Mapsurfer (aka Randy Hall) is a DVOAer who write a very interesting web page about orienteering. Check it out at www.mapsurfer.com. On November 4, Randy wrote about the up-coming relay champs. He dissed us..but, he's still a good guy, so we can let him get away with it. Here is an excerpt.

I'm saddened that I'm hearing no buzz around DVOA about the relay champs. Perhaps people are burned out from the A meet, or the economy and other events are dampening the enthusiasm for travel. I'd really like to go, and the mapper, Claire Durand, has convinced me that the terrain is interesting and worth the trip. I just don't want to go alone, and am not enthuasitic about being on a pickup relay team. I want to be on a club team. That seems so in the spirit. I think if O is ever going to have spectator appeal, it will be in the form of club relays. SVO, my secondary club and defending champs, are much smaller but will be sending perhaps two teams. I can go and root for them. I can run a red course an hour before the mass start, then find a bluff to sit on and be a spectator of the sport myself.

It is interesting to speculate on what relay teams could be put together. I think SVO could face some challenging competition if some clubs were able to get to the event. Imagine the team CSU could put together. I don't know their ages, but with Suzanne Armstrong, perhaps they could put together a really strong 4 point team. If she and Ross are under 21, thats 4 points + 2 strong M21s. What about a BAOC team of James Scarborough, Syd Reader, Wyatt Riley, and Penny DeMoss, for example. There are many other possibilities I can think of, but I do not know if these teams can come together or not for various reasons. I do not know all the whys and wherefores of the club relay rules, so perhaps I am off base.

I want to go, but probably will not. Alternatively, I could go to the Possum Trot weekend, but I hate the cold. It sounds like a fun weekend in any case, but I will most likely miss both, staying home to rake leaves or something, and reading about the results in ONA a month later. I'll save my money for Jukola someday if I ever get good enough.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), November 06, 2001

Answers

Kenny Walker posted this to his attackpoint training log... there has been some outside speculation on the composition of a csu team at this year's relay champs. unfortunately our big-point runners all have academic conflicts that weekend. so I'm saving my kroner to go to spring cup (and other events) during spring break instead. incidentally, there is also a relay there.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), November 09, 2001.

Rumor has it that Penny DeMoss is uninterested in going to the relay, and that the same goes for the similarly useful Annaliese Steuben (and I bet I misspelled that). But I don't know if that's true or not. Also worth wondering about is whether the top SVO team includes the ever-interesting Mihai Veres again.

-- J-J (jjcote@juno.com), November 12, 2001.