• Minutes of recent meeting of the OUSA Board of Directors, 28 April 2018
• Agenda from the most recent meeting 2 Aug 2018
• Next Board Meeting -  1 September 2018, 4:00 pm MDT, Laramie Plains Civic Center (Phoenix Ballroom), 710 E. Garfield St., Laramie, WY  82070 (following the AGM)

Note from OUSA President


One of the primary activities at the AGM, being held this year on Sept. 1 in Laramie, WY, is to vote for the new Board members. The Board is comprised of 12 members, and each year we vote to fill four of those positions.  Of these four, three of the current members are leaving the Board after many years of dedicated service. Those members are Bob Forgrave, Peter Goodwin, and Greg Lennon. This year, I am so excited to present a slate of very strong candidates:

• Clai Gardner
• Susan Grandjean
• Joseph Huberman
• Matthew Robbins
• Ian Smith (Current Board Member)
• Ellen Stefaniak

My special thanks goes to William Jameson and the nominating committee who worked diligently to produce this slate of candidates. On that committee, along with William, were Mary Jo Childs, Peggy Dickison, and Gavin Wyatt-Mair.

The voting information for all clubs will be sent out within the next week. Each club has or will soon have received information about the number of votes their club will have at the AGM and how to name their delegates or proxy.  These documents can also be found on the OUSA Library.

Please read the candidates’ statements to get acquainted with their backgrounds and areas of interest.

Thanks,

Kris

Clai Gardner

I have orienteered since 1980 and I am a lifetime U.S. Orienteering member.  I really love orienteering.

• Club leadership: Lone Star Orienteering Club founder and current president
• US Military Orienteering team member at CISM World Championships 1994 and 1997
• Geographic Information Systems Master’s Program Training
• Assisted in organizing numerous national orienteering events

My planned focus if elected as a BOD member:

• Facilitate map production
• You cannot play baseball without baseball fields and you can’t orienteer without maps, so I will facilitate map production
• Facilitate map production so we can involve more youth participation
• Listen to suggestions that will help facilitate map production
• Assist clubs in partnering with universities, community colleges, and all levels of education that have access to GIS software to produce maps

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Susan Grandjean

I'm excited to have the chance to be nominated for the Board Of Directors for OUSA.  My first experience in orienteering was as a junior and I was welcomed to the federation with open arms.  I was given the opportunity to travel internationally with the Ski-O team and had the privilege to be sponsored by K-Swiss in Foot-O in the early 90's.  Even though I took a long break from orienteering to race mountain bikes, the attention that OUSA gave to me at a young age solidified my involvement with orienteering.  

My entrance back into orienteering was when OUSA supported MTBO, where I am a current member of the U.S. MTBO team.  My involvement in MTBO has given me the passion to be more involved in orienteering, and now at this time in my life, I feel I can actually give back to such a great organization.  I want to be able to share with others what was shared with me years ago in this fun/challenging sport.  

On top of representing the U.S. in MTBO, I am also the president of Columbia River Orienteering.  My goal in being the president of CROC is to increase new membership. As we are midseason into our first year with this set goal, our club is showing success with new members joining every month.  As a small but active club, I find personal success with the elevated energy of our veteran club members have and how well we are working together to achieve our goals as a club.

As a board member of OUSA, I would like to be involved with the growth of orienteering through youth and junior development in all disciplines.  I feel I would come to the table with a different insight of our sport due to my experiences in MTBO and Ski-O, as well as my involvement in my local club.  And I also believe I have the ability to think outside the box to help grow orienteering on a national level.  If we can achieve this goal, we can increase our success on the international level.  Please consider my request to become a board member of Orienteering USA so I can share my passion with others and help our sport grow on a competitive level.

Joseph Huberman

I have been orienteering since 1978 and the president of Backwoods Orienteering Klub since 1980 when we had only 8 members. I have been Event Director for (at least) 10 National Events including: a team fundraiser in cooperation with the U.S. team, Long O Champs, Relay Champs, Classic Champs, Interscholastic and Intercollegiate Champs. I have also directed ARDF US & Region II Champs (radio orienteering) and two International Training Camps.
 

