Discussion: The elusive B meet...

Looking for advice and opinions on that rare beast - the B meet.

If I understand the nomenclature, the A meet is clearly the A #1 national event, and may also bear some distinction as a championship event - that's fine.

The C event is the other extreme - the local event that might represent a best effort of a few people. Some C events are better than others, but nobody should be expecting A meet quality standards.

Then there's this thing called the B meet - which might be regional, ought to be of good quality, and fits between these designations.

But I don't recall seeing more than a handful...

A bit ago we had a discussion about volunteers needed to put on events, the events went all over the place - some clubs using a small handful to pull off an event to others having a fine quality event.

My realization was that ROC's events are pretty darned good - and maybe we should call some of them B meets.

And I asked around and didn't get a good answer about the topic...

Just what sort of expectation would others have if a club called something a B meet? The O-USA website is rather skimpy on details - http://orienteeringusa.org/event-organizers/standa... - referring to the full A meet rules as a guideline. [and I have not read those rules in full - perhaps someone close to the rules could say there are specific sections that refer to B in there...]

And perhaps the kicker is - would it make a difference?

I'd suggest that the designation could help indicate the quality level of the local product. Right now I'm sure people have impressions of club offerings and go by that.

Local marketing wise, I wouldn't bother to mention it - the public has little idea about the events, and throwing in a classification for anything other than a national event wouldn't help.

But when we start to look at success factors, it would be helpful to compare meets with WYOBGR courses and all the local amenities against a 60 minute score-O. (And no judgment here - they both have their uses and ROC holds both types of events, but they are different;-)

Thoughts?

I personally look at a B-meet as a local meet on a decent map with decent courses and organization. I will drive at least 1.5hrs for one of these

I consider C-meets crappy maps/test maps with poor courses. These can also include just local trainings. I will not attend one of these because of the resources I have around me.

Wow, that's unfortunate.

Our club considers most of our meets to be "C" meets, though several of them are on high-quality maps with good course setters and vetters, offering usually 5 pt-to-pt courses. But some are simple score events on shoddier maps. So the range in quality and what's offered varies. Generally we have one weekend "B" meet each year, where we up the ante a bit - usually it's Sat + Sun, we always use one of our best maps, offer all 7 courses, try to use e-punch, hype it up, etc. Basically, it's not an A meet only because it's not an A meet, if that makes sense. ;-) Of course, definitely less stress and work than an A meet, mostly due to the lower turnout, but we do get some out of town visitors for these events.

Technically the sanctioning committee is supposed to receive info about B meets from clubs, but I'm not sure that that actually ever happens...

I believe the B designation is vestigial from when the ONA calendar was the primary source of meet information. It was a way for a club to indicate that this was an event worth traveling to without taking out an ad. SLOC used to list 1 or 2 meets a year this way. Now that our primary communication is via the web (where we have basically unlimited space to promote/explain an event) calling it a B meet is not adding any information. Thus, we don't bother.

FWIW, our upcoming MOJO/Grunt weekend would certainly have been listed as a B meet 10 years ago. Full courses and a complete weekend of activity in contrast to our true local meets which are usually just YOGR, but still on decent maps.

Section F of the OUSA Rules of Competition sets out explicitly the requirements for an OUSA sanctioned B meet. These look to me to be excellent (if somewhat outdated) guidelines for a B-Meet.

But it has been quite awhile since I have seen an OUSA sanctioned B-meet. Many clubs like QOC and DVOA hold several B-meet quality events each month. For clubs to apply to OUSA for B-meet sanctioning seems to be a waste of time since it brings no benefits. If no one uses it, maybe it is time to eliminate B-meet sanctioning.

Ahh - thanks for the comments and the specific rules section. ROC's club series events follow those guidelines with only a couple footnotes.

a. We're sometimes casual about the refreshments and might not meet the letter of every 2.5km. (Though it has been years since someone has commented on them at or after an event) ((and it is funny to read the bit about not drinking from the jug - though I don't wish to get that started again;-))

b. Publication of the event including course setter might not meet the details of that section though more from ignorance than anything else. (Though if any club has a complete set of volunteers for meet director and course setter for 2011 already please let us know how you do it;-)

So the question remains - does it really mean or do anything? (And should it?)

