WSF pushes grass root development: How to Develop a Strong Snowboard Community

Following up on the last years’ discussions and brain storming sessions among delegates from the National Snowboard Associations (NSAs) about grassroots projects, the Education Committee of the World Snowboard Federation worked out a document that shall spread knowledge and guidelines for all snowboard organisations across the world.

The document on “how to develop of a strong snowboard community” has been developed with Snowboard Germany’s Boris Kilvinger and Andreas Jügelt in the lead. With its release the WSF Education Committee aims at making the experience gained available to the NSAs and to motivate them to be more active in this field.

Download the document from the following link: http://bit.ly/1OeeXuT

How to develop a strong snowboard community – summarized

The guideline is split up into 4 general phases, 2 different levels and 8 different components. It is currently focusing only on the 1^st phase for now – therefore it has been written especially for nations that have to build their structures from scratch or want to grow. Keys to the concept are proper prioritization (quantity & training before quality & contests), shaping a people- and athlete-centered environment and cooperation with other freestyle-oriented sports to maximize synergies.

Each nation could find itself in a different phase from Initiation (ex.: develop 1 lighthouse region) over Growth (ex.: invest in growth expanding regional clusters and embracing the digital potential to scale) and Maturity (ex.: focus on service quality, start with international events / rookie tours) to Saturation (ex.: complete professionalization; re-invent yourself).

The concept can be rolled out on all levels of a country from NSA (Level 0) over state and/or regional associations (Level 1) down to touching the topic of potential club strategies (Level 2). As the goals and issues on the association level more or less match on the national and state/regional level (Level 0 & Level 1: driven by competitive sports), they were combined. The club level (Level 2) works rather different with a strong focus on a broad spectrum to develop a strong grassroots base for your system and is therefore discussed separately (an association’s job is to guide and support their clubs with tangible and intangible resources).

The overall strategy consists of 8 essential components a country will need to focus on with different priority depending on the phase it finds itself in: Teams / Coaching, Culture of recognition and incentives, Marketing, Internal processes, On- and Off-Snow infrastructure, Resources, Competitions, Quality of training / Education of coaches.

This strategic concept is taking scientific research results, analyzing the main drivers of successful sports associations, into regard. Those are:

• the total amount of kids in the system
• the total amount of coaches (not their experience or quality education)
• the total amount of (regional) training days (on- and off-snow) depending on (regional) infrastructure and resources (financial, volunteers, sponsors, etc.)

Complementing to the document, the WSF Education Committee provides workshops on grass roots develop during the WSF General Assemblies

WSF Press Team
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