Discussion: USA junior training & competition in Europe 2014

The juniors have arrived in Finland and traveled to Kuopio. They'll train for a couple days and then head to the Venla/Jukola event center. You can follow their progress here: https://www.facebook.com/usajrnavteam

neon is blogging the trip at http://asummerineurope.wordpress.com/

Wow, this is great!

Great stuff...love the blogg

Thanks to all who helped us meet our fundraising goal to support the junior team this summer! $1040 in donations came from people who went to the Indiegogo website directly from a link posted on AttackPoint.

If any of the US Juniors in Europe should encounter Thierry Gueorgiou, it would be great if you could personally thank him for donating two Jerseys and a vest for the junior team fundraiser. Those three items raised $900!

And, I think there is a possibility that the juniors might see him at the training camp after Jukola---at least I saw his name in the info related to it though I don't know in what capacity it will be since it was in Finnish.

http://asummerineurope.wordpress.com/
Just sayin

Venla live results; first leg runners go out at 2pm tomorrow/today (Finland time).

Sr team members:
Cristina
Samantha

Live video. Sam just ran by

Sam is 34 th out of over 1000

31st now

Well not quite the top half for the junior girls but considering their youth and limited international experience, I think they did terrific! Keep it up!

And some very nice runs by other North American girls too.

Jukola Live Streaming: http://areena.yle.fi/tv/2300504/#/play

Note that there is a different link if you want Swedish commentary (though some interviews are still Finnish): http://arenan.yle.fi/tv/2296724

Swedish-Finnish - sounds the same to me. ;-)

Ethan did a really nice job, 23 min slower than the leaders over 11+ km and moving up 523 places. He was 30% back in placing (334/1130) and Izzy was 32% back in placing (383/1203). I know forking can make a difference in the finish order, but that's great.

Pleased to see Michael finishing; he started off really fast.

Thanks Barb. My results stopped working after Ethan was at 8.2k

Looks like Erin picked off a few people in his first 2.1km

And on the next section!

at this point it looks like Erin has picked up over 200 places and there are a dozen or so folks within a minute

It looks like Addison is off to a good start.

...and he finished nicely as well! Austin's up.

Addison did great!

And Austin has started out great too. Course the law of diminishing returns is kicking in making it harder and harder to move up.

Go Thierry!

Nice job, Austin!

Has everyone finished and where did they place? I've not been home all day and didn't get to see any of it

Connor (leg 6) is on the course, Matt has yet to start, they are currently at 537.

Awesome...thanks

Matt must be on the course now, too? with the 9 AM mass start of the remaining legs?

Connor is in. OUSA is at 519 after Connor's course. Matt was part of the mass start. He is through 2.3k. Not sure where Matt's leg places them, the place number on his leg keeps changing.

More than 1600 teams started; 1176 teams finished. USA came in #607 with a total time of 13 1/2 hours. Whew!

All right junior team, go USA!

Sightings.

Addie has a first post from the Koli training camp

I've been reading her posts---they're Great!!!

But, I thought the US juniors would be training with Eero's club. From the pictures and posts, it looks like they are by themselves??

Yes, that's what I thought too. I'm guessing that the maps and flags are provided by the coach, and then Erin coaches the team to use the exercises. I wonder if they're hanging with Eero and his buddies at all.

I see Eero in one of the pictures, so I hope they do train together.

Ah, yes.

The training is organized by kalevan Rasti one of the best clubs in Finland. We have been traveling each day to training with Eero's club. We all do the same trainings. Eero's club is doing their own meals so other than training there has not been much time to hang out. Some of the girls joined us for agility training yesterday morning. We are planning to have a big celebration for midsummer which should be nice and fun for both groups .

Nice!

Like.

Matt and Isabel: Jukola and Venla.

Addie's report on the second day of training in Koli. The Finnish team is there too. Pictures of maps, food, and wet clothing.

It sounds like multiple OUSA Jukola team members reported hitting "the wall". They sell energy gels in Finland, I think; and it'd be a shame to be in a similar, completely aviodable situation at JWOC Long. Or, perhaps one of the later arrivals can pack a carton of gels?

Thanks for the concern.

The cause of the wall was the longer length and very tough terrain of the courses compared to their usual courses.

Their training goes well and they are getting stronger. I am excited to see their results at JWOC this year.

Well indeed, the courses were long, but I also don't think they ate anything while on the course. It's a lot easier (and cheaper) to eat something than to do enough training that would get you through a 2-hour+ course without eating.

To T/D's point....

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18049981/

By the 2013 Canadian Champs nutrition lecturer.

Some pics of the Junior Team hanging out with the Finland Junior Team. Looks like they are having a great time

https://www.facebook.com/emily.a.bosley/posts/4291...

thanks for sharing the photos. Addison sure is having a great trip---and the others appear to be too!

It is really great to see all these different posts and pics. Here are some more from Michael https://twitter.com/thumpassing.

