Northeastern Ohio Orienteering Club

One of the odd realities of orienteering is that no matter how good someone may be on the course, it can still be hard to find the event venue! Hinckley Ledges Lake seems to consistently have this effect on our members, but fortunately a large contingent of NEOOC ‘buzzards’ successfully found their way to this special event. We heard great reports from them about the orienteering and the course for this beautiful summer day. Conditions were very dry, and the vegetation thick. Click into the post to read the full results!

On a spectacularly perfect Saturday morning, 25 participants took part in our first morning orienteering event. This was rescheduled from June 25th due to the deluge that took place at that time. Click into the post for the full results!

Walborn Reservoir has likely never seen such an enthusiastic band in search of booty. Happy that the earlier predictions of thunderstorms had missed the mark, at least 22 kayaks and 11 canoes (and a few runners headed for land controls) lined up on the beach, ready to go. Read all the results by clicking into the post!

OK, so the format was screwed up and there was mud pretty much everywhere. You can’t say you didn’t have a good time. We started with 28 participants on the course by 6:30 and 28 participants returned by 8:30, which is a good thing. Thank you to Richard for running the registration table and to Holly Wilgus and Andreas Johansson for handling the starting/timing/ map duties. Click in to the post for full results!

A big thank you to Neil Dollinger, Randy Mitchell, Michaele MacGeorge, Fran Kern and Phil Nelson for helping with set up, registration, awards and cleanup. The Natatorium also deserves our appreciation for providing us a room at no charge. There were a good number of participants in the free family version exploring the center of town. A number said they had never seen some of the locations visited. Click into the post for the full report!

As always, a thank you to the volunteers. Without our all volunteer crews no orienteering events would happen in Northeast Ohio. A special thank you to Richard Davies, who as a first time course designer and setter, did a fantastic job of providing a challenging and entertaining set of courses on a day that proved perfect for orienteering. Though rained threatened, it never materialized to dampen any one’s “spirit.” Click into post for the full report!

Hats off to pinch hit course designer, Randy Mitchell, he laid out a course that contained the intrigue of the ledges’ cliffs and boulders but used the subtle terrain to the east to create a counter point that caught some experienced orienteers off guard. After boisterous, in-your-face features of the ledges, orienteers were over-running the ripple-like contours that made up a gentle saddle or shallow reentrant or one of several seasonal streams. That is what orienteering is all about –map reading and the challenge of keeping in contact with your map. Ya’ should have been there to run it. Click into the post for the full report!

An awesome job was done by Course Designer Steve Hendrix to create a perfect quick kickoff to the 2015 season. Since we never know what the weather might bring to mid-March, and we’re all a little paunchy from being stuck inside more than we wanted to, the idea was to construct 3 short courses with limited navigational dilemma, which would keep participants moving and warm, and that could be run consecutively. All in the name of helping us shake the rust off. Steve executed this immaculately. (This early season format was so successful; we will certainly be using it again.) Click into the post for the full details!