The 2021 Orienteering USA Annual General Meeting will take place online on Thursday, October 21 from 8:00 to 10:00 pm (EDT). Information and updates will be posted on this page as they become available.
Your membership in Orienteering USA helps us to bring programs and services to orienteers and clubs throughout the country. Thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Clare Durand
President, Orienteering USA
Congratulations to Grizzly Orienteering and the San Benito High School NJROTC Unit who have been chosen as the recipients of the 2021 Wilson Community Growth Grant. Winners of this year’s grants receive $1,000 to deepen youth participation through purchase of equipment and expanded event programming. While the impact of Covid-19 on the Orienteering community was significant, it only emboldened these organizations to focus on safe and inclusive ways to introduce new participants to the sport.
Grizzly Orienteering’s Allison Brown is a native of Missoula, and her husband Boris Granovskiy is a former member of the U.S. Orienteering Team. Their thorough approach to building from the youth upwards promises for a healthy future to their club.
San Benito High School is located near the southeastern-most tip of Texas. The area’s flatness and lack of vegetation offer a creative challenge when it comes to designing courses and hosting events. Chief Timothy Wilson brings his experience with navy ship navigation as a way to highlight the transferability of concrete skills as well as intangible skills like leadership, resilience and perseverance that Orienteering requires.
Read the full Press Release for more information. Applications for the 2022 Wilson Community Growth Grant as well as the 2022 Wilson Character Through Competition Award will be available later in the fall of 2021.
2021 was an odd year for international orienteering competition. With no World Championships in 2020 due to the pandemic, the organizers for 2021 scrambled to incorporate additional sprint disciplines into what was originally scheduled to be a ‘Forest’ program. With the pandemic still raging around the globe, many countries outside Europe elected not to send teams to WOC at all this year.
Due to issues related to family and coronavirus concerns, many of the standing US Team members elected to sit this year out as well. Veteran member Eric Bone (COC) is no stranger to WOC, making his 19th WOC appearance this year but teammates Sydney Fisher (WPOC) and Will Enger (COC) have each been to WOC once before this year. Three of the six WOC novices on this years team are currently members of the Orienteering USA Junior National Team as well (AJ, Diana & Alexis with Thomas Laraia from MNOC having recently aged out). So this year was looking to be a great experience building year and it certainly didn’t disappoint.
Leading up to WOC2021, team member AJ Riley (DVOA) got a head start by competing at the WOC Selection races and training in Europe beginning in early June. Joe Barrett (QOC) arrived in the Czech Republic a few weeks later and put in some solid training time well in advance of WOC. Diana Aleksieva (QOC) and Alexis Merka (QOC) did some training at Kost and the mother/son duo of Angelica Riley (DVOA) and AJ did a final tuneup race at Bukovel in Ukraine.
TeamUSA officially came together July 1st for their official COVID tests, registration and check-in followed by some easy explorations of the surrounding areas and sprint venue. AJ was selected by the IOF to take over their Instagram feed for the day – detailing some of his training, taking questions and more. You can catch most of the 40+ posts over on our Facebook page – Part A & Part B.
More Media: Official Site | Diana & Alex Training at Kost | Team Riley at Bukovel
First up in the competition schedule was the individual sprint at Terezín, a former military fortress composed of citadel and adjacent walled garrison town. Organized as a series of 6 qualification heats in the morning and a final in the afternoon, the racing was fast and furious. Unfortunately none of our TeamUSA athletes qualified for the finals, but AJ did give a nice post-race interview for the IOF.
| Men A | 26th – Will Enger | 17:19 (+4:15) |
| Men B | 26th – Thomas Laraia | 15:35 (+2:41) |
| Men C | 25th – AJ Riley | 15:46 (+2:48) |
| Women A | 24th – Diana Aleksieva | 22:31 (+10:01) |
| Women B | – Angelica Riley | msp |
| Women C | 22nd – Alexis Merka | 25:01 (+11:11) |
Alexis – “Everyone seemed so fast I felt like I had to push that fast too, slightly forgetting that I’m nowhere near being in such good shape as them… But running down the finish chute was an amazing feeling..“
Thomas – “Annoyed about losing focus to 9 and missing where I was exiting the track and generally not taking enough time to look at all the options. Too many legs where that hurt.”