From Addie's blog:
Day 4 of training in Koli: agilities, pair relays with the Finns, a partner exercise (you only have every other control on your map)
Day 5 of training in Koli: the Finnish girls like Erin's pre-breakfast agility training; working on long legs; capture the flag; bonfire celebration with new friends.
Back to Kuopio: travel, laundry
Eero's house redux: a track workout, some travel, and dinner with Eero's family in Helsinki.

@andreais: Twitter requires an account. Could those pics be reposted on an open site?

I don't have a twitter account and I can see the pictures just fine. Click the x to close any pop ups asking you to create an account.

I looked at the Norwegian O event for the upcoming weekend, the O-Fest entries, but can't find the team members. Am I on the right page?
http://www.orientering.no/o-festivalen/2014/en/Sid...

Never mind, I was in the wrong class, found them
http://eventor.orientering.no/Events/StartList?eve...

@andreais - that initially had me confused too. I still can't tell if they are running on Sunday. Anyone know if they are running on Sunday?

Here´s everyone:
http://eventor.orientering.no/Events/Entries?event...

Sunday is reverse start order based on results from the previous two Days - leader starting last, number two second last etc.

Several of our standing team members will be competing at the European Youth Championships in Macedonia 25-28 June. www.eyoc2014.mk

I think it's great that OUSA discovered EYOC, which is a more appropriate stepping stone to JWOC than JWOC itself for 16-year-olds and younger.

A little more detail. Will, Elina, Anna and Evalin are competing at Strumica Open, which is the public event associated with the EYOC. The EYOC is for European federations, and European youth. Specifically, it's for M-16, M-18, F-16 and F-18 age groups, so aimed at an age cohort that is closer to the younger US competitors. I believe that Will told me that Louise Oram recommended it to him. I made the initial arrangements, and coordinated with interested parents. This is not an official OUSA or team trip. The organizers were incredibly helpful, and arranged it so that the US youth could stay in the official team hotel with the European teams (rather than in the regular hotels for the public), and take meals with the European teams. The organizers arranged transportation for Will yesterday from Sofia to Strumica with the Finnish team. The organizers arranged training for the next two days for Will with the Bulgarian team (two maps per day). If I recall correctly, the EYOC is only three events, with one of them a relay. The Strumica Open is five events, all individual, including two urban sprints (one of them a night-O) two middles and a long. So I expect the EYOC youth will compete in some of the Open events. Elina and Anna arrived late last night, just about half a day after Will, and I believe Evalin will join tomorrow. So, there will be a nice little contingent. First races are on Thursday.

One can run in the European Orienteering Championships and represent the USA, just not be eligible for medals, and I believe this has happened at least once. Why not the same for EYOC?

Start lists have been published for Strumica Open.

Name	S1	S2	S3	S4
Will	12:03	14:10	13:42	10:46
Elina	12:38	14:16	12:38	10:15
Evalin	12:30	14:08	14:40	10:19
Anna	12:31	14:02	12:26	10:35

And Night race starts are also posted.

Is that Thu, Fri, Sat and Sun? I see Will is also in the Night race.

Run fast, run smart.

Great post from Addie about the first day of training in Norway. Sounds like it's pretty awesome to have Ane Sofie to shadow the girls and give some feedback. Katrina & Lorena also joined the group.

Here is what Erin wrote to me at the end of Finland:

It's been great to have Jordan along; he brings a lot to the table in orienteering experience and the group has really taken to him. They also learned a lot from the Finns and it was great for me to get to know the coaches and talk to them and create opportunities for the groups to bond. I think we left them with a taste of what the new US orienteering program is based on: fun, social dialog, and training. You would have loved seeing all the kids playing capture the flag and watch the groups of Finns and US kids become one. The transformation that they went through, from timidly eyeing each other at trainings to scheming strategies in in capture the flag, and cheering together when heroes in the group captured the flag or freed people from jail. It was great to have the group of Finnish girls join us for agilities and like it so much that they asked for more on the last day. You would have been very proud to see how kids slowly won over the people around them with character, interest in the local people and language, and getting many comments, for example from the hosts in Koli, "we hope you will come again it was a great pleasure to have you."

You can see as their friendships and relationships grow deeper both their positive attributes and inner struggles have come up, and how the group is able to mirror those back to each other to grow and reflect on the moment. It has been a real pleasure to simply hold the space and add a few comments here or there but really give them a chance to give it a go on their own. We have had a number of great arguments and discussion about various aspect of life, how to train properly, and the future of orienteering. Many of them were very interested in going to their clubs to get something new started and introduce some of the ideas we have been talking about. I am now looking forward to Norway -- adding Katrina and Ane-Sofie and Lorena; what they can offer I think will be pretty powerful.

With Liisa's work and the help of Eero and his family we have had no issues. So I have to reiterate that while I may be taking the lead it would not be able to do it this well without the awesome support!!!

Such a rich and wonderful experience these kids are having. Thanks to everyone who has made this possible, from the donors on Indiegogo, to the donors to OUSA Jr. Team, to the mystery person who has funded coach Erin Schirm for the past 2 years, to the organizers, especially Barb, but also the volunteers who arranged accommodations and logistics or sold hundreds of sandwiches at A-meets, to the parents who are setting aside limited family resources so that their kids can experience this trip. And special thanks to Addie Nolan whose blog is fantastic. Please keep it up!

