to get people into orienteering in a more safe or inclusive way?

Definitely, and I think that’s the key. We don’t need to follow IOF rules to the letter for community-level events. We want to follow them as closely as possible in state and national events. Does Park Run look like a 5000m track race or a 10K road race? Not really. They’ve set it up for beginners, but in reality, beginners all the way up to very elite runners participate in that together. There’s no reason why you can’t walk an entire course. There’s no reason why you can’t go around as a family. There’s no reason why it has to be a “line” course – they can do different things each week. I think one of the other big barriers is regularity of participation. There are not many opportunities for people to participate on a weekly basis.

And get better…

Or just be a part of the community, just do it for their physical and mental health. Because orienteering events are a bit further away, or they take a bit of effort to put on, we can’t realistically put them on that often. But if we are thinking “Let’s make it easy for ourselves,” go to a local area where we can modify the orienteering to suit our participants. We can change it each week to make it something slightly different, we could have people coming back to the exact same area 10 weeks in a row. I noticed on the British Orienteering website that they had over 14,000 runs logged for MapRun in 2022. And that’s an Australian product. One of the barriers to participation in orienteering is that it’s more difficult than say, Park Run. So there are some great opportunities to use this kind of technology to give people the flexibility to learn in their own time.

Definitely.

Do you think there is a connection between grass roots participation and participation at the elite/international level?

The simple connection, from the grass roots level to the elite level, is easier to see. If you build the bottom of the pyramid bigger that means the top becomes bigger. Where Sweden has many people competing in orienteering compared to Australia, the top of the pyramid is bigger, and therefore the peak is even better. You’re more likely to have those high-level runners, just by pure numbers. That’s the easy connection to see.

The less easy connection to see is “How does having good elite runners help with our grass roots?” I think you see that in many different sports, how well role models work in motivating people to participate in the sport. People commonly talk about big events that we have in Australia as “legacy events” because they really increase the profile of the sport – people see it and people are motivated. For example when we have the Olympics in Australia, we are going to have a surge of participation associated with that, if those sports are making the most of that situation. So supporting elites to be able to participate at the elite level is important, and does feed back into that. Not only grass roots participation, but also development, so when someone is already participating, but then continues on and aims towards that elite level.

And then they stick around, and then they get roped into admin…

Yeah, they be an elite athlete themselves, they might go into coaching or they might go into admin. But they are motivated. I think in Australia we are quite special. Because we are a small sport at the moment, people can have a chat to Aston who came 5th at the World Championships. That’s pretty special for orienteering, it’s not something you would readily come across in other sports where you can talk to someone who is the best in the world.

On that topic, how is your athletic career going at the moment? I know you were in Tassie [for the Kunanyi trail running festival] last weekend. How did that go?

People may know that I went to World Championships as a junior, and then pretty much moved straight into senior representations. I’ve been to Europe many times, but in 2018 when WOC was in Latvia, I thought: “Well I’m never going to make it to the top.” I decided I would keep trying in orienteering, but focus more on my work, my physio career, and dialed it back a bit. But COVID had the reverse effect on me. I was in and out of work because I was on contract, so at times I had a lot more time to train. And I was seeing huge improvements. So I thought: “Maybe there’s something else here. I haven’t actually gone all the way yet.” It was a defining moment in 2020 when I realised I was actually very keen to keep pushing on. I still wasn’t trail running, but I was focused on the 2021 World Champs in the Czech Republic. I was really pumped up for it so I pushed really hard in 2020 to get into good shape for 2021. And then 2021 happened, and we still weren’t out of COVID. So I thought: “What can I challenge myself with at home?” That’s where I flicked across to trail. So I pushed myself in a few trail runs and started to get a few results. I thought that maybe I could also do this. As we know, orienteering’s not really a professional sport, there’s not really any money to be made, but there is money in trail running. Which means you can use that to pursue orienteering goals as well. For me they are very complementary, and I am enjoying doing both. With the forest and sprint years now, I see myself as more of a forest orienteer. At the moment I am 100% focused on WOC, but still doing a bit of trail running on the side. It’s exciting and it’s keeping me really interested, and I actually see myself as an elite athlete, compared to 2018.

And finally, which is harder – a “vertical km” race or a knockout sprint final?

It’s tricky! The vertical km is all on you – it’s all up to how you’re feeling on the day. Whereas the knockout sprints are interesting tactically. It also depends on the fields you are running in as well. I’ve done both in the last month, so if I had to compare the two races, I think the vertical km was harder. But I probably got a bit of an easy run to the finals in the knockout sprint. But in a stronger field – which I’d love to see in future years and think we will with all the great young runners coming up – that discipline is so mentally tough!