By Gavin Wyatt-Mair
We had perfect weather, a great turnout, and plenty of fun at this year's BAOC Briones event and 13th Bay Area Scout Orienteering Championships.
There were 117 BAOC participants and 425 pre-registered scouts, for a total of 542 runners.
This year we were again fortunate to have e-punching on all courses — a really great improvement to our efficiency and accuracy. The e-punching went very smoothly, thanks to a dedicated effort by our e-punch crew.
Steve Gregg mastered the Blue course in just 84 minutes and 57 seconds. Briones has not been kind to Steve in the past, so this is a very nice win for him. Well done, Steve! Steve was followed by Mikkel Conradi and Andrejus Masalkovas, 6 and 10 minutes later.
Tapio Karras continues to show his expertise on Red, winning in 78:51 — a very fast time for such a hilly course. Pierre DelForge and Matthias Kohler were 7 and 9 minutes behind.
The still hilly Green course was won by el Presidente Ian Tidswell in 70:50, followed by Bob Cooley and Chris Roper, 9 and 13 minutes back.
The Brown course somehow avoided much of the hilly stuff, and was won handily by Dennis Wildfogel. Ingerd Svard and Steph MacLean were 13 and 18 minutes behind.
Jen Stilwell dominated Orange in 73:09, with Marina Keating 31 minutes behind, and the team of William, Brian Saba, and Joe another 8 minutes back.
Gary Kraght put together a fast win on Yellow (42:05), with Ray and Kai Rosenbaum 17 minutes behind, and young Jukka Karras 23 minutes behind.
There were few White course runners, but Mike Monahan blazed around in 38:24, followed by Gabrielle Delforge and Sophia Gonzalez, 40 minutes and 44 minutes behind.
There were some interesting route choices on Red, Blue, and Green. On the long leg, most runners went east on the road, short cutting near the end. Some took a more direct route, but that was definitely slower. I could find nobody who went west on the road, yet I found that to be the fastest route choice by a significant margin when I pre-ran the courses. It has less climb than any other choice, and is about the same distance as the eastern choice. Perhaps my slowness when contour-crossing uphill is greater than most? Interesting!
There was some junky PO-ey stuff near the end of Blue that was easily avoided by careful scrutiny of the map. Judging by the appearance of the runners, however, few avoided it! Oh well.
E-punch facilitates courses crossing over themselves without compromising fairness. This was a handy feature to use when setting courses in Briones, since good terrain is hard to find in Briones in October (it's mostly mountainous, stickery, or has PO). So when one finds a chunk of the good stuff, it's a big help to be able to use it more than once!
Thanks for showing off the club and our sport to all the scouts!
Thank you!
We would like to thank the East Bay Regional Park District and the Briones Park rangers for their support. The Park Rangers were particularly helpful with parking, access and advice, and we are very grateful to them. The scouts would like to thank BAOC for sponsoring the Scout-O event and helping scouting out. Thanks also to all the parents and scout leaders who took the time to bring their scouts to a day of orienteering.
To all our helpers: Thank you very much. With such a large attendance, help was the most essential element of the meet, and you all did a wonderful job! To those whom I have left out (and I'm sure I have, since there were so many ad-hoc volunteers), please accept my thanks, too. And of course, thanks to my family (Nina, Arwen, Malcolm, Kelsey, Wendy) for all their help and patience — typing, stuffing packets, telephone calls, mailings, recruiting, results, and putting up with the disruption.
Once again, BAOC members excelled and showed the club's true colors with all their help and encouragement. Here is this year's list of helpers with this caveat: I simply couldn't record all the helpers and help that was given, so please, if your name is omitted, we are still very very grateful and I apologize for the omission.
Nina Tyksinski Pre-registration, phone calls, e-mail
Bob Cooley Maps, and more maps
Alan Houser Course design (WYO), vetting, safety, start, bag set, bag pickup
Jay Hann Results, bag set, water, photos, bag pickup
Chris Hann Bag set
Judy Koehler Photos, awards ceremony, instruction, scout packets
Jean Beuerman Registration
Ev Beuerman Registration
Mark Blair Bag pickup
Nancy Lindeman Bag pickup, instruction, packets
Terry Gleason Instruction, registration, parking
Bill Straka Instruction, scout packets, start
Barbara Straka Scout packets, start
Penny DeMoss Start
Harold DeMoss Start
Roberta Pitsenbarger Scout Score-O signups
Joan Roos Finish, instruction
Grace Tang Finish
Trinka Gillis E-punch
Evan Custer E-punch
Steve Gregg E-punch
Rosemary Johnson E-punch, permits
Bjorn Widerstrom E-punch
Jeff Lanam E-punch
Evan Custer E-punch, equipment
Joe Scarborough Early run
Mikkel Conradi Early run