I was Chairman of the Rules Committee for several years during the time we were conforming our rules to the IOF rules.
 

What I am most proud of is that I have lead BOK by consensus for 38 years without internal conflicts. 

I would like to see OUSA become relevant to many local orienteers. It is a large pool of recreational orienteers that form the foundation of our National Teams. 

I believe that to expand the recreational base in the U.S., OUSA should provide tools to make life easier for our club volunteers. A good start would be to offer (free) a registration and results infrastructure. This will bring local club members to the OUSA site and could relieve volunteers from the hassle of data entry. Club volunteers should be able to focus on the fun — orienteering — part of event directing. BOK has focused our policies on keeping our volunteers happy and I will advocate for this approach as a BOD member. 

Matthew Robbins

I've been an orienteer since I was a freshman at Rose-Hulman in 1984. I currently run SportIdent download for most of OCIN's events, including all but one OCIN A-Meet since 2011 or so (at least 10 A-meets and 32 event-day downloads). I was also OCIN's President from approximately 2010 through June 2018, and before that I was OCIN's Secretary and then Vice President in the late 2000s. My first A-meet course setting was the 2005 U..S. Team Trials Long, and I've set A-meet courses for Sprint, Middle, Classic, Long, Ultralong, and three U.S. Relay Championships. My favorite discipline is Night O'. I've organized and taught a course-setting clinic with Mike Minium and two other OCIN members. I help with OCIN's junior TROL league as much as I can. I consider myself OCIN's "Volunteer Number 2" because I'm running download at most OCIN events, over 30 per year, and because Mike Minium is clearly OCIN's "Volunteer Number 1". I'm currently working to have several MTBO events, with properly formatted MTBO maps, this August through October in the Cincinnati area. (I am “cedarcreek” on AttackPoint.)

    My goals for the direction of Orienteering USA are to:

• Increase the number of orienteers in the U.S.
• Increase the number of juniors, scouts, cadets, parents, and adult leaders competing at orienteering
• Increase the number of people organizing and volunteering at orienteering events throughout the U.S.
• Improve the knowledge base of the orienteering community in the technical side of orienteering: mapping, processing Lidar and aerial photos, course setting, download timing (such as SportIdent), and the combination of course setting and download for gaffled events such as relays, billygoats, and mass-start ultrasprints
• Associate orienteering as a STEM activity because of the broad range of technical skills needed to compete in and organize events

My main volunteer work in orienteering is creating basemaps from Lidar and aerial photos. I have mapped several small projects, but I spend a lot of my free time at the technical process of processing Lidar and aerials to be in consistent units and formats, and passing that product to a professional or amateur mapper. My intent is to reduce the time it takes a mapper to create a good map, and to enable amateurs to make maps nearly as accurately as professional mappers. I'm hoping to find or create materials to teach people how to do that. I'm not a GIS professional or a trained cartographer, but I've processed orienteering basemaps in at least 20 states, including Alaska and Hawaii.

In September and December 2017, I presented 3-hour Lidar workshops for Peter Goodwin's OUSA mapping seminars at Letchworth SP in NY, and at QOC's A-Meet near Marine Base Quantico. With the consent of OCIN's Board, I lobbied for OCIN to pay for orienteering maps in Sidney, Ohio, South Bend, Indiana, Lexington, Kentucky, and the Summit Bechtel Reserve (SBR) near Beckley, West Virginia. SBR is now the permanent home of the Boy Scouts of America's Jamboree held every four years, and in 2017 had attendance of over 35,000 for ten days. So far only one of those locations, Lexington, Kentucky, has launched a new club, the Bluegrass Orienteering Club (O Blue), but I'm committed to helping motivated individuals build clubs around good maps.

