Purpose:

The Silva Award is given annually to an orienteer who, along with being a member of Orienteering USA, has demonstrated outstanding service to orienteering in the United States over the past five years. The recipient need not be a terrific orienteer, and orienteering skill is not considered in determining the award winner. The essential quality of every winner has been service to promoting and sustaining orienteering, to making the sport work in this country, and in helping to build the organizations needed to make orienteering successful.

Would you like to get hundreds of new people exposed to orienteering? Consider hosting a Scout-O. New England Orienteering Club (NEOC) has done this for 22 years, and in 2017, Orienteering Cincinnati (OCIN) successfully followed their lead with our first Scout-O. By sharing the challenges and techniques we learned along the way, we hope to help you host your own successful Scout-O.

There were registration/start windows designated for each course, and other club members served as event directors at the middle three map locations while Phil headed up the first and last locations. Total straight line distance for the two options were about 7.2 km for the short (advanced-beginner difficulty), and 15.5 for the medium (advanced difficulty), if you were to compete on all five maps. As at all organized events, you had the option to only compete in a few races; most competitors chose the challenge of doing all five.                                                                                                                
                                                                                            Middle course at Burke WMA
                                                                                            (click to see larger image)
Despite a foggy start to the morning (after overnight rain!), the EmpO'Ringen, beginning on a newly produced map of Margaret Burke WMA, attracted competitors from near and far. Fields which had contained short grass only a few weeks ago were more mature, creating a need for close attention to the map here. The other locations were Camp Pinnacle (start location for the 2006 Long [Ultralong] Champs), Cole Hill State Forest, Switzkill Farm Town Park, and Foxenkill Flats (land surrounding the Berne-Knox-Westerlo schools). By the time we reached Switzkill Farm the skies were much clearer and the temperature rose, but not excessively so.

While HVO's Jeremy Colgan was fastest overall on the courses, he registered a missing punch at Camp Pinnacle when he stopped to help a distressed orienteer then forgot to punch. He was credited with a “Sporting Withdrawal.” So EMPO's own Frank Boscoe was declared the winner for the day on the Medium courses, and Janet Tryson prevailed on the Short.

The help of the club members directing start/finishes and control collection after the races was invaluable. Sue Hawkes-Teeter served as vetter and co-director, helping everything go smoothly and also serving as hostess for the post-event barbecue.                              Photo by Russ Meyer

Equipment: EMPO owns almost enough equipment to handle this event, but not quite. We had enough SI units and flags for the control locations, but not enough stands, so at a number of locations we hung the SI unit on the flag by running the hanging string through the hole (not a universally liked method, but needed here). Using this method actually helped speed-up the control placement and pickup processes. The other equipment requirements were for computer(s) and printer(s). We had computers or print-out stations available for all locations but one (so you needed to download at the next map before proceeding).

If you want to find out more, or advice for tweaks to the format, contact Phil. His address is on the EMPO website. Full results are available here.