What the "other" MJ said! I echo it all!

Waffles > birthday cake

The work done before the team got to Europe seems to be paying off and everyone seems to be learning and having fun. Addie has been doing a great job with the blog. Great to see the pictures and commentary!

The junior trip sounds SO FREAKIN COOL. I'm mega jealous. Good luck in the upcoming races y'all!

First results in from the Strumica Open.
splits

Some disappointment, based on the AP logs, but pretty cool to see Evalin-Anna-Melanie-Elina 2-3-4-7 in W18, and Will woulda won M18 but for a mispunch.

Results from sprint, Day 1 of Norsk O Fest. Jordan, Izzy, Michael, Austin, Connor under 5 minutes behind winner; Michael less than 4 min behind. Maps are available from "GPS tracking" here. Some fine hillside orienteering. Looking forward to hearing the details.

Addie's blog from yesterday including some sprint training. Everything is awesome.

Strumica Open: Melanie is at top position after two races. Results. It's mostly our four women racing against each other, plus girls from Turkey, Russia & Hungary.
Izzy's friend Reka from Hungary is racing in EYOC. I think.

Kind of exciting, live results for Norsk O Fest happening now.

Results for Ethan and Michael Svoboda in Italy http://www.ortarzo.it/aaoc2014/en/long/ It is really cool to follow the US juniors and their Canadian friends compete all over Europe.

Nice.

In today's Norsk O Fest, Isabel and Michael did particularly well.
From reading Addie's blog, it sounds like Erin wanted the team to push the pace, since these results don't matter but they get to have top level competition, to take risks.

A loose rule of thumb that I've used in looking at results for very competitive European events is that U.S. finishers within 33%+/- of the leaders means that U.S. person did very well. So, nicely done Izzy and Michael!

Giacomo also raced the sprint (ok, he's not a junior anymore), and finished 30th. Nice work gentlemen!

The juniors have gathered in Bulgaria; there are now 16 juniors including 2 Canadians. For the next week they'll train with coaching by both Erin Schirm and Raphael Ferrand (the coach for the Canadian JWOC team). I've heard rave reviews of Raphael's training camp in Canada last week.

Matej and Ethan are racing in Italy; they'll join the team on 13 July. Ethan, of course, is on our WOC team, and Matej was named as alternate.

Update on Addie's blog:
Norsk O-Fest Sprint
Norsk O-Fest Middle
Oslo adventures
Exploring Oslo; Journey to Bulgaria


Training map from Michael S's blog.

Ethan just finished the WOC Sprint qualifier and had a very good race (I think) but unfortunately, not good enough to get through to the final. He was 2:09 behind the winner of his heat (Men-A) but need to be in the top 15 (0:46 behind in this race) to move on.

No North American men made it through to the final but Sam Saeger did on the women side.

Men results are here: http://www.woc2014.info/LIVE/results/sprintq/Resul...

Women results are here: http://www.woc2014.info/LIVE/results/sprintq/Resul...

Brilliant blog, Addie! I noticed great Attackpoint record keeping by Izzy, Will and Michael S. It is a joy reading them :-) I really like Will's embedded links to maps. Great work.

It's Addie's blog, not Addison's, but it is indeed brilliant!
Will's maps are great - he usually gets them up there pretty fast. Michael S also posting maps.
Some good photos showing up on Facebook too.

Nice result by Matej in the Five Days of Italy
http://www.5daysofitaly2014.it/uploads/day2_result...

Ethan had a very good run in the WOC relay today.
The results for the men are here:
http://www.woc2014.info/LIVE/results/relay/Resuls-...

The results for the women are here:
http://www.woc2014.info/LIVE/results/relay/Resuls-...

My general impression was that the US first leg runners for both men and women had some early trouble but after that, everything was very good.

Addie has posted a bunch more at http://asummerineurope.wordpress.com/.

Day 1 Razlog Cup results have been posted. It looks like the group did pretty well:
http://orienteering.bg/upload/Rez_Raz-2014_Mid_Day...

Yeah Евалин

Looks like Павлина did pretty well also!

Do we have Day 2 results yet? I am not able to find them.

Overall results have been posted. USA juniors pretty much owned M18 and F18
http://orienteering.bg/upload/Overall_Razlog-2014....

Katrina has a 3rd and a 2nd in F21, and is 3rd overall, too!

Very proud of all our team!

and Connor and Matt are 7 & 11 in M21--nice

And, in case you didn't pick up on it, that is Evalin leading the 1-4 USA contingent in the F18s.

Евалин Браутигам--- no, I didn't pick up on that. The first letter of the first name and last two letter of the last weren't enough of a clue with all those other silly characters in there.

Joe's post was the clue. Paulina is leading F50.

