Miami Valley
Junior Orienteering Championships
and Shamrock Hunt

March 15, 2020 - Caesar Creek State Park

Weather: mid 30°s, warming to the upper 40°s, mostly cloudy.

Attendance: 91 in 63 starts.

Yea!! We were under 100 people for the event and so were within the Ohio Department of Health's (then current) mass gathering declaration. Of course our social distancing was well beyond the minimum recommendation of six feet from each other. The courses spanned an area of one square kilometer! In this large arena I hope everyone avoided the dangers of the 2020 Ides of March!

Thanks for meet assistance:
     Registration - Sharon Bond
     Starts - Ben Bond
     Control retrieval - Kat & Tom Svobodny

Results are shown by division for the Jr. Champs and by course for the Shamrock Hunt in both standard results and split times. There were hardly any "mp" (mis-punch) results. Everyone did a great job getting all their controls correctly. There was one "spw" (sporting withdrawl) result where Teratin Goecke came to the assistance of another orienteer with a sprained arm. We applaud him for helping out in such a sportsmanlike manner.

In the Rookie Individual Division, Union County Middle School's Camren Cooper earned the medal for the fastest time, helping his team win the large traveling trophy. Close behind was the Miami Valley Young Marines, taking second place in the division. Great job!

In the JV Individual Division no team won the large traveling trophy. A mid course arm injury caused a course incompletion and a sporting withdrawl. Again, thanks to Teratin Goecke for coming to the aid of a fellow orienteer.
In the division two are listed as having the fastest time, Oakwood High School's Kat Svobodny and Vandalia-Butler High School's Toby Mears. This is due to a late arrival and start by Kat. Her car GPS navigator sent her to Spring Valley Frontier Campground instead of the Holly Shelter. Toby was done already and it appeared he had won, so he was awarded the medal. Once awarded, they're won. Thanks to Kat for helping collect controls after the event. [Sometimes we have to turn off the electronic navigation aids and use our own map reading skills to point the way. Here's a case where that's demonstrably better!]

In the Varsity Division, Talawanda High School's Jasper Ralinovsky took the top spot with a sub-hour course time. His time on the 5.1 Km course was better than the winning times on both the 3.7 and 2.6 Km courses! For Varsity teams Union County High School won the division and the large Varsity traveling trophy!

In the cooperative divisions, the Miami Valley Young Marines won the Middle/JrHigh Division. Great job!

The Splits report shows time spent traveling between each control. For each competitor, the first row shows cummulative time, and the second row shows each leg's split time. Leading times are in blue. - For example, in the Middle/JrHigh-Coop Division, The team of Hardy & Hoying started out leading with a great first leg time of 3:45, then split the fastest leg times with the other top three teams through control #9, maintaining their overall dominance. Locating control #10 was a challenge for them and the Hoying & Wheeler team. Hardy & Stapleton had no trouble with #10 and took the lead there, holding it all the way to the finish!

Be sure to check out the Trophy Standings report.

Additional orienteering is always encouraged. In the interest of competitive fairness, only the first course an individual or group runs is included in the championship competition. Once an orienteer is out on a course they return with advantageous knowledge of the competition area, shared controls, etc. Results for subsequent courses are listed with the Shamrock Hunt results.

In the Shamrock Hunt results, many people have their club listed as "n/a" even though they may be in an orienteering club. If their registration sheet does not list a club, I have no clairvoyance as to what club they belong to or if they're current in any club's membership rolls. Thanks for your vote of confidence, but I'm not that omniscient.

Matt Bond
Meet Director

Jr. Champs Results

Jr. Champs Splits

Trophy Standings


Shamrock Hunt Results

Shamrock Hunt Splits


The Winsplits files can be read by Winsplits Pro. This program has extensive split time analyses.
Jr. Champs Winsplits file
Shamrock Hunt Winsplits file