Yankee Springs

October 3, 2004

Meet Director: Mike Keating

Assisted by Paul Shank

The Sunday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. While the turnout on the west side of the state was small (27 people), the people who did come appeared to have a very enjoyable orienteering experience! There were no complaints about control placement.

There were some complaints about the map, particularly about some of the mountain bike trails. A reentrant served as the same last control for the red, green, and orange courses. The mountain bike trial north of this reentrant is mapped as a fairly straight east-west trail, but the current mountain bike trail there has a series of curves in it. This caused some confusion in a number of participants as they thought they were on the wrong trail. It is my understanding that SMOC has already arranged for an expert to field check Yankee Springs in the near future and update the map.

Tom Hollowell, the first green course participant to start, reported that the 10^th control bag on green (a rock pile on a spur – not near any trails), which also served as the 13^th control on red, was laying in the weeds about 30 meters from where it was hung. (Tom was going around in circles looking for the control when he found it.) Tom rehung the control in the correct spot. Thanks Tom. I am speculating that squirrel hunters took down that control bag and threw it in the weeds. (I don't think the deer did it.)

One other unusual occurrence was that during the meet a motor-home parked right in front of the initial trail leading into the woods for the yellow course. Several of the yellow participants reported looking in that direction and, not seeing the trail, went farther down the road before they realized that something was wrong.

The closest results were on the red course with the three top finishers (Juha Heinonen, Mark Voit, and Janos Sumegi) grouped within 3.54 minutes of each other. It was interesting to listen to the attack strategies of the red runners. For example, a number of them attacked control 9 (a depression) very differently than I expected. I was guessing that they might go to the northwest of the control and attack over terrain that contained several small hills and depressions. Instead they went to the south of the control along a very high ridge and then attacked by plunging down the ridge. This was simpler in that there was less navigational checking involved. For control 10 on the red course (a hard-to-find rock pile in the woods), there was a surprisingly wide variation in the attack strategies of the red runners.

Tom Hollowell and Chuck Newman were the top two finishers on the green course. Chuck Newman reported that he was "scared to death" of some of the control placements and proceeded very slowly and carefully. From past experience, I know that Chuck's "slow times" are often faster than my supposedly "fast times."

The mountain bike trail mentioned above caused the last control to be particularly time-consuming for the orange course participants. Both Tom Hondred and the team of David Greelhoed and Nicole Finn eventually found it.

After first-time instruction, two young girls – Kelsey Cawel and Beth Shank, blitzed the 1.50 K white course in 19.58 minutes. After some more instruction, they then set out to blitz the yellow course, but had some trouble there finishing in 63.17 minutes. After his initial instruction, David Erickson did the 1.5 K white course in a leisurely 48 minutes. After some more instruction, David then set the fastest time of the day on the 3 K yellow course with 48.15 minutes.

My thanks to David Greelhoed, Nicole Finn, Rick Waldo, Paul Shank, Dennis Elston, Mark Fochesato, and the Franklin 3 (Jess Franklin et al) for helping pick up controls, water jugs, and trash.

This was my first time as a meet director. I had served as an assistant meet director for David Ives at Peach Mountain last spring. Thank you David for your mentoring. A very special thanks goes to Paul Shank who assisted me with this meet. Paul has been a meet director numerous times and provided me with very valuable advice and assistance!

I believe my own orienteering skills improved significantly as a result of planning the courses and setting the controls, plus I found it to be a very enjoyable experience. It appears that SMOC needs more people to volunteer to be meet directors or assistant meet directors. I found it to be very rewarding and enthusiastically recommend it to others.

Results:

Red 7.02 K 14 controls
1	Juha Heinonen	67.83
2	Mark Voit	70.70
3	Janos Sumegi	71.37
4	Rick Waldo	91.55
5	Mark Fochesato	106.00
6	Alexander Izzo	128.67
7	Dennis Elston	208.37
	Nat Roberson	OE
Green 5.47 K 11 controls
1	Tom Hollowell	107.28
2	Chuck Newman	131.28
3	Paul Shank	142.00
4	Gordon Seeley	202.30
	Michelle Koenigsknecht & Alan Rumler	OE
	Suzanne Izzo	OE
Orange 4.76 K 10 controls
1	Tom Hondred	144.63
2	David Greelhoed & Nicole Finn	179.13
	Franklin 3	OE
Yellow 3.00 K 8 controls
1	David Erickson	48.15
2	Kelsey Cawel & Beth Shank	63.17
3	Catherine Roberts & Mary Joscelyn	85.00
4	Pam & Darcy Shank	91.17
	Laura Shank	OE
White 1.50 K 7 controls
1	Kelsey Cawel & Beth Shank	19.58
2	David Erickson	48.00