2024 Silva Award Winner: Clinton Morse
Clinton Morse is posthumously awarded the 2024 Silva Award for his decades of service to the sport of orienteering in and around Connecticut and especially across the nation. Clinton’s untimely death in July has been a sad and terrible loss for his family, friends, and the local and national orienteering community. He was always eager to take on significant projects and assist others with thorny issues, especially technical ones. His absence is leaving a gaping hole for so many.
Photo by Nadim Ahmed
Clinton became active in orienteering and WCOC over 20 years ago. He did the field work and drafting for several local maps including Gay City State Park, Crandalls Town Park, Coops Sawmill, and the University of Connecticut (UConn) sprint map. He was currently working on completely re-mapping and expanding Brooksvale Park near New Haven, CT. He had plans to help the club revise some of their other outdated maps. He was the manager of much of WCOC’s event equipment and set courses for numerous local events, including a Billygoat. He also organized national events himself. In the spring of 2024, he single-handedly put on the Sprint Team Trials for the US World Orienteering Championship team at UConn—an event that had Clinton as mapmaker, course setter, registrar, and meet director. Clinton was living proof that one person can put on a national event, especially with some helpers on event day. It was a resounding success.
Clinton has been the Orienteering USA Communications Manager since he retired from UConn in 2020. In that capacity, he was the OUSA webmaster, published the monthly OUSA online newsletter, published the much-heralded Year in Review, and coordinated social media for the organization. His work has raised the bar for OUSA’s media and communications and set wonderful precedents for those who will come after him. He traveled to a majority of the National Ranking Events held during his tenure to take photographs, write up event summaries, and participate in the competitions. He drove countless miles (actually not countless, he did track them) in his converted camping truck to attend these venues, often crossing the country in only a few days to get to an important event. When he attended these competitions, he often helped do whatever he was asked to help with. For example, at the World Games in Birmingham in 2022, he assisted with equipment setup and doing whatever people needed done even as he was photographing and managing the publicity for the orienteering events.
In his capacity as OUSA Communication’s Manager, Clinton Morse was best known as a photographer and a dedicated and passionate advocate for all clubs hosting events and all orienteers finishing them. He quickly got his own course out of the way to photograph others finishing. Clinton’s tasking was only to provide general content for OUSA’s social media, but his passion for photography and his fellow orienteers led him to create a tremendous photo library expressing the immense joys of our sport.
Clinton stepped into a role that was defined on paper as a communication role, and made it his own, with an infectious knack for sharing the best of our community and our sport, in photos, video, newsletters, and simply sharing ideas with others. In that role, Clinton also became a valuable sounding board for anyone in any club that was facing communication challenges and needed some wisdom and perspective.
Clinton defined what it means to be a community builder. Always happy to connect with other orienteers about their events—past, present, and future—he not only helped promote those events but also drove across the country many times to be a part of national events all over the country. There are stories of Clint, as a spontaneous volunteer, going out on snowshoes in negative 14 degree weather at the 2023 US Ski-O Championships to take epic photographs of activity that would otherwise have been missed in the cold.
When the year was over, he produced an annual retrospect of the year’s top events and promotions for the coming year. These have become keepsakes for many OUSA members, reminding them of what US orienteering is at its best. They are now also a reminder that Clinton Morse represented the best of orienteering in everything he did.
Clinton was a fixture at most recent big NREs for his work as OUSA’s Communications Manager, taking photos of orienteers in-the-woods and finishing. But at many NRE’s, he volunteered for various duties well beyond his official duties. Because he needed to pre-run courses, he reduced the hosting club’s need to find prerunners to turn on the SportIdent SIAC-enabled units. He set up his truck-camper for use as download, using an awning that was part of the camper conversion. He volunteered on many occasions to help pull controls after a day’s events.
Clinton Morse exemplified the true spirit of orienteering. His enthusiasm, dedication, and passion, and friendship can never be replaced and he will be sorely missed.
Also see 89 tributes and memories on AttackPoint discussion thread “Clinton Morse”
2024 Golden Service Awards
Gregory Balter, Delaware Valley Orienteering Association (DVOA)/Grizzly
Orienteering (GrizO)
Ever since Grizzly Orienteering was founded, Gregory has been a fantastic supporter and advocate for the club. When Grizzly Orienteering decided to host their first-ever NRE in 2022, Gregory volunteered to create the base map for the area they used. He then flew out to field-check the Lubrecht map, served as a course consultant and took on the task of printing maps for the entire three-day festival, doing all these things with a fantastic attitude, excellent expertise, and the appropriate timeliness to have everything ready in time for the NRE. During the festival itself, Gregory helped put out and pick up controls, and helped out everywhere he could with the new club’s first big event. When it was time for GrizO to host four days of NREs as part of the Pacific Northwest Orienteering Festival this year, Gregory stepped up again, expanding the Lubrecht map, creating the base map and doing some initial field checking for the Soft Rock map, as well as doing all the map printing for all four days once again. He has done all this work voluntarily, with the sole goal of hoping to see orienteering in this country spread and grow.