Highlights from Thursday's sprints: Katrina 2nd in F21E out of 11. Will first again in M18, and now has a commanding lead overall going into Day 3. Michael L was 2nd in the sprints. American girls were 1-2-3-4-5 in the F18 sprint.

First JWOC race will be Tuesday the 22nd: the sprint.

I believe it was a two day meet and the results are final. Connor said the team was in Borovets today.

Oh. :-)

Now that is what a podium should look like :)

Addie has updated her blog:
http://asummerineurope.wordpress.com/

LIKE LIKE!

Dave and I arrived. The juniors look great. At the moment they are at the nightly team meeting. Tomorrow Addie, Addison, Matt and Anna will train, because their first race is Wednesday. The others have a rest day in preparation for the first JWOC race on Tuesday. We are at a ski resort, with lots of hotels big and small, and many restaurants and shops. Today there was a car rally.

Good luck to all juniors on your races this week. Kick butt but most of all have FUN and enjoy the sport you love!

Good luck to the USA juniors racing at JWOC this week!! Very excited to follow you this week!

Rock it out there Juniors!! Rooting for all of you!

Start times for Tuesday's sprint have been posted.

Does anyone know if realtime results or tracking will be available?

gps will be worn by random 40 women/men for all events but the middle Q. so maybe?

GPS list has been published - no USA team members. I do question the "random" selection as SWE has 7, FIN 6, SUI 5, BUL 5..... USA 0.

http://jwoc2014.bg/uploads/SprintJWOC_with_GPS.pdf

What are the lineups for each race? Looks like we've got 6 men and 6 women in the Sprint. Do we get all 6 in the Long and Middle, too?

Not just that, CAN+USA+CHN+JPN=0 GPS

@ pinksocks
For JWOC, everyone gets to run every race so, yes, 6 in middle qualifier, 6 in long and two teams of 3 in the relay. Based on the qualifier results, team members will be in either A, B or C middle finals.

Woo, excited to follow, good luck to the juniors!!

Any possibility of any live coverage?

I'm hoping to tweet under #ousajrs #jwoc

WIFI at the finish

Do the live results work for anyone? The only updates I am seeing are Barb's tweets .

I can't get them to work, but I'm using an iPhone.

Well, the live results page uses Comic Sans, so...

@Pink_Socks - that's funny... they posted a note on Facebook that the were working on the issue.

very spotty, but working

the time difference calculations and placing also don't seem to work right, look at the girl above Anne W

JWOC Sprint

Excellent result by Will Hubsch--56th and only 1:30 behind the leader.

For the men:
1. Tim Robertson-NZL--14:41
56. Will Hubsch--16:11
65. Ethan Childs--16:22
122. Austin Fowler--18:06
126. Matej Sebo----18:33
132. Michael Laraia--18:41
Connor Frost---mp
about 160 starters.
Complete Mens results here
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Results_official_Sp...

For the Women,
1. Sara Hagstrom--SWE--13:15
69. Isabel Bryant---15:49
75. Katrina Weinmann---16:02
103. Evalin Brautigam---17:08
115. Elina Breton---18:22
119. Melanie Sergiev---18:48
121. Anne Wilkinson--19:11
about 134 starters
Complete womens results are here:
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Results_official_Sp...

JWOC Sprint 2013 vs 2014

Based on a quick calculation, the 2014 JWOC team improved their average finish over 2013 by about 30 places.

2013
Boys - best finish 96, average finish 137
Girls - best finish 111, average finish 127 (one MP)

2014
Boys - best finish 59, average finish 103 (one MP)
Girls - best finish 69, average finish 100

Percent behind the top three for the US runners in the Sprint Distance from 2011-2014. The juniors did a lot better this year but especially the women

Mens Sprint
2011 2012 2013 2014
19.65% 17.00% 17.11% 9.55%
22.49% 19.92% 19.50% 10.79%
25.12% 28.90% 32.90% 22.53%
31.24% 29.84% 37.11% 25.57%
39.23% 31.35% 37.68% 26.48%
40.65% 32.05% 42.79% MP


Womens Sprint
2011 2012 2013 2014
25.56% 37.24% 26.98% 18.28%
50.52% 49.93% 28.00% 19.90%
xxxxxx xxxxxx 69.16% 28.13%
xxxxxx xxxxxx 89.91% 37.35%
xxxxxx xxxxxx 90.82% 40.59%
xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx 43.46%

Wow, this is huge. I wonder whether other countries have had a year where they improved so much. I'd be curious what development approaches they used.

I don't think you can use the percentage behind as any accurate measure in this case given that the sprint was basically a running time trial. The average position makes sense though and there clearly is a jump in performance.

Last year we wanted so much to break into the top 100.

For future reference my twitter stream is https://twitter.com/barb_bryant.
Phone battery doesn't last full race.

Barb - thank you very much for the tweets. That was really my only source of info during the race. Although the "Connor blew past spect ctrl" was a little disheartening :).

Thanks again - I really appreciate your keeping us up to date

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning CillinC - isn't pure running speed a major part of orienteering sprints? Seems like the improvement from the USA juniors is due in part of technical skill but in part to increased running speed.