More Media: Official Site | Sprint Q Photos | Will Enger – Sprint Q Video | Thomas Laraia – Sprint Q Video | More Sprint Q Photos
Day 2 took us to the town centre of Doksy with its irregular street network. The terrain consisted of urban areas with paved streets and parkland with grass surfaces. Artificial barriers added navigational challenges to the course. The US Team for the sprint relay was composed entirely of WOC novices with Angelica taking the leadoff leg.
She started into town on the heels of some of the fastest women in the orienteering world including the likes of Tove Alexandersson(SWE) and Simona Aebersold (SUI). A clean run, but well behind the leaders, she handed off to son AJ for the second leg. Though largely running a solo race at this point, AJ ran strong and clean and was caught up by some of the 3rd leg leaders, being pulled through the spectator control hot on the heels of race leader Gustav Bergman from Sweden. AJ handed off to Joe Barrett who admitted sprints weren’t his strong suit, but he had a clean run nonetheless handing off to anchor leg Alexis Merka to round out the race. Unfortunately the team was over the official time limit, but all indicated that they enjoyed the racing regardless.
AJ – “Apparently I was on TV with my homie Gustav so that’s cool.”
Joe – “Mostly running solo, just a few of the leg 4 women at the very end of the course. No major misses. Just hesitant in some circles, and felt I was reading really slow around all the fake fences at 9 and 10… It was a good low pressure way to start.”
Alexis – “It was a super fun race, I enjoyed the course and I’m definitely satisfied with it… So we got pretty much completely lapped, but that’s okay. I think that definitely helped me focus a lot more on my own race and on pacing myself better than I did yesterday. It was really fun.”
More Media: Official Site | Alternate Sprint Relay Movie | Sprint Relay Photos | Sprint Relay Map (pdf)
After a Rest Day, the action moved on to the Middle Distance races which took place in some challenging mountain terrain. Physically demanding steep slopes with granite boulders, cliffs with broken ground and some marshy areas were prominent features on this map. Morning qualification heats – top 15 in each heat plus additional spots for under-represented countries advancing to the final.
| Men’s A | 29 – Eric Bone | 43:31 (+12:45) |
| Men’s B | 21 – Thomas Laraia | 38:26 (+10:14) |
| Men’s C | 29 – Joe Barrett | 44:06 (+15:22) |
| Women’s A | 26 – Diana Aleksieva | 1:15:38 (+45:43) |
| Women’s B | – Angelica Riley | msp |
| Women’s C | 27 – Sydney Fisher | 44:11 (+13:39) |
Thomas started out with a great run in his heat, pretty much matching pace with the eventual heat winners through the first 4 controls, then hit a patch of green which slowed him down more than the stronger Euro runners who moved right through it. He finished only 10 minutes back which earned him a spot in the final. Team mate Eric Bone filmed a nice interview with Thomas after his run. Sydney was also happy with her race, losing a little time to small bobbles, but otherwise running cleanly to secure her spot in the women’s final.
Thomas: “Felt a bit of pressure and heart racing but it calmed down a lot through warming up and didn’t feel it anymore on the start, so good to see.… Strength lacking, will prioritize being faster and stronger next time. Goals for future are qualifying for the final on merit alone”
Sydney: “Pretty satisfied with this race. Small bobble on 1. A lot of hesitation to 5. Overall pretty clean though. Legs didn’t feel too energetic, but no one (around me anyway) was moving that quickly up the hills.”