I have had some success asking government agencies to release Lidar data. I submitted an Open Records Request to the State of Kentucky that released all of their Lidar data on a publicly-accessible FTP website. It was previously closely-held and released only to organizations that had help fund the flights. As an example, the State Parks agency didn't contribute money, and wasn't being given the Lidar. Additionally, I recently got an agreement with a New Mexico office to get access to NM Lidar before it goes up on a website, and I got access to over 300GB of Lidar near Bozeman, Montana by sending them an external hard drive. Of course, the USGS 3DEP program will eventually fly Lidar for all of the Continental U.S., but that will take years, and I've gotten enough visibility within that community to help OUSA and member clubs get access to that data possibly more quickly than if we did nothing. 

I am a licensed radio amateur, and use those skills primarily for radio orienteering, or ARDF, Amateur Radio Direction Finding. I've competed in (or been on the organizing team of) the US ARDF Championships every year since 2003, and I competed for the USA at the 2004 World ARDF Championships in Brno, Czech Republic. The ARDF community recently got BSA to amend the requirements for the Radio Merit Badge to include ARDF options, and we at OCIN are trying to include ARDF in our BSA orienteering events, and to help make merit badge counselors aware of ARDF and the new requirements.

I was a member of the Rose Orienteering Club (at Rose-Hulman) for four years. It withered away soon after I graduated. We hadn't done enough to build the club and create a critical mass of volunteers. We had some core club members who would decide if we were going to the U.S. Championships or the Intercollegiate Championships, and they did the work to organize it for the rest of us. Later I realized I was just along for the ride. There are people in orienteering who inherently understand it takes more than just people showing up. I had to learn that the hard way. It takes people to organize and make events happen. I want to help people understand that, and to help remove barriers to entry for volunteers of all kinds.

Ian Smith

I started orienteering in Boston in 2007 at the age of 22 because I had friends who were active in Cambridge Sports Union. I was a member of the U.S. national team from 2013-2017, and I have been to O'ringen, Jukola, Tiomila, and other multiday festivals in Europe. I have been active in two contrasting clubs: Cambridge Sports Union and the New England Orienteering Club. Since 2010, I have had a leadership role in NEOC including directing two National Meets, directing numerous local events, and serving on the Board of Directors, as the Event coordinator, and as the chair of mapping and national meet committee. My time in NEOC helped me understand key differences between two important objectives of sustaining the organization and executing an agenda.

I have been on the OUSA Board of Directors since 2016.  I initially ran because I wanted to change the direction of the federation. OUSA was in an unsustainable financial situation, and we weren’t making progress as a federation; there didn’t seem to be a strategy for moving forward. While on the Board, I was active on the Finance committee and helped avert the trajectory towards financial insolvency. I have worked with Philip Westover of MNOC and Boris Granovskiy of QOC to improve club websites, and I organized an OUSA convention in 2017 with Barb Bryant. Unfortunately, 2017 had to be a year of relative austerity and little investment in programming to bring OUSA back into the black. I am eager to implement programming and a strategy to promote growth of the federation and member clubs, development of youth outreach and engagement, and to support continued improvement of our competitive national teams.  

My priorities are:

• Improve the resources and offerings available to clubs to help them publicize themselves, engage the community, grow sustainably, and derive benefit from membership in the national federation.  These include websites, training, publicity toolkits, and opportunities to engage other organizations.
• Communicate with and listen to member clubs and the membership more successfully. OUSA members and the orienteering community have lots of great ideas, and it’s critical that we provide opportunities to engage and share knowledge going forward.
• Grow the sport through development and support of junior programs. School leagues and junior programs are crucial for the future of the sport.
• Support elite teams.  This includes resource support and recognition of athletes at all levels - the Junior and Senior teams, MTBO, Trail-O, Ski-O, and World Masters.

As we put together a strategy for the next several years, I will define measurable goals for the progress of OUSA and our community’s collective effort to grow orienteering in the U.S.