I am super impressed with these improvements - keep it up juniors! Way to go Erin! Good luck in the next races.

acjospe +1

@acjospe well as you said, if you break it down to running speed and technical ability, you have two different aspects where you can lose time, an easy course pretty much removes most of the time differences due to technical ability so clearly the percentages behind are going to be less. I agree that part of the percentage improvement is due increased speed/technical ability but this doesn't account for all of it

Excellent work! Go Juniors!
I think a lot of it is increased running speed. We in the US have a tendency to discount how important running speed is to top results in orienteering. Yes, Navigation is extremely important, but the greatest navigator won't come close to winning if they can't also run. Erin has spent a lot of time getting these kids to really push the physical training that they need to get these kinds of improvements.

Very nice to see so much improvement. Congratulations to all of them, runners and leaders.

The athletes' work, Erin's work, and the investment of so many hours and dollars from volunteers, donors and OUSA are really showing dividends. Congratulations to all!

Start lists for the long are up.

Melanie 9:54
Elina 10:14
Isabel 10:44
Anne 11:10
Katrina 11:50
Evalin 12:14
Complete list for women
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/JWOC_Startlist_LONG...

Austin 9:19
Will 10:03
Connor 10:39
Michael 11:27
Matej 12:41
Ethan 13:11
Complete list of men
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/JWOC_Startlist_LONG...

quite a few photos of OUSA juniors, also Erin, on the JWOC Sprint Model FB
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.50581160...

The JWOC Sprint results for 2014 are a large improvement from 2013. The time differences between our best and the best in the world are rather small (where could you have picked up 60 seconds?).

On the Woman’s Side: Last year, our best time was 30% longer than the winning time. This year, our third best is about 30% longer than the winning time and two runners were faster, only 20% longer than the winning time. Likewise, last year, the second fastest time was 70% longer than the winning time. This year, the entire team took less than 50% more time. These are substantially better results.

On the Men’s Side: Last year, our top two runners took about 20% more time to complete the course than the winner, with the majority of the rest of the team taking about 40% longer. This year, two of our runners took about 10% longer than the winner and all finishers were less than 30% slower. This is a major improvement!

And photos of the US Juniors, Canadian Juniors, the top 3 women, and 2nd and 3rd place men from the JWOC sprint here: http://bidwbb.smugmug.com/2014-Journal/2014-07-Jul...

Great job Juniors! (And apologies for missing Tim - I was busying chasing Will)

where is Elina? Hope she is not injured, too.

did not race today

What happened to Svoboda and Bergstrom? Both are showing "missing punch" for finish time.

Great runs Izzy and Ethan! WOW USA Juniors!!!!

W-20: (131 starts, 115 finishes)
Izzy (USA) 67
Evalin (USA) 80
Katrina (USA) 83
Pia (CAN) 89
Anne (USA) 113
Emma (CAN) 115

M-20:
Looks like Ethan is safe with 65 and might hold on to 64...
correction, Rio (France) lost time between last radio and finish - Ethan holds onto 64th

Looks pretty safe to report on M-20:
M-20 (163 starts, 150 finishes although one or two more might trickle in...)
Ethan (USA) 64
Michael L (USA) 106
Trevor (CAN) 129
Matej (USA) 135
Adam (CAN) 141
Austin (USA) 143
Robbie (CAN) 144
Connor (USA) 145
Michael S (CAN) MP?
Alex (CAN) MP?

also Will (USA) 122

To compare:
2013 Long Women
104 Meg
106 Isabel
123 Anna
137 Anne
142 Barbara
143 Danielle
out of 143

2013 Long Men
120 Ethan
139 Will
142 Carl
152 Zac
161 Nate
163 Matt
out of 163

Addison is not feeling well; fever & headache, I think similar to Matt's symptoms of a week ago - and they are roommates here. I took him home early this afternoon.

The rest of the Tour group is waiting for their starts - it's a long day and tiring to spectate, see everyone leave, then wait around several hours for your own races. Hope it goes well.

Melanie fell at control 4 on her left leg in such a way that the knee was extended too far; this exacerbated previous problems she had. She walked back to the arena from there. She had a similar incident this winter and it was better after some icing for a few days, and I think she wants to wait and see how it feels. But Erin hadn't had a chance to check in with her (she left on bus before he arrived at arena), nor Ane Sofie. Pavlina may know more.

Elina did not run; as you probably know she has been having trouble with her hip and I think it was a wise decision to avoid injury on the Long and focus on the Middle.

Austin and Connor had some navigational problems.

It was super exciting to see Isabel come through the spectator corridor way earlier than I expected, at 62 minutes, which was better than a lot of the women who'd been through previously. In the live results, she's at 38th out of 101 at the 2nd radio control, just to corroborate. However, she had what she thinks was a 5 minute error in the second loop, costing her a chance to finish in the top half. She wondered out loud afterward at Samantha Saeger's amazing 8th place finish in Bulgaria a number of years ago.

