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This summer when I flew over to Europe for my usual adventures, I did something a bit different. Instead of flying to France, where the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) would be held later in the summer, I flew to Sweden with Ross Smith. We always dreamed of living abroad in a place where we could orienteer and race more frequently. With the help of friends we secured an apartment in Uppsala, Sweden and Ross found a job. I took a leave of absence from my teaching job and at the beginning of the summer we first moved in to our new apartment. We plan to live here for a year, training as much as we can with the local orienteering club, OK Linné.
When we arrived the empty apartment echoed with our voices and we slept that first night on the floor with our sleeping bags and pads.
by Meg Parson
This July, I traveled to Poland to compete in the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC). Before I recount some of my experiences, I would just like to thank NEOC for their generous grant that helped pay for some of my travel expenses; their support is very much appreciated.
It was an eventful couple of weeks, filled with both sick teammates and new friendships, solid runs from the US Junior Team and beautiful open woods. Yes, none of us spoke very good Polish (and an iPod translator can only get you so far). And yes, there was a minor outbreak of food poisoning at our hotel. But all in all the US Junior Team had solid performances during the week of competition and managed to have a pretty good time along the way.
by Carl Underwood
At the beginning of this past summer I went to Wejherowo, Poland to compete in my second Junior World Orienteering Championships. I arrived to the training week a few days late because my high school graduation was on Sunday the 26th, so on the 27th I flew to poland to join the team. It turns out that it may have been luck to arrive late; the day after I arrived the majority of our team, along with the Swedish team, had food poisoning. Everyone was throwing up and were sick for at least a day after becoming sick. Luckily a few others and I managed to stay healthy and were able to train every day.
During the training week the woods were beautiful; they literally clean their woods. You could see very far ahead of were you were and could easily pick out spots in the distance and find them on the map. Then there were basically two types of terrain: one was hilly with large contours and bland hills, the other was relatively flat but was filled with pits and small hills.
The NEOC Board of Directors recently voted to award travel grants to club members Alex Jospe and Ross Smith, who competed for the U.S. in this year's World Orienteering Championships.
These follow grants given earlier this year to other NEOC members: U.S. Teammate Sam Saeger; and Meg Parson and Carl Underwood, who ran in the Junior World Orienteering Championships.
Follow the U.S. Orienteering Team on their blog.
Photos courtesy of Team USA.
Today was the Long final, the traditional individual race, and it certainly kept with tradition in that it was long and it was hard. The fact that it was a beautiful day for spectating, but way too hot for the runners, just added to the challenge. There were still some brilliant performances, most notably that of Frenchman Thierry Guergiou, winning in his home country to the delight of the largely French crowd. And actually I think to the delight of most everyone, as winning the Long for the first time on his home soil, well, it just seemed like the right place and the right time. The women’s winner was Annika Billstam of Sweden.
For our qualifier for the final, Ali Crocker, it was not her best day, and she ended up being disqualified for not punching at one of the water stops.