Ellen Stefaniak

I’ve been a member of OUSA since 2012 though I have been orienteering since first trying it at BAOC meets in 2003 & 2004 when I saw it as a way to improve navigation skills for my sea kayaking activities.  I found that I enjoyed it so much that, upon moving to Richmond, Virginia in 2005, I sought out opportunities here.  I soon became involved at local meets, primarily through control pick up.  In 2011, I was one of the five founding members of the Central Virginia Orienteering Club (CVOC).  I have served as club Secretary since then and handle most of the web presence, publicity, and records for the club.  I also assist with most of our meets through such activities as teaching beginners, timing, control pickup, occasional course design & setting, and other tasks as needed.

I’m interested in joining the Board of Directors for several reasons.  I feel that my experience with a newer and smaller club within OUSA would bring a different perspective from that of the more established clubs. The needs of these smaller clubs are different and how we can support them varies.  We’ve also made a shift in CVOC’s focus to adjust to what our most frequent participants are interested in and are organizing more of our meets to appeal to adventure racers, in addition to traditional orienteers.  Being an adventure racer and orienteer myself, I think this is an untapped market that could help in spreading the appeal of orienteering to a wider audience with a common interest.  I have many ideas of how we could explore outreach to that community as a growth opportunity for our sport and organization.  Our club also has ongoing involvement with the local Boy Scout council in a variety of ways and I’d like to explore means of drawing participation from Scouts and other youth organizations as a means of developing our future members.

In my professional life, I’ve held a variety of project management, process improvement, and business analysis positions in information technology at major corporations where I have developed skills that would transfer well to service on the board.  I enjoy planning and can see the greater vision as well as all of the details that go into making a project or initiative succeed.  I’m detail-oriented and enjoy working with teams and working toward shared goals.
 

I feel that I can bring a different perspective to the board, along with new ideas to grow the OUSA organization.  I welcome the opportunity to be a part of our progression in the coming years.

Nominee's name and Club 

Name and Club of person submitting the nomination

Description of the nominee's volunteer service to orienteering. Please be sure to address both required criteria.

Today was the second-to-last race of the week, the dreaded long. Only Michael and I were brave enough to undertake the challenge, while the rest of the team wimped out… er, made the wise and well-thought-out decision to save themselves for the relay. In all actuality, the race wasn’t too bad as far as navigation or heat go; it was just, well, long. Long enough that I will admit that I let out an audible groan when it came time to flip the map over. As you can see from the picture below, the course designers brought us all the way to the top of the map, and then right back down.

WUOC Long Distance Course (click map for larger image)

National Event Calendar

• August 17–24: North American Orienteering Championships and Canadian Orienteering Championships (YOA) - Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada
• August 29–September 3: Rocky Mountain Orienteering Festival (RMOC) - Laramie, WY*
• September 22: Thirty Years of Pond Mt. NRE (WCOC) - Kent, CT**
• September 30: BAOC 1-Day NRE (BAOC) - San Jose, CA
• October 19-21: U.S. Nationals (OCIN/SMOC) - South Bend, IN

International Event Calendar

• August 4–11: World Orienteering Championships - Riga, Latvia
• August 4–11: World Trail Orienteering Championships - Riga, Latvia
• August 5–13: World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships - Waldviertel, Austria

Laramie Range Orienteering Club (LROC) and Rocky Mountain Orienteering Club (RMOC) invite you to join us at the Rocky Mountain Orienteering Festival for six days of orienteering in the Medicine Bow National Forest, just east of Laramie, Wyoming.

The events will take place from Wednesday, August 29th through Monday, September 3rd (Labor Day).

Four of the event days — Friday though Monday — will be designated as National Ranking Events.  Eligible residents of western states can also compete for the Western States Championships, based on their best two out of three results on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

The events include a mass-start long distance (Goat-style) race, a one-man relay, a middle distance, and three classic races. The Festival will also include OUSA's Annual General Meeting on September 1st.