While much of the military world had their eyes glued to the television watching the Army/Navy football game, over 550 JROTC cadets and their leaders competed in a different sport. Of course, I’m talking about orienteering. The competitions were held to see which teams would attend the Navy National Orienteering Championships, Area 10 (North Florida with the southern bits of Georgia and Alabama), competing at Elinor Klapp Phipps Park in Tallahassee. In contrast, Areas 11 and 12 (most of the rest of Florida linked up at Kelly Park.
Wasn’t that excellent weather for orienteering?
Thank you to Blaik Mathews for managing the logistics for not just one but two orienteering events while dealing with a sad family event in South Carolina. The man is incredibly dedicated to our sport.
I found myself handling the in-forest arrangements for the Tallahassee event. It is a beautiful park with some topography and lots of trails. However, the bush was thick in places, so the orienteers probably found more trail running than usual.
Big hand to Rob Antolino of Rehobeth HS JROTC, who came over from Alabama to be the JROTC event director. Another to Trey Cottrell, a parent volunteer at Tallahassee’s Lincoln HS. Between them, they scored all the park permissions and kept this orienteer from going wild with anxiety. (Do you know what is also unique about Trey? His son has graduated and is on to university, but Trey is sticking around to help the team at Lincoln.
Then there is Fey Wright, a first-year instructor at Lincoln who surprised herself was responsible for getting a power generator to run all our event electronics. Not only did she find one, but she also got it donated, as the business owner wanted to support the JROTC. (Here is where I apologize for being unable to plug the business.)
Mike Engestrom stepped in to run the event Livelox, and he did a great job! “We tracked 148 orienteers on six different courses,” said Mike. “And we could locate at least one participant to return to the mapped area and the Finish after being lost.”
Meanwhile, over at Kelly Park, the good folks at Florida Orienteering were pulling many hands on deck as ‘old reliable’ Blaik Mathews went north to South Carolina. On top of that, the folks at Wekiva State Park refused to open the gate to allow the usual shared park for orienteering. But from the look of it, the FLO course setters put markers out in Kelly East and West, enough to set thoughtful legs and require the orienteers to be careful as the control they were seeing may not have been the one they were seeking.
What are the event headlines?
- Vanguard orienteer Noah Archer sets a record by becoming the first to reach 200 Ranking Points before Christmas.
- Farragut, Gaither, Central, and Boca top the Area 11/12 Team competition
- Lee County of Georgia and Nease from the JAX area took top honors in Tallahassee.
- Gabriela Vanderwalt of Lee County helped her team, winning her Green course by an impressive 15 minutes. Pay attention, OUSA Junior Team!
- West Nassau’s leader, Ed Spezio, announced the team will go to Texas to defend their AFJROTC national championship title. GO FOR IT, WARRIORS!
That’s it for the report, but you can enjoy reviewing the courses and actions through Livelox, analyzing the results, and finding areas for improvement through Splitsbrowser and other results tools. Visit the Suncoast Orienteering website: https://suncoastorienteering.com. Under the “Events” tab on the menu, click “SOAR Event Results” to view the results tools, or click here to go directly to the EKP results, including Results by Class, Splits Browser Tables, and Livelox Results/Replays.
Gord Hunter
Suncoast Orienteering
12/18/2024