The New England Orienteering Club

Spring Park Orienteering Thursday Series
April 28-June 23, 2022
Meet Directors: Pia Web, Ian Finlayson

Summer is almost here and with that the end of SPOTS, the Spring Park Orienteering Thursday Series, which this year offered seven evening events in parks around Boston varying from lightning-fast Fresh Pond and Magazine Beach to more technical Hammond Pond and Franklin Park and ending with a picnic and pizza party at beautiful Pine Banks. We had a great turnout with a total of 290 starts on the different courses (Sprint, Short, and Kid-O).

Three runners had the chance to win the point series on the Sprint coming into the last event, which on the day was won by Mori Finlayson-Johnecheck, who ended up tied for the overall Top SPOT with Keegan Harkavy. The woman’s Top SPOT was Elsa Barthel with an excellent 6th place overall. The Top SPOT on the Short courses was Nicholas Palmer who was awarded the SPOTlight award, with almost twice the number of points as the second runner after a series of strong results over the series. He got hard competition on two of the races by Egil Yildiz-Botterud, who had so much fun at Fresh Pond that he did the course twice!

We realized halfway through the series that the short course was too long for some of our youngest competitors and added a really-short Kid-O course which ended up with Diego and Giulia Berlanda Bertoldi on the Top SPOTS ahead of Elenor and Catherine McNeal-Lewis. Our youngest competitor also deserves a mention. It is always fun to see Arthur Waller spending some quality time with his grandparents on the short course. We saw him being carried around the courses before the pandemic but he is now on his own feet and we look forward to seeing him able to run the courses by himself in the coming years.

It was fun seeing many old friends in person again, but also to see and get to know some newcomers. Nils Peters claimed the SUN SPOT prize (SUN stands for “Speedy Unknown Newcomer”) and there were many other newcomers to the park-O series that took on the varied challenges of fast areas and technical areas with great spirit and increasing navigational skill. In terms of veterans of the park-O series Brendan Shields, who has helped organizing many park-O’s in the past, won the Prodigal Son SPOT award after returning to town after some 7 or 8 years in Switzerland. Another experienced orienteer, Tobias Karlsson won the SPOT-cleaner award for the cleanest run at the final event.

There was a strong showing from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School team which earned several SPOT prizes: the Bright SPOT for a 1st year orienteer went to Zephyr Newman ending up 5th overall after placing in a podium SPOT at a couple of events. Dashiell Mazzotta earned the Sore SPOT prize for showing up at events despite having a broken arm. And CRLS coach David Landrigan earned the Rooted to the SPOT prize for not running any courses but instead guiding and rooting for the CRLS team.

This series wouldn’t have happened without a lot of helping hands. Special kudos to Sara-Mae (who won the Sweet SPOT award for always bringing cookies) and Larry Berman (recipient of the SPOTless award) for running the events, and our different course setters: Ari Ofsevit, Dean Sturtevant, Patrick McNeal, and Terry Costello. Mori Finlayson-Johnecheck won the Soft SPOT award for running the timing software and programming the wireless results screen and Giovanni Berlanda Scorza the Hard SPOT award for providing and building the timing and results screen hardware. Barb Bryant and Dave Yee didn’t only let us use their back yard for one of the events, but also provided post-race pizza. Barb, Dave and Patrick share the SPOT-On award for making SPOT week 6 happen. We also had help from many people that I haven’t kept track off to pick up flags and clean up after the events. Thanks to you all!

The planning for the 2023 Park-O series has just started. We are always interested in signing up new or returning course setters so please let us know if you are interested in helping as we have Open SPOTS on the organizing team.

Have a nice summer and see you again in the woods in the fall!

Pia and Ian – Co-SPOnsors


See the results (and splits) for each event.

Series Points

Place Name Fresh Pond Franklin Park Beaver Brook Edmands Hammond Magazine Pine Banks Total Best 4
1 Keegan Harkavy 25 25 25 24 99 99
1 Mori Finlayson-Johnecheck 25 21 24 25 21 24 25 165 99
3 Ethan Childs 24 23 24 25 23 23 142 96
4 Nils Peters 22 22 14 23 21 20 122 88
5 Zephyr Newman 23 24 19 15 1 21 103 87
6 Elsa Barthel 18 20 23 12 22 95 83
7 Ari Ofsevit 23 16 20 20 15 94 79
7 Ian Finlayson 21 22 18 18 18 97 79
9 Chris Merlo 20 22 22 1 14 79 78
10 Tobias Karlsson 20 18 16 16 22 92 76
11 Kristin Hall 16 17 11 19 15 16 94 68
12 Conlan Doran 18 11 17 15 13 17 10 101 67
12 Dashiell Mazzotta 19 13 14 17 17 1 81 67
14 Katia Bertoldi 16 16 14 13 9 68 59
15 Giovanni Berlanda 19 20 19 58 58
16 Jonathan Palmer 1 10 15 12 10 14 8 70 51
17 Sam Greene 12 19 12 5 1 6 55 49
17 Magnus Bjorkman 15 13 10 8 11 57 49
19 Graham van Bever 11 12 11 2 11 47 45
19 Bridget Hall 21 12 12 45 45
21 Brendan Shields 24 19 43 43
22 Philip Zurek 17 14 10 41 41
23 Terry Costello 14 6 8 8 8 44 38
24 Patrick McNeil 9 11 10 7 37 37
25 Pia Webb 15 7 9 1 32 32
26 Vadim Afonkin 18 13 31 31
27 Andrew Donaldson 8 7 1 6 9 31 30
28 Aims Coney 9 5 1 5 3 1 24 22
28 Jon Campbell 22 22 22
30 Greg Bjornstad 1 1 7 13 22 22
31 Dean Sturtevant 10 2 3 5 20 20
32 Sam Altenberger 13 6 19 19
33 Leah Williams 17 17 17
34 Laura Houston 4 1 1 1 6 4 17 15
35 Channon Ames 4 7 11 11
36 Matthew Houston 1 3 1 4 2 11 10
37 Darla Novotny 6 1 1 1 1 1 1 12 9
37 Felix Sims 4 1 3 1 1 10 9
37 Phil Bricker 9 9 9
37 David Yee 9 9 9
41 Nadine Leisgang 1 7 8 8
41 Jim Paschetto 1 1 6 8 8
41 Xavier Fradera 8 8 8
41 Safia Singh 5 1 1 1 1 9 8
45 Evan Moore 1 1 5 7 7
45 Elena Glassman 7 7 7
45 Carmen Gargallo 1 1 2 3 7 7
48 Elizabeth Afonkin 5 1 6 6
48 Nova Johnson 3 1 1 1 1 7 6
48 Emily Jones 1 4 1 6 6
51 Peter Amram 1 1 2 1 5 5
52 Teodoro Tapia 1 1 1 1 4 4
52 Wendy Johnecheck 4 4 4
52 Mark Donaldson 3 1 4 4
55 Jose Carlos Santos Berna 1 1 1 3 3
55 Hugh Koschwanez 2 1 3 3
55 Leah Grodstein 3 3 3
55 Sylvie Guichard 3 3 3
59 Ethan Kellogg 1 1 2 2
59 Don Fallas 1 1 2 2
61 Dmitriy Oksenkrug 1 1 1
61 Andrew Nober 1 1 1
61 Maiken Vavrys 1 1 1