Ralph Courtney, North Texas Orienteering Association (NTOA)
Ralph has been an enthusiastic orienteer and member of NTOA since 1996, including serving as equipment manager for over 20 years. He maintains their Orienteering trailer with all of the equipment that he takes to the meets. He is one of the first to arrive at a meet and one of the last to leave – helping to setup and take down equipment.
A lifelong Boy Scout, Ralph edited the 2003 edition of the Boy Scout Orienteering Merit Badge book. He has been teaching Orienteering at Philmont Boy Scout Ranch to hundreds of Scout Masters since 2009. The Scout Masters take this knowledge back to teach Orienteering to the scouts at their troops. Ralph teaches Beginner and Boy Scout Orienteering clinics prior to most of NTOAs meets.
He has created or updated over 20 orienteering maps. He coordinates our NTOA mapping, including the new map for the 2025 OUSA Junior Nationals that NTOA will hold.
Ralph is meet director or course setter for two NTOA events every year. He was course setter for 2007 Junior Nationals, was meet director for 2017 Junior Nationals, and is course setter for 2025 Junior Nationals.
Ralph is NTOA scout liaison, coordinating use of scout camps/ranches for our orienteering meets. He set up three permanent orienteering courses at Boy Scout camps.
He has taught classes and set courses for every one of the Texas Junior Orienteering Camps (TJOCs) since 1998 for high school students from across the United States. Multiple TJOC students later become junior national orienteering champs.
Peg Davis, Tucson Orienteering Club (TSN)
Peg Davis began orienteering with the Tucson Orienteering Club 35 years ago and quickly became an integral volunteer. She started by managing the newsletter and PR, then expanded her involvement by directing numerous events each year and teaching dozens of beginner clinics. Over time, Peg took on leadership roles, including Vice President and President of the club’s Board of Directors. She served as the event director for the 2001 North American Rogaining Championships and the highly successful2004 World Rogaining Championships.
Even years after hosting these major events, Peg remains a central figure in Tucson’s orienteering community. Her efforts help draw orienteers from around the world to the annual Southwest Spring Week (formerly Weekend), where she consistently fills essential roles—whether as event director,volunteer coordinator, social organizer, guest house host, or anything else needed to ensure a memorable experience for all attendees.
Jeanette Dunlap, Orienteering Louisville (OLOU)
Jeanette has been a continuous supporter of Orienteering Louisville for many years now. She has designed and set up Maze-O courses. She regularly handles photography duties at meets. She brings baked goods to their pitch-ins. She promotes the sport to new people.
Jeanette organized all the food for this summer’s Carter Caves Junior Orienteering Camp (CCJOC). She led the other volunteers in preparing, serving, and cleanup so that the youth and staff could have healthy, delicious meals to keep them going strong. She was instrumental to the success of the camp. Jeanette also led the JWOC/WUOC Lunch Fundraiser at Flying Pig XXVI. She helped develop the recipes, tested them, and modified to ensure that the vegan option was as premium as the standard. She did all the shopping, much of the prep work, and most of the assembly. She also distributed the lunches at the meet and sold the extra sandwiches she made to maximize profit for the OUSA Teams. This fundraiser made about $2000 for the teams.
Additionally, she is helping the OUSA Youth Development Program (YDP) with a few tasks. Jeanette does not run any courses herself. She does this because her kids love orienteering, and she wants to see the sport succeed and grow.
Bridget Hall, New England Orienteering Club (NEOC)
Bridget Hall has expended massive volunteer efforts on behalf of NEOC and OUSA. Bridget has been contributing since early 2020 to the development of our young orienteers at the national level and building the community around them. During 2020 and 2021, the two toughest years in the lives of our young athletes, unable to travel, compete, and technically without a solid coaching structure, Bridget was one of the former National Junior Program juniors who helped keep her peers motivated, engaged them in online training and exchanges and helped start the bridging to the National Team. Following the merger of the Junior National Team with the National Team at the start of 2022, Bridget was there as captain of the JWOC team in her last JWOC year, reaching out and motivating her peers, as well as building bridges between the National athletes and the Junior Squad.
As the main author of the US Team Blog, she has been instrumental in bringing the National Team athletes closer to its supporters, the OUSA community. Bridget reaches out to the athletes with the topic for a post, asks for athletes to author articles or does so herself, uses guiding questions if the authors are younger, asks for maps and photos, and assists in creating the blog post if needed. For some readers, these posts bring back a little bit of the way-back-when articles in Orienteering North America, and for others they are just one way of hearing directly from the young athletes and things that make an impression on them in the World of Orienteering.
