First three days of Barebones' results are posted at
www.barebones.ca
Please draw your routes in RouteGadget.
So far at Barebones, 2 of the 3 races have been planned by women (Carol Ross, Louise Oram). One more will be (Meghan Rance). That follows 3 races out of 4 at the NAOCs.
And one out of two at Sage events
women course planners rock :-)
Sewing, quilting, knitting, mending...stitching whatever together with a certain adeptness.
I guess it's right up our alley eh?
;-)
Another fantastic Barebones weekend, as usual! Thanks to all who organized, etc.
A more general question, about course planners....
How were course planners selected for these events (NAOC & WCOC)? Do you send out a call for volunteers? Does the event director select certain people? An applicant process from which the best available are selected?
Adrian asked me in the parking lot at PNWOF last year!
Ok, that sounds very similar to how I got my gig. Eric wanted to do a SML US Champs, and he asked if I wanted to design the Middle, and he would be my vetter. And somehow, that was that.
I can't speak for Adrian and/or Jim, but it seems like in Canada, in general, the event director hand picks his/her course setters pretty much as soon as he/she takes on the event. The only instances where I've ever seen something different was when there's a bit of a contest, a course-setting contest for one of the events - in which case I suspect the best gets selected. And I've never seen a call for volunteers for course-setting.
But for as far as I know, Canadian meet directors select their own course-setters.
Having said that, I don't know what they'd do if a whole swack of them applied! maybe it has happened before? AZ? Jim?
Three of the best course designers in Canada - Stefan Bergstrom, Bill Anderson and Brian Graham were/ are tied up working on this year's COC's in Ottawa so Barebones and NAOC had to settle for what was left (and they picked well) but wait until you see what's in store for you in Ottawa!!
Must be something about parking lots; I believe I asked Kitty and Jane in or close to the parking lot of the 2008 Alberta Championships, near Sundre, Frida volunteered to do the course planning for the Thomass event, after an event, probably in the parking lot and Magnus and I discussed him doing the course planning for the NAOC sprint at the College of the Rockies parking area. I think I proposed to my wife in a parking lot, as well. Maybe more decisions should be made in parking lots..
By the way, I consider it a huge honor to be asked to be course planner at Barebones - an honor, privilege and responsibility bestowed on only a very small, select group ;-)
In my opinion the quality of the courses is the absolute key ingredient for a good event, and so the event director must trust the course planners to a great degree. We had no "competition" to be course planners for Barebones - instead it was a discussion between some of club members early on in the planning to see who would be good potential course planners - based on our goals to have great courses and also to develop a deeper pool of experience planners for the future. We followed this up with personal invitations (very likely in parking lots).
I'd like to say that all six of the Barebones 2010 course planners did a superb job of setting fun, fair ,and challenging courses.
Dan Coombs - Lost Lake (Long)
Louise Oram - Whistler Village (Sprint)
Carol Ross - Brandywine Falls (Middle)
Magnus Johansson - Whistler Mountain (cancelled)
Magnus Johansson - Nester's Hill (Relay)
Meghan Rance - Stanley Park (very long sprint)
Jeremy Gordon - UBC (Sprint)
And special thanks to the controllers:
John Rance: Lost Lake, Stanley Park
Alex Kerr: Whistler Village, Brandywine
Adrian Zissos: Whistler Mountain, Nester's Hill
Brian Ellis: UBC
and Jan Lien (Norway) - Brandywine IOF Event Advisor
O scores Performance evaluation of first 3 races is
here
Once, in 2001 when we really truly tried to live up to our tag of "really lazy organizers", we decided to have a course planning contest. We published the map and invited people to set courses for us. We picked the best set of courses submitted and implemented that course. We didn't announce the winner in advance, and the idea was that the winner would find out they'd won when they saw the map at the start of the race. Sadly this didn't work at all - the winner didn't attend Barebones and the amount of work to "grade" the submissions was way, way more than setting the courses ourselves.
The winner of the 2001 contest was Nick Hale (from the UK). There is
an article about the contest that I wrote for ONA, which has some good course planning tips from the contest judges.
A big thank-you to all the organizers and volunteers for a great event. We have never been to this area of the country and enjoyed the orienteering very much. Certainly a big part of the sucess can be attributed to the maps, courses and terrain but what made it extra special was the "other" stuff like announcing, awards, refreshments, meet info sheet and friendly attitute of all involved.
I want to same about the NAOC in Cranbrook. It had the feel of a major international event too and combined with the Barebones event, was the perfect vacation.
I was really thrilled to run on courses set by relatively new course planners. There was a sense of adventure to it. Also, I noticed my daughter was very impressed that Carol and Louise were setting the courses for such a major event. Hopefully these amazing ladies will continue to inspire the younger girls to achieve in both competition and officiating!! Again, huge thank you to all the NAOC and Barebones Teams...it was the perfect vacation!
This discussion thread is closed.