I'm from the same club as ccsteve, so my perspective and questions might be similar. I recall that we discussed trying to designate one of our club series meets as a B meet a year or two ago, but we had missed the deadline for submitting a sanctioning request. As far as I know, we've never had an official B meet, but as Steve mentions, many of our local meets satisfy a large majority of the requirements for a B meet.

I personally would find it helpful if clubs designated some meets as B meets, providing of course that they satisfied the requirements for a B meet. That would help people decide which meets for other clubs might be more worth traveling for.

I certainly don't agree with the statement "I consider C-meets crappy maps/test maps with poor courses", so I wouldn't want to imply that just because a meet isn't a B meet, it is never worth traveling for. But not being familiar with another club, which of their venues and maps are decent quality, which meets they put more attention to, etc., it would be nice to have some meets designated B meets and be reasonably assured of having certain expectations met at those meets.

I expect the spectator courses that will be available during the 2011 Team Trials will be of A-meet quality. Eric W is consulting on the TT courses, and will probably have input on the others -- all of which will be designed by ndobbs.

We won't be seeking sanctioning for the spectator event, but it should meet most orienteers' expectattions of a B-meet.

Jon and I may be guilty of Jordan's definition of a B meet vs. a C meet, since we just refer to anything that is organized and not an A meet as a B meet. I had no idea there was a real definition of B meet requirements! So by what I'm reading here, most local meets that we went to every weekend on the east coast were C meets?

We used to run into days when, horror of horrors, there were two meets within a 2-hour radius of our home. We chose where to go based on the the course description (advanced courses or an interesting format), location, availability of kid-friendly activities and so forth. I don't know that B vs. C meet would have made a difference to us in most cases.

The web is a wonderful thing to help us in decision-making. More details are better, to include the ability to clearly delineate when meets are barebones or have no facilities available. B vs. C is just another bit of useful information, but I hesitate to say it's the most important bit for everyone.

BAOC calls any meet that has all seven US-colored courses a B meet. I don't remember ever applying for sanctioning for those. We follow the course-setting guidelines and most of the other rules, except that we don't always give notice 2 months in advance. Many people have said that our B meets are as well organized as some A meets.

That page, and the PDF, are messed up. Appendix F, about the B meet rules, is followed by several sections that are numbered wrong.

I think the concept of a B meet, less elaborate than an A meet, but offering a wider variety of courses than a C meet, has value. I think the definition needs revisiting, though.

C meet Event
B meet Premier event
A meet (insert title sponsor) Series Cup

One one end of the event offerings is club training.

On the other end are the big races (I like how COF has adopted the term Canada Cup to replace the worn out term "A meet").

In between are the so-called "B" meets. What do you call these races and what courses are or should be offered? IMHO that shoul depend on what target group one is after. It could be the 7 course offerings that have been mentioned (to me that seems overkill) or it could be one course for everyone. It depends how they race is marketed and who it is targeted for. e.g., Are the Billygoat and Highlander classified as "B" meets? Does it really matter ...esp. if the events have a decent web page describing what participants can expect in course choice, map quality, etc.

club training
insert name of race
Canada Cup

Meets are for friends to meet. For a club, a closed group. A circle of devotees.

Events are public. You list them on events pages. Ever notice how there aren't meets pages?

Yeah, T/D, I agree and I tend to refer to RMOC meets as "events" or "races" when I promote them outside of the core of regulars, to emphasize the fact that it's a competitive sporting event.

I'm not a linguist, but I have lived in this country for nearly 50 years and I don't recall hearing "Meet" used as a noun for anything other than a competitive sporting event (assuming one allows a broad definition of "sporting"). "Event" on the other hand, gets used for everything from earthquakes to 3-day weekend sales.

