Miami Valley
Jr. Orienteering Championship Practice
and Turkey Hunt

November 17, 2019 - Germantown MetroPark - East

Weather: Temperatures were in the 40's throughout the day and cloudy.

Attendance: A total of 94 in 32 starting units. A breakdown by event class is 54 in 13 starts for the Jr. Champs Practice, and 40 in 19 starts for the Turkey Hunt.

Thanks for meet assistance:
Registration: Sharon Bond
Fire Tending: Ben Bond
Control Retrieval: Tom Svobodny

Thanks to all for attending. I hope everyone enjoyed their courses. As turkeys are a key symbol this time of year, turkey cutouts are placed at all controls on the beginner (white) course. Hence the event name, the Turkey Hunt.

Congratulations to all who successfully navigated their courses. Your success verifies your current navigation ability and invites you to continue challenging yourself to improve in new terrains with new maps.

To stay current on your orienteering skills, look through MVOC's online "Getting Started" pages. There is a plethora of information there: Skills tested at each course level, Map interpretation, Clue sheet symbol meaning, Compass use, and How to use the electronic punching system. By March, when the Jr. Champs performance counts toward trophies, all should be adept at these skills.

There were no individual orienteers among the Jr. Champs classes. I understand the reasoning behind only sending out groups of orienteers, however in the spring competition vying for trophies, the large traveling trophies are only awarded to teams of individuals, not teams of groups. That said, from the results, Beavercreek could probably easily form a highly successful team of individuals made up of their best three or four orienteers. The minimum team size is three, but having a fourth individual allows dropping of the slowest time amongst all team members. Success in bringing home that big trophy (or trophies) starts with planning your team strategy. Be sure to reference the Jr. Champs rules, and as a help, use the Team Planner spreadsheet.

Reconciling results between the Jr. Champs Practice an the Turkey Hunt may cause wonder about why there are many in the Turkey Hunt classes that are associated with schools, where one would think they should be in the Jr. Champs classes. The reasons are varied and include:
   • The group consists of leaders of the youth organization.
   • The group had adult navigational assistance on the course.
   • The group ran a course that did not have a corresponding Jr. Champs class.
For this last reason, several Beavercreek groups ran the green course, some quite successfully. However for the green course, the only Jr. Champs class is for individuals. The green course is designed and set at an expert level where any mapped feature is fair game as a control location. Thus, those on the green course have trained on the earlier development courses, are comfortable navigating with their given tools and experience, and can now test their ability in high competition. The guiding principle focusing the expert level course on individual achievement (within a team setting) comes from aligning its results with those of Orienteering USA youth competitions, the national governing body of orienteering in the US.

The split time list shows time spent traveling between each control. This is a compilation of everyones split time report they received when they finished. For each competitor, the first row shows cummulative time, and the second row shows each leg's split time. Leading times are in blue.

Save the date! The 2020 Miami Valley Jr. Orienteering Championships are planned for March 15, 2020, tentatively at Possum Creek MetroPark. The location may change, so check our online schedule often. School coaches should contact Matt Bond now if they have a scheduling conflict. I look forward to handing out many trophies!

Matt Bond
Meet Director

Jr. Champs Practice Results

Jr. Champs Practice Splits

Jr. Champs Practice Trophy Standings

Turkey Hunt Results

Turkey Hunt Splits