We saw both Evalin and Katrina come through the spectator leg about 10 minutes behind Izzy's time, which was still quite exciting - and to have the top 3 USA girls so solid is pretty sweet.

I haven't spoken with Anne about her race today.

For Emma to finish the Long was awesome; it's grueling.

I heard comments about the terrain/map being different than the training maps. Greener, perhaps.

Will has posted on his log, so I direct you there. His knees were hurting afterward.

OK, so I admit I talked most with Isabel. Here's more from her. They had a long leg early on, up up the hill. Isabel said she wasn't "in control" - wasn't sure exactly where she was. But she did know that she had to cross a river/large stream at some point and would find a trail beyond that, and those seemed quite findable. When she got to the stream, she had a theory about where she was. Everything worked fine; once she got on the trail features were super readable.

After she made her error, some girls caught up to her and she described a couple experiences of them being confused and her finding the control, but then they'd catch up.

She said she'd been told there would be a map exchange. There wasn't. She figured that out in the first few seconds, checking the number of controls against her clue sheet. This reminds me of something that happened I think in 2012 where the boys had forking on the long but the girls didn't. I could be misremembering.

We saw Matej about 20-30 min into his course, around the GO control, which was surprising, because the other guys didn't show up until spectator control, an hour or more into the race. We figured out he'd taken a high, right route on his long leg up the hill. Seemed reasonable as there were some trails and he'd know where he was etc. He'll no doubt clarify soon.

Barb, thanks for the updates!

Yeah, awesome to hear all about! And great job juniors, woo!

JWOC Long
Official results are here
Women:
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Results_official_LO...

Men:
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Results_official_LO...

More from Anne and Katrina: to summarize, they found it technical and physically challenging. Both had a mistake early on. Katrina at #2. She said that while 3 to 4 was long, it went quickly, whereas 7 to 8 was "bad" and green and rocky.
Katrina said that other than her error at #2, she was fairly clean, but quite hesitant.
They said Matej overheard a coach saying it was the most technical Long in 20 years.
They said Connor twisted his ankle - but not so much to keep him out of further competition.

Do you know about the puppy? Early in the Bulgaria training trip, the team was hanging around somewhere and saw a feral puppy hiding in a cardboard box. They slowly coaxed her out with food and sweet talk. The kids say a lady living nearby tried to hit the puppy with a stick. The team led by Pavlina rescued the dog, took it to a vet for shots, shampooed the fleas out. Pavlina has a friend who will take the dog at the end of the trip. For now she comes to the meets and sleeps in our chalet. A lovely happy being - though she's apparently doubled in size during the couple weeks she's been with the team. She's about 4 months old.

Very cool to have a team puppy.

My impression from the map is that the Long was really difficult. I'd expect a lot of problems and big time gaps. Glad I didn't have to run it. :-)

@Barb. Thanks so much for gathering information about the juniors' experiences. We got a look at the men's map via Twitter, but no GPS, so we have a bit of an idea what the terrain and (men's) course was like. All of the juniors should be encouraged by seeing that hard work and dedication bring real results. Yeah, Team! And Thanks to Erin and whoever has sponsored him for making all of this possible. It bodes well for the USA.

Random other stats: this is the first JWOC for 4 of the 6 US girls, and 4 of the 6 boys.

16 Junior Standing Team members are on this trip (12 team members + 4 alternates). All trained together starting 3 July in Bulgaria, along with the Canadian coach and 2 Canadian team members. (Except Ethan and Matej who were running WOC & WOC spectator races respectively, as US Team member & alternate.) Prior to that, 5 raced in the European Youth O Champs. 9 JST members trained and competed 23-29 June in Norway with Coach Erin and Norwegian orienteer Ane Sofie Bjorgul, who is co-coaching our JWOC team here. Prior to that, 8 JST members competed in Jukola and attended a training camp in Finland for a week, with Erin and Jordan Laughlin leading. And of course the JST has been actively training all year, meeting weekly by phone, and occasionally in person (Feb AZ training camp; April CA try-outs, other A meets).

The training and coaching has clearly paid off.

When I made my "deal with the devil" in the summer of 2012 with Erin, at that JWOC, to help however I could with advancing his vision for US juniors, I had just one condition: that we field full girls' teams. He really came through!

Addison seems all better now.

JWOC Sprint and Long maps are available here
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/index.php?name=maps

I´ve been following Addies blogging and various other reports from USA juniors during the whole summer and I´m very impressed by the hard work put in by everyone involved! This dedication and hard work has definitely paid off - JWOC results so far are considerably better than previous years.

I wish the whole team good luck for the remaining races this week and hope you´ll continue your trip towards orienteering excellence :)

Correction; Addie not Addison, my mistake :(

It's Addison who keeps getting credit for Addie Nolan's beautiful writing. It is great to have a teammate along with such great journalistic qualities. Thanks Addie!

http://asummerineurope.wordpress.com/

JWOC Middle Qualifier--MEN
Official Results are here:
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Results_official_MI...