A long time go, Mark Frank drilled "event"-not-"meet" into my head. His thinking was that many would-be orienteers would be turned off if the competitive aspects were front and center.

Now I know that that is anathema to many (most?) here on AP, but the sport needs the walkers as well as the racers. "Event" is neutral enough to be used among both groups, with additional words providing competitive or recreational spin.

I've never bought the line that you can't call an orienteering event a race because you will lose the recreational participants or as guyo states walkers vs racers.
The road running 'events' here are called road races. They get 1000's more participants than orienteering and many of those participants walk. Again it is how you market the race. A phrase like "Run, jog or hike your way....." - should demonstrate the race is open to all.

I agree with hammer, but I also think that "meet" sounds scarier than "race", for basically the same reason as T/D. When most people hear "meet" they think of high school or college track meets or cross-country meets, which usually have a small group of competitors. That's why a public meet is often called an "all-comers meet" - it's different. The word 'race' is one step less intimidating sounding because people are used to races open to all.

Not that it need concern Americans, but the word 'meet' has no competitive connotations whatsoever in some other varieties of English. To me it always sounds like a bunch of people getting together to do something esoteric and unathletic like admire each other's collections of cacti or stamps or something. It was actually a little off-putting when I first got to the US. 'Event' sounds much more athletic to me.

On the original topic, I think that it is ridiculous to have sanctioned B meets and that all rules relating to them should be removed from the OUSA rules. If a club is holding a higher quality event and wants people to know, it can just advertise that fact directly. The time of the letter B rather than C in a printed calendar being an indication to anyone that they should travel longer distances to such an event are over.

Swap meet.

Ok, JJ, I'll give you that one, though some swap meets can get mighty competitive!

In NTOA, we consider our two-day events to be B meets, and our one-day events C meets. We try to run the B meets like A meets in some respects (e.g., assigned starts times) as a way to a) practice for putting on future A meets and b) acquaint our members with how an A meet works.

The notion of sanctioning one of these B meets hasn't even been a consideration. It's not like we need to somehow market it against other orienteering events (there, now I've used both terms) occurring the same weekend. There won't be one within a 10-hour drive-time radius. :-)

(BTW, driving 1.5 hours to do anything fun in Texas is considered a short trip. It's all relative, I guess. ;-)

Now I know that that is anathema to many (most?) here on AP, but the sport needs the walkers as well as the racers.

This has been bugging me. I hear people say this a lot and I don't understand why. It's true that many (most?) on AP want more "racing" orienteers in the sport - more competition, for one - but that doesn't mean they all don't appreciate the walkers and more casual orienteers. After all, we all want the same thing - lots of fun orienteering. I wish people would stop pretending that there are two opposing factions in orienteering.

The sports definition of "meet" is a collection of "races or competitions". So meet has the same meaning as race only plural. Event can mean anything that is over-hyped.

Disorienteer has brought us back to the topic.

Around here, An A-level "thing" aspires to comply with all aspects of the national rules.

A B-level thing has significance beyond the region and is pre-entry, but doesn't set out to comply with one or more aspects. Quite often that aspect is having a nationally accredited controller (the quality-assurance mechanism used here.) But I can also recall an area that was so steep that the activity could not be called "RUNNING navigation"; and areas so well-used that they were not though to be suitable for the top level. Which is a pretty high standard.

Not used much, but in my mind "C" refers to non-pre-entry events with a full range of course difficulties. They are stilll expected to have a controller who checks and approves the planning and organisation, but they don't have to be qualified.

Not used at all, but I think we should have a label for events that don't have this independant check of the courses, the control put-out, the descriptions, all the things that can go wrong. We're doing this more and more, right down to 1- and 2-man events, and of course there's often an error. Maybe "Z" as there is such a wide span between "C" and this level.

@Cristina: Thank you!

Event can mean anything that is over-hyped.

I'd rather have overhyped events than underhyped meets. Hype pays the bills.