Note - Red, Green and Brown were a score-O style course
What a way to inaugurate a new year of Florida Orienteering! We nearly froze our toes off! (for us Floridians that means it was under 55F, cloudy & windy, all day long)
We nearly saw bears in the woods! (many of us saw the 'bear lunch pails' of empty armadillo shells which the bear eats and discards)
We were nearly over-run with Blue and Grey Infantry! (Civil Was era Encampment was underway in the park and their skirmishes coincide with our hikes; and most of our attendees hob-nobbed with soldiers throughout the day)
We nearly set an attendance record for DeLeon despite the weather! (preliminary count of 248 was our second largest crowd ever at Deleon Springs)
We offered, as usual, very nearly perfect introductory White & Yellow courses in the pretty, manicured portions of the park. We were very nearly able to offer experienced orienteers a decent challenge in the by-now-overly-familiar confines of our increasingly overgrown DeLeon map. All that adds up to a nearly perfect day for FLO, evidenced by broad, if teeth-chattering, smiles all around.
Even the Memory Course was well received. I don't have results yet but about a dozen brave souls willingly ran without a map, having to memorize each successive leg using only the maps hanging from each control. Each map showed only the next leg, so in this type of event we can often send competitors crossing right back over the same ground, maybe in reverse, on a later leg; something we could not do in regular cross country course design. I was surprised most people actually finished the course.
Lots of people finishing short courses went out on another; more so than usual. Lots of other people having finished their course found extra entertainment by walking over to the Spring boil to watch some fool Canadian enjoy (?) a swim! He had to be Canadian: Donna & Steve Fluegel were here from Connecticut way up north there and they knew enough not to swim.
It was good to see long time FLO member Kim Johnson back after a several year absence. And FLO Life Member Rodney Counts was a really big hit with his K-9 partner, one of several dogs orienteering this day with folks whose names I mostly missed.
The Advanced courses (non-Memory) Brown, Green and Red were unusual enough to require further explanations. They were set up as a Score course, but I didn't describe it that way. The master map simply showed 12 controls. If a competitor visited any six of them, they'd done a Brown course, any 9 would be a Green course and all 12 would be a Red course. They could even decide while they were out there how many, and therefore which course, they would do. Most folks recognized this immediately as a Score course, so I had to admit that was all it was. The results will try to distinguish among the three levels.
I had thought that all courses were going to be dry and mud-less, since my own 8:30 am run to set controls (in 55F weather - the warmest of the day, it turned out) involved nothing more than a splat or two. But I neglected to consider the creativity our high schoolers bring to this issue. Two award winners, of a sort, each returned without a right shoe, having walked the 2 km or so from the incident with only a very cold, very wet, mud-caked right sock. Both shoes apparently are at the bottom of the same mud pit. Who knows what the parents are going to say now about this supposedly inexpensive sport of orienteering.
Early in the event other JROTC cadets had returned covered with mud after a cross-country beeline leg that literally was a cross-swamp leg near the Big Cypress Tree. The master map had deliberately not shown a connecting line between controls crossing the swamp, but had used highly curved lines to indicate that all were expected to follow the trails on that leg. Not required, just expected. Oh, well. As long as they aren't using our washing machine....
Many Many thanks to all the helpers. Meri Horn, Griseldis Lutz, and the Dempseys, on Registration. Alicia Padrick, Jonathon Linforth and Russ Steinke on Start/Finish. Bob Putnam and Ron Eaglin for setting the controls, and Joe Maliszewski and Andrea Holman for retreiving them. I'm not sure whether the biggest Thank You goes to Jonathan Linforth for manning three hours of start/finish with his still-healing broken arm, or to the Titusville HS mom (Meri) whose first day of trial-by-fire duty with FLO was three hours on the registration table with this huge crowd, or to Russ Steinke who promised to stay to the end of the day and close up - he quickly learned that I had driven home early with all the Waiver sheets, so that he was unable to confirm all of our people were out of the woods. The agony of his uncertainty is something I know too well. I've apologized as best I could.
Adventure racers galore turned out. Also six high school JROTC units (Titusville, Boone, Lake Mary, Oviedo, Centennial and Winter Park). The Titusville JROTC'ers are training for their trip April 17-18 to Cincinnati for the Class A competition for US Interscholastics Championships. Other JROTC units (or any high school group of 4) should check their web site for this. Thanks to all these groups for their support. Quite a number of new memberships and renewals were registered, so thank you all for that.
Even with our new unsurprisingly higher membership fee structure, you're signing up. We appreciate that and hoped you would because we thereby help support the US Federation with their new and much higher insurance fees. Most of you may not know that FLO carries insurance coverage for each event, available only through USOF and their committee of diligent volunteers who make it possible. We wouldn't even be allowed into most of our venues without it.