Moving on to the afternoon’s Middle Final:
Sydney: “Disappointed in this race. I had no flow – lots of time lost in the circle and a couple of big mistakes. I started too fast and was tired from running earlier. Good experience though! So many cameramen/drones out in the woods.“
Thomas: “Mostly a pretty good race. Things I remember, fat mistake to 22 being too high and seeing some random crags…. Big pack going to 15, absolutely running on fumes there, wish I could’ve passed and kept attempting to catch people but I was pretty ruined. Nice to work as a group on 15-18 with Paul and somewhat Tomas.”
| Men’s Final | 49 – Thomas Laraia | 1:02:54 (+23:23) |
| Women’s Final | 52 – Sydney Fisher | 1:18:21 (+40:09) |
More Media: Official Site | Middle Q Photos | Extra Middle Q Photos | Women’s Final Map (pdf) | Men’s Final Map (pdf)
After another rest day that saw much of the team getting more training done, the competition then moved to the continental sandstone terrain of Kokořínsko with its intricate morphology consisting of valleys and reentrants crowned by massive sandstone rock formations. This venue would host both the relay and Friday’s long competition. Running the women’s race were Sydney > Angelica > Alexis. Sydney got in a clean run before the rains began, but the day would only get darker and damper as it progressed.
Sydney – “In a normal year I would not run first, but I was excited for the experience. Goal was to stay with the pack through the arena, plan a route to 1, and then run my own race.… The terrain was amazing and I felt good physically…Hopefully next time I’ll have the speed to stay with a pack.”
Alexis – “…worst race of my life. Not because of the rain or the dark, i liked that. Just the hills were seriously way over my ability and I was completely dying. The cameras gave me a few anxiety attacks, which really didn’t help… I’m still glad I have this experience. Everyone has to have their worst race someday, and frankly I’m kind of honored mine is a WOC race.”
By the time the Men’s Relay started the rain was coming down pretty good, but AJ navigated well and hung with the pack for quite a while, making an appearance on the first couple TV controls. Eric, concerned about increasingly dark conditions, switched places with Will and ran second wearing a headlamp in order to read the map in the dark woods with the intention of handing it off to Will at the exchange. Things didn’t exactly go to plan though…. The photo of Eric below isn’t a poorly exposed shot – it was just that dark out there…
AJ – “I love relays and honestly had a great time. Good to see that I can be competitive with the top guys if I was a bit more fit.”
Will – “This was enjoyable and the terrain was awesome – but the experience was clouded somewhat by me not being able to orienteer normally due to the impending darkness. … [Eric] ran the second leg with a headlamp, and was going to pass it to me, but then they made us mass start just after Eric passed through the arena, so I never got it… Still a fun experience, but would’ve been a lot better under reasonable circumstances.“
More Media: Official Site | Forest Relay Photos | Maps (pdf)
Back at Kokořínsko on Friday for the Long Distance race utilizing the same arena as Thursday’s relay, and used a larger version of the long narrow relay map with the latter portion of each course coming back through the terrain used on Thursday. Long legs frequently offered up long trail runs to avoid the steep, intricate cliff areas and many runners took full advantage of them but some options were clearly better than others.
| Men’s Long | 56 – Joe Barrett | 2:17:32 (+41:37) |
| Women’s Long | 54 – Sydney Fisher | 2:15:24 (+58:13) |
| Women’s Long | 55 – Diana Aleksieva | 3:07:10 (+1:49:59) |
Joe – “Definitely the best race of the week for me. Read the cliffs in the circle pretty well. Only going down the wrong gap to #4, and then left #5 in the wrong direction without map aligned, and got blocked by an unexpected cliff... the cliffs did create route options to gain/lose time“
Sydney – “Time wasn’t great, but the course was a lot of fun. I just didn’t have the speed on the trails around, or the endurance… the course used a lot of rock passages, which was really neat… I like longs”
More Media: Official Site | Long Distance Photos | Women’s Map (pdf) | Men’s Map (pdf)
Sydney – “It was a great experience and I am glad I got to race. The sandstone terrain was fantastic. I haven’t (yet) traveled many places to orienteer, but it was definitely one of my favorites… I had a couple of good races and a couple not so good. I was a lot closer (% time wise) to the leaders than I was in Norway so I’m moving in the right direction… Goals for next time are to be more fit (I have 2 years to get faster…seems like plenty of time) and to hopefully spend some time in relevant terrain more than a few days in advance.“
Will – “I never thought I’d get a second opportunity to finally run a forest race at WOC, and it took a funky, unique year with a lot of our best guys injured or declining, so I’m thankful for the memorable experience in any case.“
Joe – “Super fun time for my first WOC… Sprint Relay was alright, not a whole lot of expectations going in, clean race, no major misses… Long definitely my best race of the week, felt strong, good pace (for me) through most of it… could have looked ahead more on short legs, not just the long ones“
Kevin Fisher (TeamUSA Official) – “I think things went pretty well considering my complete lack of training or expertise in this area. Everyone got to their races on time and to and from the airport, which was honestly my main goal… it was inspiring to spend time with all of these athletes, and really fun to watch them compete, hear their experiences in the woods, and talk about routes… I would highly recommend the WOC experience to anyone (wait for a normal year though!)”