JWOC Middle Qualifier--WOMEN
Official Results are here:
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Results_official_MI...


Last year the first 20 in each qualifier made the A-Final, the next 20 the B-final and everyone else was in the C-final. Not sure if they will have a C-final for the women this year, maybe put everyone that didn't make the A into the B?

Congrats to Ethan on making the A-final, that's really great! And Katrina was so close to the cutoff in 22nd in Q3... Great job to all and thanks for posting results Carl!

Awesome job Ethan!!

Awesome results on the qualifier! So proud of the American Juniors.

Congrats to all you juniors running, and special pat on the back for Ethan! Well done. Thanks for the links Carl!

Tough course, but Ethan rocked it. On the guys side we have one in A and one in B final. On the girls' side, 4 in B. (Based on preliminary results.) Katrina just 2 places out of A final.

In the Tour, Addison was having a good race until he stopped to help a crying girl. What a hero. The others did pretty well; Anna at 40-something minutes may have one of the better results today.

Matt says his compass no longer understands the difference between N/S and E/W. He's buying a new one tomorrow.

Nice article at IOF:

http://orienteering.org/seven-weeks-navigating-in-...

Yes, very nice article at IOF.

Can anyone help? While in Europe I was able to see anything on the IOF page, but am not able to see anything when in the USA, I get the webpage being unavailable, so can't read above article :(

you could try clearing your history

I just want to give everyone a heads-up that my goal for JWOC was to qualify for the A-Final. I do not have any goals relating to the final itself, so I'm going to go out there and give it my all. Maybe I'll have a great race, maybe I'll blow up completely. So if I have a really bad race today, that's probably why.

Here is Ethan hearing that he made the A final. (video)

Please make that video clip available to all. I get that a Farcebook login is required.

I guess if Ethan wins a medal, we'll know why, too!

@EChild: I am so happy for you! Wish I could have been there to say so in person.

The start list for the Relay is here:
http://www.jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Start_list_Relay.pd...

For the Men: (Men Start at 10:15 am Bulgaria)
USA 1
1.Ethan
2.Will
3. Matej

USA 2
1. Michael
2. Austin
3. Connor

For the Women (Women start at 10:00 Bulgaria)
USA 1
1. Izzy
2. Evalin
3. Katrina

USA 2
1. Elina
2. Anne
3. Melanie

JWOC Relay
Unofficial results are:
Women---Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, 27-USA#1, DNF?--USA#2
Men---Sweden, Czech Republic, Switzerland, 38-USA #1, 43-USA#2

For the US Women, the standings at the end of each leg were:
USA #1 Leg 1-29th (+6:44), Leg 2-30th (+22:22), Leg 3-27th (+37:43)
USA #2 Leg 1-39th (+14:35), Leg 2-39th (+45:32), Leg 3-DNF(?)

For the US Men, the standings at the end of each leg were:
USA#1 Leg 1-44th (+5:52), Leg 2-36th (+11:33), Leg 3-38th (+27:04)
USA#1 Leg 1-46th (+8:51), Leg 2-43rd (+22:53), Leg 3-43rd (+41:58)

42 Teams started the womens race and 54 started the Mens race.

It appears that Will Hubsch running the 2nd leg for USA#1 did very well, loosing less time to the leaders than any other US leg, especially considering it was the 2nd leg and not the first.

Go team! Nice run everyone. Wow--Will!

So, Carl, knowing you are on top of this, any chance you could put in perspective the improvement over the last two years at JWOC, both the relay and the individual events. How much better have they done in placings, and/or percent behind, and/or finals made.

This year has seemed to me to be a big step forward, today's relay included, but I haven't done all the numbers.

Official results are out now: http://jwoc2014.bg/uploads/Results_relay_JWOC.pdf

Women's USA 2 did not MP; they finished 34th.

@PG
I have a running tab of % behinds for the US Juniors from 2011-2014 that I can post though it's not updated yet for the middle and Relay. I'll post when I get that done.

I haven't kept track of placings though I think I have all the results for the same periods so it's doable but will take a bit more effort. Maybe I can get MJ or Andrew to do it.

My take is that the girls have improved quite a bit this year in every event. The guys have improved too though it's more obvious in some events than in others. For example, they really did well in the Sprint this year compared to last though, in the relay, the guys were 38 & 43 this year versus 39 and no placing last year.

However, there is little doubt in my mind that with 7 weeks of near constant O' training, in different parts of Europe, those juniors are much better prepared for US Champs, Team Trials, NAOC, Interscholastic's, Intercollegiates or any other events on the North American O scene.

Here is a link to a year to year (2011-2014) comparison of the USA JWOC results in terms of Percent behind the leaders. (I use the average of the top 3 times as the "leaders" time).
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21240768/USA%2...

Note that "percent behind the leaders" is just one measurement and can be skewed depending on the technical and physical difficulty. Another measure would be to look at placing and that is not included in the comparison.

I don't really know much about the structure of JWOC, but is there any way to normalize times across all the finals, such that you can somewhat objectively compare the results in final C against those in final A? What does "skipped" mean in the table? Athletes decided not to race the final?