Check the results for all the usual remarkable statistics and neck-n-neck races. Walenty Prytulo called at the last minute to say flu-bug has him down so the Orange course was won handily by Artur Intson who simply didn't feel like his usual Red course and turned his nose up at the idea of the Memory. The yellow course was won even more handily by first timers Michele MIller and Martha Weber, whom we are now urging move up to orange next time. All proving there's fun to be had at DeLeon Springs yet - especially since we plan to have it completely re-mapped before the next event there.
Bob Putnam
| Name | Time |
| Webber/Miller | 15:00 |
| Little | 29:50 |
| Robinson | 52:20 |
| Snoap | 65:11 |
| Mike Lynch | NTR |
| Name | Time |
| Webber/Miller | 19:59 |
| Paula Pradella | 29:00 |
| 2 hot mamas | 34:40 |
| Zaharios/Evans | 42:20 |
| Centennial #2 | 48:10 |
| Johnson, K | 49:47 |
| BSA Troop 699 | 51:00 |
| Centennial #3 | 52:27 |
| Worischeck | 54:14 |
| Fred/Joanne Lamond | 76:00 |
| Centennial #1 | 84:47 |
| Pearcy | DNF |
| Hamilla | DQ |
| Name | Time |
| Artur Intson | 36:06 |
| M Hecht | 42:43 |
| Centennial #5 | 44:13 |
| Centennial #6 | 45:20 |
| Stultz | 59:00 |
| Vaughn | 63:20 |
| BHS #4 | 66:38 |
| Bates | 67:15 |
| Sampou | 67:20 |
| BHS#3 | 67:53 |
| V. Seward | 69:00 |
| Steinke | 69:06 |
| Cavagnaro | 73:28 |
| Winter Park | 76:56 |
| BHS #1 | 77:15 |
| BHS #2 | 77:58 |
| Winter Park #4 | 79:22 |
| Julin | 80:40 |
| Kremer | 83:07 |
| Somers | 83:51 |
| Mahnken | 85:18 |
| Bensen | 85:25 |
| Rodermeyer | 85:25 |
| Oviedo #3 | 91:09 |
| Evans/Zaharios | 92:46 |
| Bradt | 93:15 |
| Oveido #2 | 93:58 |
| Centenial #4 | 94:45 |
| BHS #6 | 95:16 |
| Spencer | 102:48 |
| Winter Park #2 | 112:40 |
| Septer | 116:0 |
| Hoods | 117:25 |
| Oveido #1 | 118:16 |
| O&A Smith | 126:20 |
| O&A #2 | 127:20 |
| BHS #5 | DNF |
| Pradella | DNF |
| Robinson | DNF |
| Winter Park #3 | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| THS McAdams | 70:17 |
| Barker | 72:55 |
| Centennial | 78:59 |
| Keys,M | 83:23 |
| THS Secosh | 86:53 |
| Centennial | 90:19 |
| THS Misa | 102:30 |
| THS Odermatt | 105:22 |
| Matthews | 104:58 |
| THS Martinez | 106:22 |
| THS Voorwinden | 117:32 |
| Lake Mary #2 | 161:31 |
| Name | Time |
| N Gould | 71:07 |
| THS Swiercinshy | 74:43 |
| Mike Dempsey | 79:57 |
| THS Horn | 86:51 |
| Johnson, B | 91:25 |
| Shmid | 92:33 |
| Nestlebasch | 96:48 |
| Rosenberg | 97:30 |
| THS Pattillo | 106:51 |
| THS Hugoboom | 107:51 |
| Tallent | 112:20 |
| Sheppard | 113:00 |
| Lake Mary #1 | 120:40 |
| Bennett/Lawson | 139:40 |
| Jen Douglas | 142:36 |
| Lake Mary #3 | 149:34 |
| Name | Time |
| Ron Eaglin | 55:54 |
| Toby Henson | 64:24 |
| Dirty Fish | 69:43 |
| Musgrave/Owens | 70:30 |
| D Fluegel | 89:07 |
| THS Padrick | 94:59 |
| Key, S. | 102:40 |
| CFAR #3 | 118:27 |
| Grosman | 121:43 |
| Shirwin | 122:35 |
| C. L. Jacobs | 144:45 |
| Counts | 178:50 |
| Akers | DNF |
| D. Hatten | DNF |
| Steve Fleugal | NTR |
| Wright/Schonker | NTR |
| Name | Time |
| Gottschalk | 60:26 |
| Joe Maliszewski | 86:26 |
| Andrea Holman | 93:56 |
| Azita | 117:22 |
| DNF | Did Not Finish |
| DQ | Disqualified (Missed Controls) |
| OT | Over 3 Hour Time Limit |