Results: February 9-10, 2013 Reach 11

Saturday, February 9, 2013: Classic-O Courses:

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• White

Sunday, February 10, 2013:

• Score-O
• Adventure Race

Writeup

Today marked the introduction of the first new map since Glenn created the Robbins Butte map in 2009, and only the second new map for the Greater Phoenix Orienteering Club in at least 13 years. Although creating the Reach 11 map took a lot of work, it's great having a new area to use in our event rotation. The turnout for two days of events was very good, in large part due to the location of the Reach 11 site just off a major freeway in the Phoenix area. We had a few glitches here and there, as you might expect based on everything with the site being new, but overall, the Reach 11 events were very successful. Thanks to everyone who came out and helped make our inaugural use of the Reach 11 location a success.

Events for both days started from the Dozer Field Annex on the east side of the Reach 11 Sports Complex. Dozer Field is the site of 4 youth baseball fields, complete with restroom facilities. It turned out to be a very nice and isolated location for our events, even with ~10,000 people attending the first major soccer tournament of the season in the fields to the west of Dozer Field.

Saturday events consisted of 4 Classic-O courses setup around the soccer fields in the west part of the park. Even with a large crowd for the soccer events, we were able to set 4 courses of varying difficulties in the area. With little elevation change, and with lots of trails and man-made structures to use for navigation, the Classic-O courses were very much runner's courses. Mike Zampino had a great run, topping Derrick Beracy and the Flagstaff Leisure Group Team (Amber Naughton, Jack London) for the top spot. Having consumed a little too much sugar for the morning, FLG decided they weren't done running and ended up with the fastest time on the next longest course (orange). Gary Hickey and Team Jenny (Jennifer Patterson and Todd Holmes) had a close battle for second, with Gary eking out a second place finish. FLG had a bit of an edge, since they had already run the Red course so had already seen much of the same terrain. We'll worry about these types of details when we start hosting World Cup Orienteering Events :)

On Sunday, we hosted two larger events: a two-hour Score-O, and a five-hour Adventure Race. Attendance for the Score-O was great, helped in large part by the presence of the Maryvale High School Orienteering team. Forty-four participants went out on a course consisting of 29 controls over a flat, 12 km course. The competition was fierce, with Ludwig Hill coming in a good 5 minutes faster than our friend Brian Durrell (visiting from Alaska), Mike Zampino, and Derrick Beracy, who all cleared the course in under two hours. Erik Ringnes would have cleared the course too if it weren't for the pesky 10 point control located in a different direction than the rest of the controls. Four of the Adventure Race teams also cleared the Score-O course as part of their event.

Participation in the Reach 11 Adventure Race was also very good, with 17 individuals participating in the race (a record for the Phoenix Orienteering Club's Adventure Races). The race started with teams of 1,2, and 3 plotting UTM locations and visiting the ~5 km of controls in the defined order. The UTM points were marked with brown labels that blended in very well with the posts they were put on. The camouflaged color of the labels was a problem for several teams. Following the UTM section, teams charged off on a ~25 km Bike-O course. The control locations on the Bike-O were not difficult, but teams still had to navigate to find them. Finally, upon returning from the Bike-O, teams went out on the Score-O course. Two Flagstaff Leisure Group teams had a great race and finished the course in just over 4.5 hours. Team Boat Anchor closed the gap by completing the Score-0 11 minutes faster than other teams, but didn't quite have enough time to overtake the leaders.

Event Volunteers:

RESULTS:

• M - Male
• F - Female
• T - Team (male, female, mixed)