Looks like some definite improvements in the sprint this year, and improvements are less marked but still obvious between 2013+2014 and the earlier two years. The relay we don't really have enough data to draw any conclusions, but doesn't look as impressive.

Thanks for pulling together the numbers, Carl. This is really nice. I totally agree that 7 weeks of near constant international orienteering has been massively beneficial to the results of these individuals, and hopefully their expectations of event quality, event competition, and individual performance will trickle down into their everyday lives and trainings and clubs.

yes, skipped means that a runner chose not to run in the race.

I am not qualified to "normalize" anything though I am happy to share the excel spreadsheets and raw results if anyone else wants to. In most cases, it's pretty straight forward in that I just enter the time from the results onto the spread sheet though for the relay, it takes a bit of searching to find out who had the fastest legs.

I have done this exercise each year since 2011 so there are some inconsistencies in how I treat mp's, dnf's, dsq's, dns's since I don't remember what I did the year before.

The USA 1 womens relay has consistently improved for the last three years. in 2012, the USA 1 men, had a really good relay so other years don't look quite so good in comparison.

Something to keep in mind too is that the oldest juniors "age out" so if you loose someone that's really good, it can sometimes be a struggle just matching the prior years performance.

Regardless of the numbers, the commitment and training that the juniors did in Europe this summer has to have helped and I wonder what the results would have been had they done very little except the week training camp just prior to JWOC; not nearly as good I suspect.

Mary Jo finished compiling the 2011-2014 results comparison based on placing and it's really obvious that 2014 is the best year the juniors have had in the last four and probably more though I don't have the data.

Here is the link to the results comparison based on placings.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21240768/USA%2...

And here is the link to the results comparison based on Percent behind (I moved folders around so the link I posted last night might not work)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21240768/USA%2...

Great work Juniors, coaches, supporters and parents.

This one is clickable for larger version

Regarding normalizing numbers, I've tried to do that for the JWOC men's Sprint and Long. It's a lot of work, and as Carl says requires making some decisions about how to handle MPs, DNFs and DSQs. Here are my summary results:

SPRINT
Improvement against field (in time) 2014 vs. 2013: 3.23%
Improvement against field (in speed) 2014 vs. 2013: 2.27%
Improvement against field (in places) 2014 vs 2013: 9.53% (which yielded 27 total places improvement, or 4.5 places per male competitor)

LONG
Improvement against field (in time) 2014 vs. 2013: 10.65%
Improvement against field (in speed) 2014 vs 2013: 5.02%
Improvement against field (in places) 2014 vs 2013: 12.93% (which also yielded 27 total places improvement, or 4.5 places per male competitor, I guess because there were just enough fewer competitors in the Long to eat up the difference in percentages)

The metric which is sometimes used on AP of percentage back in time, compared to the prior year, is not a very precise tool, taken by itself. For example, this year, there was a lot of praise for performance in the Sprint, because by this commonly used metric, the team showed significant improvement in the Sprint. Less praise about the Long, I guess because there was a belief the team did not do as well in the Long. But compared to the field, the male team's improvement in the Sprint was maybe not so significant, and the team's improvement in the Long was actually bigger.

In any event, there is improvement in all categories in both the Sprint and the Long. Nothing but positives. And I certainly am happy with the Sprint, where someone I know did really well. The team worked hard preparing for JWOC, and they deserve credit all around.

For those interested, stats that I compiled back during the "Focus On Juniors" years 2006-2010.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_0v_9HS9IRR1duR...

I just read Addie's last blog entry and I have to acknowledge that her coverage of the Junior trip with text that often made me smile and photos that captured the antics of the kids made this the best junior trip to follow yet. That is not to diminish the awesome photos of Dave Yee and the updates, tweets and photos by Barb, or the gleanings from logs by Will, Addison, and others, but Addie's blog was outstanding. Thank you, Addie, for taking so much time and effort to share your trip with the rest of us. You are a very gifted writer.

I would also like to recommend that JWOC Tour fans take a look at the great photos by Evalin Brautigam which are posted on Facebook. If anyone wonders how much good their donations to the Junior Team did, the pictures tell the story. I sense that this will be remembered as one of the best summers of these kids' lives. Thanks to everyone in the O community and it's friends who helped make this possible. What a great time to be a junior orienteer in the USA.

Yes, the blog was excellent.

Thank you so much for reading it! I really wrote it for people back home, and hearing everyone give me so much positive feedback and encouragement since I've finished (and during the trip itself) has been lovely. I wouldn't have kept it up if it hadn't been for all the people reading it.

And related to that--I actually just finished reuploading most of the pictures to the blog, so they should all load properly now, even the pictures from the earliest posts. I was having issues viewing the photos myself, so I decided to just reupload everything. Now it'll be a nice memento for the trip if anyone decides to go back and read it again!

Well hey, a surprise: when you (a) fund a program and (b) create more relevant events, results improve. Neither condition nor both is/are of course sufficient, but they would naively seem necessary.