So that wraps it up for this year. 2022 will feature a Sprint WOC on June 26-30 in Denmark and sprinting will also feature prominently when the world’s best come to Alabama two weeks later on July 7-17 for The World Games 2022. Mark your calendars and plan to come to Birmingham to be a part of the action as the US hosts the world’s best orienteers for what is sure to be some great competition!
Photos courtesy: Kevin Fisher, Dasa Merkova, Angelica Riley, Tomáš Bubela, Lukáš Budínský, Jiří Čech, Petr Kadeřávek & Petr Háp plus screenshots from official IOF & WOC2021 video feeds.
At its regular board meeting on June 21st, the Orienteering USA Board of Directors voted to update the SARS-CoV-2 policy to reflect changing conditions and what we know about how the virus is transmitted. Many of the previous ‘requirements’ are now reduced to ‘recommendations’ and others are eliminated entirely in the new streamlined version. There are, however, still some items that remain requirements for NRE events and are strongly suggested for organizers holding local events as well.
The executive summary reads:
The full text of the revised policy can be found in the OUSA Library under Library>Administrative>Policies or directly at this link.
A note from OUSA’s VP for Youth Initiatives:
As we return to holding National Ranking Events (NRE), I encourage everyone to think about kids who may have moved up a course – or two – during our hiatus from NREs. 12-year-olds who last competed on White in the fall of 2019 are now in their last six months of eligibility to run Yellow. Ditto for 14-year-olds moving from Yellow to Orange. These are big jumps in normal years, but made even bigger as most kids have not recently orienteered in major events with heightened attention to rules.
As we return to orienteering, we should be sure we are providing an experience for our youth aligned with the principles of the Orienteering Development Model, which emphasizes fun and play over a strict focus on competition for our youngest orienteers.
Fortunately, our Rules of Competition provide opportunities for us to support young orienteers in being able to focus on their races, be successful, and build confidence. About five years ago, OUSA adopted several key rule changes that are even more important during this time of transition. The rules are shown below in bold text.
A.28.5 Except at Orienteering USA Junior Nationals, White and Yellow courses may have open start times to allow parents to coordinate schedules with their children’s starts.*
Board rationale: This is a change from pre-scheduled start times intended to make events more family-friendly by allowing parents who are at events with their children to both compete, and still shadow their children. Clubs are encouraged to have the White/Yellow start as close to the parents’ start as possible, to accept parental requests for start times for their children, or to allow children to start at any time during the start window, and to simplify the start procedures as much as possible.
A.28.6 The competitors take their competition maps at the starting time at the start location or after the starting time at the map issue point. Except at Orienteering USA Junior Nationals, competitors on the White and Yellow courses may be given the map prior to their starting time, provided that the conditions are consistent for all such competitors.*
Board rationale: Allowing some time with the map before the clock starts allows them some time to plan a course. Event organizers may also allow parents/coaches to review the course with their children during this brief window to help them to plan for legs and review where problems may occur. This will help to ensure that children are successful on their courses, having fun, and progressing in their orienteering skills. If white and yellow competitors will be allowed to review their maps with a more experienced orienteer prior to their start time, this should be communicated to all competitors in advance to allow for proper planning by the competitor and their parents/coaches/experienced orienteer.
*The open start time and map preview does not apply to Junior Nationals, because Junior Nationals does not offer age-class awards.
Because kids are behind on their NRE experiences, we encourage organizers to be more liberal with their implementation of these rules for 2021 and into 2022
Putting my club volunteer hat on, here’s how we are planning to implement these ideas at NEOC’s New England Championship NRE to be held in Massachusetts this fall. Other clubs may choose different approaches.
