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The Club's 2005 Score-O attracted almost 60 competitors
for its two versions: the Red runners had two hours to get
as many of the 40 controls as they could, and the Green competitors
could return in only 75 minutes. Each of the forty controls was
assigned a point value from 1 to 5 depending on distance and difficulty,
and the winner was determined not by the number of controls found,
but by the point value of those controls.
The 2-hour Red course was won be Michael Eglin from the Badger
Club in Wisconsin who reached 34 of the 40 controls, and accumulated
106 of the 120 available points.
Unfortunately Michael, and many others, came in overtime and lost points at
a rate of 3 penalty points per minute over the time limit. As the
Course Setter,
I can only be complemented that so many fast, excellent orienteers just couldn't
bring themselves to give up and come in until it was too late.
Rounding out the top five on Red were: Valentas Totoris (32 controls
for 86 points), Maricel Olaru (29 for 78), Dugalic Dragovan (25
for 76), and Joe Sackett
(24
for 75 points).
Young Eugene Backiev won the 75-minute Green Course finding 19
controls for a point value of 47, thus beating old pros Gary Klaben
(also 19 controls
but for
only 38 points), Lenny Shatskin (15 for 34) and Viktor Nikolenko (16 for
30).
Many competitors ran immediately to the flat, green area along
the Cal-Sag canal at the south part of the map where 7 high-value
controls
were hung.
Here they
found that usually prominent features such as stone walls, spurs, reentrants
and deep depressions were not as easy to find as they expected. Mapping
Director Rich Gaylord and long-time Club member Joe Sehnal worked together
in 1995
to carefully map this confusing area, and find subtle features that could
be legitimately
mapped, but were not necessarily unique or distinctive. And the map has
held up well. But even Red course winner Michael Eglin became confused
in this
area; he said afterward that he might have been able to punch all 40 controls
within
the two hour time limit if he hadn't lost contract with the map down
in this area, and lost about 15 minutes.
The Orange course, at 6.1 km., was a bit longer than usual. This
was noted in the Meet Instructions posted at the start and by the
master map boards.
Orange
Course winner Jeff Schafermeyer normally runs the Red course. But he
helped with the Start until it was too late for the Score-O. So
he ran the Orange
course
in 58 minutes—a pace of 9.5 minutes per km. Many Orange competitors
came in exhausted after more than 2 hours on the course, but very satisfied
because
the woods were very open and easily walked, with good visibility.
The 3.6 km Yellow Course was won by the Raven 5-man team
from Troop 166 with a time of 58 minutes. And the 2.5 km White
Course was won by Team
Miles in
54 minutes...all
very good performances.
I’d like to thank meet volunteers Joe Sehnal who helped
hang controls for 4 hours on Saturday, and Rich Gaylord who showed
up at 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning
to hang controls before running himself. Registration was capably
handled by Katie Schafermeyer, Karen Curley and my girlfriend Sari
Rantanen, Beginner Instructors
were Petri Ketola and Jim Marshall, Starters were Jeff Schafermeyer
and Dan Curley, and finally Control Pick-up volunteers were Steve
Maney, Charlie Shahbazian,
Kris Sabataitas, Jim Gordon and Brian Pfister who picked up the 50
controls in record time.
Thank you one and all; without your help I could not have put
on this meet.
Clark Maxfield
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