Florida Orienteering
Moss Park
October 13, 2012


Courses: WHITE | YELLOW | ORANGE | GREEN | RED | BLUE | NOTES

What a Day! What a Day! A beautiful fall day with an occasional breeze, 80F to 85F or so most of the day and in the afternoon just enough of those high puffy Florida clouds to make it perfect. If you were lucky enough to have scheduled this event properly you know how nice the day was. Preliminary count was almost 150 Florida Orienteering 'civilians' plus another nearly 200 JROTC cadets spending the weekend at their annual FLO-sponsored Orienteering Training Camp.

Many thanks to the Toby Henson and his cadre of JROTC cadets and their families who make the Camp run smoothly (and who fed us helpers with free food) and also many thanks to volunteers running the FLO event: Frank Kuhn, Ray Bruneau (who also repaired the permanent course markers at Moss Park), Jerry Sirmans, Joe Maliszewski, Kris Mante, and to Will Pirnasch for designing the courses.

Will says he always tries to add a bit of interest to the courses so they don't get boring and in this case, did not disappoint. In fact he had the fresh-interest-tables turned on him when he vetted control positions two weeks prior and discovered the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (Administrators of Split Oak Forest) had just performed a controlled burn over a huge portion of the map. Imagine his surprise! Time was short, so rather than go home, back to the drawing board, and design completely new courses in only unburned areas, he made a few adjustments by deleting a few controls. It all worked out, and did indeed prove to be 'interesting', however unusual. I'll give you an example: The final control for the blue course was 1830 meters from the Finish. I do not believe any other blue course in the US has ever that long a "run-in". We could have had thousands of spectators along that finish chute... Another example, sure to prompt a "Whoa!" from orienteers around the country, is from my 6.9km Red course: I had been underway about 16 minutes, running strong without error, over 2.3 km out, and had yet to punch the first control. Then it was another 2.1 km to the second control. Super, super, cool! But a bit draining on the old man's bones. Even more fun was had taking the logical route straight across the knee-deep cypress swamp from 2 to 3. As a perennial Instructor at these events its was gratifying to see tracks in the woods indicating some of those ahead of me had used some excellent navigation techniques in their route choices. Way to go everybody!

We had lots of company all day long from Sand Hill Cranes, wherever we went in Moss Park and Split Oak. And we got our feet (and shins and knees and more) really wet. I call that a successful day.

Check out Jerry Sirmans' usual array of top notch photos from the event here on the FLO web page.

And be sure to note that November's event at Kelly Park is the FIRST Saturday in November, the 3rd.

Hope to see you there.

Bob Putnam


Related Links:

Photos - Moss Park - 13 Oct 2012

Master Map - Moss Park - 13 Oct 2012


WHITE

Name Time
FLX-USAF 35:34
Samuals, M 38:49
Grant, E 58:25
Bossen, N 59:38
Larose, E 62:17
Leclair, H 87:45
Meiggs, H 89:55
Smith, C 115:15

YELLOW

Name Time
Pena, J 30:10
Wood, D 30:15
Clune, E 39:40
Pena, A 39:48
Anderson, E 41:40
Perez, M 41:45
Jenkens, B 45:40
Brack, M 45:45
Doncaster, S 45:48
Setzer, A 47:40
Guthrie, D 47:48
Touchstone, J 52:05
Samuals/Hall 64:00
Firpi, F 87:55
Miller, R 91:28
Evans # 1 94:00
Sharkey, M 94:12
Grant, E 95:00
Evans # 2 95:32
Larose, E 96:40
Lewis 100:30
Rosaria, D 100:39

ORANGE

Name Time
Farmer, S 60:22
Konstanz 60:55
Settlemire, D 61:00
Jordan, G 61:10
Brown, J 63:00
Rohde, A 63:10
Hilyard - AHS 65:40
Jessop - AHS 71:10
Girlzgo 73:03
Bishop, V 74:10
Thomas, L 74:15
Schieder, A 97:25
Bly, S 100:58
Golden - AHS 101:25
Stephenson - AHS 108:22
Dempsey - AHS 109:05
Griessler, P 112:10
Kieser - AHS 115:48
Rausch - AHS 118:11
Pena - AHS 120:57
Birdsall - AHS 136:28
Rosa - AHS 150:23

GREEN

Name Time
Acuff, T 76:00
Roan - DHS 101:30
Dennis/Carolyn 102:12
Surratt, N 103:48
Maliszewski, J 107:30
Dempsey, M/M 119:48
Mante, K 120:50
Griessler, M 131:45
Team Awesome 155:00
Giardini - DHS DNF
Rodgers - DHS DNF
Peters, V DNF

RED

Name Time
Putnam, B 63:43
Bruneau, R 106:02
Bednarz, S OT

BLUE

Name Time
Hearn, G 90:25
Go Blue 127:15
Figjam 128:08
Puz, J 130:20
Primal 131:32
Walser 143:22
Canyoneros 157:23
Warburton,m DNF
Boone, NJROTC DNF


NOTES

DNF   Did Not Finish
DQ Disqualified (Missed Controls)
OT Over 3 Hour Time Limit


Created 16-October-2012