Want to learn more about the Orienteering Development Model and our approach to introducing kids to the sport? Try the Orienteering Development Model for OUSA Members on the Education Portal, with a focus on stages 1, 2 and 3. Each lesson has a short video and the text of the relevant ODM stage. The course is free for OUSA members.
Do you have more ideas? Email vpyouth@nullorienteeringusa.org. See you in the woods!
Tori Campbell
OUSA VP for Youth Initiatives
Photo credit: Dave Yee Photography
This weeks Puzzle Friday feature takes us down south to the Sid Richardson Scout Camp in Texas where the North Texas Orienteering Association (NTOA) recently hosted its annual Texas Junior Orienteering Camp (TJOC). This camp is a 6-day residence camp for orienteers aged 13-19 and was held June 6-11, 2021. 19 adult staff worked with the 36 junior orienteers who came together from California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio and Texas to improve their navigation skills.
Special thanks to the organizers and to Mike Minium (OCIN), one of the longtime coaches for the TJOC who took the photos used in this weeks puzzle. Check out the full gallery of TJOC ’21 photos over on Smugmug. Have a great weekend everyone!
The JWOC Selection Committee (Erin Schirm, Anton Salmenkylä and Jon Torrance) is pleased to announce the 2021 US Team selected to compete at the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) to be held September 5-10 in Gebze, Kocaeli, Turkey, about 50km from Istanbul.
From Left to Right:
Go Team USA!!
Accompanying the team as JWOC coaches will be Anton Salmenkylä, JNT Coach and National Team member, and Tyra Christopherson, National Team member.
Over the weekend, the Tahoe 2021 event hosted by the Bay Area Orienteering Club (BAOC) was sanctioned and approved by both the Sanctioning Committee and Orienteering USA Executive Committee and the event is now officially the 2021 Orienteering USA Nationals.
Venue permits for the middle and long events are still pending, which has become a routine situation in the age of COVID-19 as many agencies are not issuing permits until very close to the event dates. However, permit approval is anticipated and registration is currently open at EventReg. Please be sure to review the event page prior to registering as there are some event specific notes to be aware of.
In the schedule void left by the California Orienteering Festival’s postponement to 2023, the Bay Area Orienteering Club (BAOC) has assembled the Tahoe 2021 series of events.
The event program will include the 2021 US Orienteering Championships August 6-9 (pending sanctioning approval) with three NRE events: Sprint, Middle & Long plus a non-NRE Club Championship Relay. Also included in the program will be the 2021 North American Rogaining Championships to be held the following weekend on August 14-15 featuring a 24 Hour Championship event and a 4-Hour recreational event.
More information on the event can be found on the BAOC website.
Registration for all events is now open on EventReg.
The US Senior Team Review Panel, consisting of Peggy Dickison, Glen Tryson & Jeff Saeger, are pleased to announce this year’s team to compete at the World Orienteering Championships to be held in early July in the Czech Republic.
AJ Riley (pictured here competing in the middle distance race in Czechia on Saturday) earned an automatic spot at last month’s team trials. Since he was the only TeamUSA athlete competing at the Team Selection races this past weekend in Czechia that event became a non-factor in the selection, but the Review Panel elected to wait until after the Selection Races for other results.
The US Team Trials 2-day scoring list was used as the primary selection tool, but the panel also used the Team Trial Sprint results as well as 2019-2020 rankings and other race results. The Team Trials had some very strong results and some close scoring made the selection process interesting.
Men
Women
Four TeamUSA athletes had previously earned personal starts for this year’s WOC. Unfortunately, all four have declined: Ali Crocker and Tori Borish for family reasons, and Morten Jorgensen and Anton Salmenkyla because of injuries. We wish them all the best and hope to see them back next year.
The ESC would also like to announce that Dasa Merka, a Czech native and Alex’s mom, has agreed to act as the Team Administrator. Congratulation to all the athletes that will represent the USA at the World Champs next month!!
Photo Credit: Petr Kadeřávek