She has further gotten engaged in the Youth Development Program (YDP). She facilitates the bridging between the young YDP athletes and the National Team athletes. Many of the current National Team members are former National Junior Program athletes and have not forgotten what it meant to have that support from the community, and many of them, including Bridget, are ready to give back to the community by supporting and engaging in many of the Youth Development Initiatives since the creation of that VP position. She has included YDP athletes in some of the US Team Blog posts where appropriate and has been welcoming to YDP athletes on their first AP logging.
Bridget is a contributor to OUSA’s Youth Mapping Program, where she completed her first map as a volunteer. She has completed three subsequent YMP maps but more importantly has gained proficiency, confidence, and experience as an orienteering mapper.
She is the type of young leader that any club would be lucky to have, and she represented OrienteeringUSA at the IOF’s 2024 Young Leader’s Academy in the Italian Dolomites in conjunction with the “5 Days Italy” event.
Finally, at the club level, Bridget has been a mainstay of day-of event volunteering since her early teenage years. More importantly, she has organized (or co-organized) four years of 5-event winter training series and contributed course designs to the 2022 regional training camp and the 2022 US Masters Championships. She has co-meet directed (including designing/setting courses) multiple club events.
Bridget is an exceptional Young Leader in orienteering for all that she has
contributed at the local club, regional, national, and international level. The
future of our sport is in good hands with the active involvement of Bridget and
those like her.
Bruce Moore, Orienteering Louisville / Nashville Orienteering Club (NASH-O)
Bruce Moore has volunteered and passionately promoted orienteering for more
than 40 years. Here are some of the highlights of his service:
Over four years ago, Bruce Moore undertook the challenge of starting a new
orienteering club from scratch in middle Tennessee. This incorporated every
aspect of running a club. His work included finding, organizing, educating,
leading and retaining members. Bruce marketed orienteering to the local and
regional community, gained permissions and coordinated with multiple venues to
promote and implement orienteering events in Tennessee.
Bruce’s tireless efforts brought Nashville Orienteering Club (NASH-O) to life.
Additionally, Bruce gave countless hours contributing his expertise and
personal equipment to produce more than seven maps for NASH-O.
Beyond NASH-O, Bruce created “With A Map” – a customizable interactive program
that combines cognitive learning and physical activity to introduce and educate
new orienteers in large to small spaces or even indoors. Bruce donated and
implemented his “With A Map” programs in multiple locations and events. Bruce
volunteered to run fundraiser maze events at the OCIN Flying Pig.
Bruce has performed decades of volunteer service for multiple OLOU and OCIN
national events including course setting, map updating, and general volunteer
work.
Notably, Bruce organized the first regional event for OLOU, ICO, and OCIN that
included a Classic Event, a Night O, and a Sprint Relay. This event is expected
to become an annual event for regional club bragging rights.
Bruce has worked with dozens of schools, organizations, and JROTC groups to
teach, coach and grow the sport of orienteering. His work has positively
impacted the lives of hundreds of people.
Bruce has gone above and beyond as a volunteer, giving of his time and
experience to expand and improve the existing clubs of OCIN, OLOU and ICO, as
well as breathe life into NASH-O.
Dick Neuburger, Possum Trot Orienteering Club (PTOC)
Dick Neuburger has been a veteran of orienteering in the Kansas City area for
40 years. He has been crucial to the success of Possum Trot Orienteering Club
by being President, organizer, event director, archive researcher, data
collector, mapper, and so many other projects and job titles. He was event
director for the Possum Trot (national event) for more than 20 years. He also
volunteered at several World Masters Championships around the world.
He has helped the boy scouts organization, school O programs, summer
children’s events, and Johnson County Parks & Rec annual orienteering
clinic.
He has been such a large part of orienteering here in KC and around
the country.
Dylan Poe, Orienteering Cincinnati (OCIN)
Dylan Poe, of Orienteering Cincinnati, was elected to the OUSA board in 2022 at
the age of 23. When the position became open in 2023, Dylan volunteered and is
now OUSA Secretary. In October 2023, he supported a proposal for OUSA to pay
for a National Federation license for Livelox, and volunteered to be the
liaison to implement Livelox for OUSA clubs. He reports regularly on Livelox
usage statistics to OUSA, has developed training materials for Livelox, and
helped many club volunteers figure out how to load their events and use the
Livelox tools effectively.
Dylan is also heavily involved with orienteering Youth development: He coached
junior teams at NAOC in California in 2023 and organized junior training
sessions at the 2024 Junior Nationals held by COC near George, WA. He helped
with course setting and coaching for Carter Caves Junior Orienteering Camp in
- He is a recognized advocate for the OUSA Junior Development Program.
