Discussion: Rose OC

I didn't go to the 1980 intercollegiates, but I went to a USOF Convention hosted by Rose OC. It must have been 1982 or 1983. I remember running a course on the campus and 2-days of red courses at Yellowwood. I can remember a bit of the race, but I don't have any memory of it feeling extremely hilly. That probably has something to do with the added pounds I'm carrying around these days compared to when I was 19-20.

When I was at KU, OK was a college club. But, like Rose OC, OK struggled when the core graduated (Perry, Dave Linthicum, BIll Comfort, Tom Wolfe, Fritz Menning, Karan and Rex Keith). I have this idea that if we keep making campus maps and hosting events on campus, we might get lucky and OK might become a college club once again.

I remember running up hills almost effortlessly. Junior year of high school. Fall. Cross Country season. And never again.

Good luck with the KU thing. Do you have anyone on the faculty who is hooked? That's probably a good next step.

We've got a good KU faculty connection through George McCleary (geography prof and Peggy's thesis adviser). And we seem to have a good working relationship with the university in terms of permission and access to campus events.

The McCleary and geography connection has been good at getting some students to try the sport. Several geography courses have offerred extra credit for students to do orienteering. McCleary does orienteering in his classes.

Pinksocks has some good ideas about pushing orienteering through dorms as activities. Those ideas take a bit more organizational and marketing effort than we've got going at this time.

The ROTC program might be worth some effort to work with. We've let them know about events, but I don't think we've had any takers.

I think we'll get there. We have to be patient and we have to build a good infrastructure (a set of maps and a few more local orienteers as organizers).