By Rex Winterbottom (Regional Event Coordinator — Sierra Nevada)
Not a bad turnout for a rainy day, or as Jay Hann would put it, "a great day for orienteering." As luck would have it, our tight "start window" and course closing time happened to coincide with a substantial break in the rain, but the control pickup crew was not so lucky.
We introduced the "arena concept" to BAOC at this event, minus the announcing. Because of the weather, I didn't follow through on all the plans, such as having an announcer and a videographer. Although it wasn't all it was dreamed to be this time, there is much potential in the future, as was demonstrated by our setup. It was really fun to watch people go across the arena area in many directions on the first and last legs of the course. Orienteering you can actually watch, appreciate, and get excited about. I hope future course setters and event directors can take advantage of spectatable areas in our local parks and set up these kinds of arenas.
Dennis Wilkinson made some good use of the parky terrain offered by Vasona, and I thank Dennis for going with the arena concept. He was also quite adaptable to the introduction of the holiday lights displays.
Thanks to Jay Hann for putting the results together. This was not a simple task due to the Motala format and some issues with the start, my apologies for that. I should have made it a bit clearer about actually going to the start triangle and punching a start control after participants were called up. I've made some edits to the results, adding names for the groups who participated.
Chuck Spalding assigned all the participants scheduled start times, and then he helped me run the starts and get everyone staged and sorted. And Chuck just came to the event to volunteer — probably one of the reasons he was awarded the club Service Award that evening at the Willow Glen event.
Thanks to our many other volunteers. The Kim family gave a special effort throughout the whole event — helping set it up, running registration, and helping with take down and control pickup. Jay also helped with set up and take down. Nancy Lindeman was our hospitality person, making everyone feel welcome and greeting people and seeing if they needed any help. She did a great job of that. Jim Fish helped with set up and registration, and picked up a few controls, too. Our intrepid control pickup crew of Jack van Ryswyck, Lubo and Matej Sebo, and Daniel and Susan Kim braved the elements.
Finally, a thank you to John Goldsworthy and Linda Hyman of Santa Clara County Parks for helping us get our permit and hold our event.
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