He’s done Course Setting for local meets for both OCIN and ICO, and for OCIN’s
Flying Pig NRE including the OUSA Masters Nationals in 2024. He started doing
map updates while course setting, and has grown into actual mapping, even to
the level of processing lidar data to make orienteering basemaps, with the
intention of making new maps for another club, Indiana Crossroads Orienteering,
as well as OCIN.
He started orienteering in 2012 as an 8th grader at Union County Middle School.
He was named to the OUSA Junior National Team in 2017, and the Junior
Development Team in 2018. He represented the USA at the 2024 World University
Orienteering Championships (WUOC) in Bulgaria.
Dylan Poe’s service to the community of orienteering reflects great credit upon
himself, Orienteering Cincinnati, and Orienteering USA.
Charles Scharlau, Backwoods Orienteering Klub (BOK)
Charles is locally, nationally and internationally active in Radio
Orienteering. He introduced Radio-O to BOK when he directed and set a national
championship in 2006. Since then, he has designed and set courses for the US
Radio-O Champs in 2013, 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
With a few others, in 2019, he set up and has been leading the Radio
Orienteering Committee which standardizes the US rules, selects the US team and
coordinates with the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and the International
Amateur Radio Union (IARU).
In order to set up and compete in Radio Orienteering, specialized radio
transmitters and receivers are necessary. Charles has designed and built
transmitters and antennas to make course setting easier and events more
dependable. His current project is designing an open source transmitter and
receiver that will cut the cost of entry for competitors and clubs in half.
Charles has consistently given up his chance to compete at our local events and
National Champs in order to set the courses for everyone else.
Ralph Tolbert, Delaware Valley Orienteering Association (DVOA)
Ralph was President of DVOA from 2004 to 2008. In addition to hosting many
local events during that time, he was also a course setter for two national
events, one in 2005 and one in 2007. Since that time, his contributions have
been more behind the scenes but no less important; he was on the vetting team
for DVOA’s national events in 2008, 2014, 2015, 2021 and 2022. In 2012, he was
the lead vetter for NAOC. He was an advisor for DVOA’s national event in 2023
and has stepped up again to be on the vetting team for our upcoming event in
October 2024. Part of the reason DVOA is able to host national events on an
almost yearly basis, is because we have club members like Ralph Tolbert willing
to contribute their time and expertise to the sometimes thankless role of
vetter. The club is truly lucky to have a volunteer like Ralph Tolbert!
Rex Winterbottom, NAV-X Map Adventures (NAVX)
While Rex’s official club is NAVX, he is also an important event coordinator
for BAOC as well as running his own event company Terraloco.
Rex loves to bring together orienteers from around the region in unique ways.
He is often looking for new venues and opportunities to host festivals that
will bring folks from different areas and backgrounds to competition. This year
alone, he has helped both SDO and LAOC to host sprint festivals by helping with
finding venues and course setting multiple sprint courses, traveling outside of
his home area to enable regional competition. He is also hosting a State
Championship event later this year that promises some fun North vs South
rivalry.
Rex’s dedication to the sport of orienteering in the State of California and
for all California clubs is not questioned. He has been an innovator for quite
a while now.
While some of Rex’s work toward orienteering is paid, much of
the event planning and course setting that he brings to the state is
accomplished as a volunteer or simply with reimbursement of travel expense. Rex
has helped to make California a more interesting place to be involved in
orienteering and has helped to bring the clubs and their members together as a
state competitive family.
2024 Orienteering USA President’s Award
Blaik Mathews, Florida Orienteering (FLO)
Dylan Poe, Orienteering Cincinnati (OCIN)
Blaik Mathews and Dylan Poe are recognized for their contributions to starting a
National Livelox subscription as a service for OUSA orienteering clubs.
In August of 2023, Blaik Mathews of Florida Orienteering reached out to Orienteering USA with the idea to bring Livelox services to all OUSA clubs. FLO had been using the Livelox software and working with Livelox on software improvements and Blaik felt it could be a great service for all of our clubs to have access to. The OUSA board agreed to form a task force to investigate a Livelox subscription in October of 2023 and new board member Dylan Poe volunteered to take the lead role for the Federation.
Blaik and Dylan have put in countless hours since then making the National Livelox subscription a reality. This has included negotiating with Livelox to get OUSA the best possible deal for our clubs, promoting the Livelox initiative to our clubs, preparing educational materials for clubs and event participants to help them implement use of the software, and participating in monthly forums to share expertise and spread the word about Livelox.
Dylan also continues to serve as the official Board representative attached to the Livelox project and keeps the board informed on usage, engagement, and club issues. OUSA greatly appreciates the work that both Blaik and Dylan have put into this initiative and looks forward to our future relationship with Livelox.
