February 5, 2008
Last updated: Tuesday, 05-Feb-2008 17:43:23 PST
We're Going to Texas!
By Sue Kuestner
Fifty-one orienteers from Washington are headed to Texas for the 2008 Interscholastic Orienteering Championships. All of us (except Eric, who will be staying at the camp near the meet as he is helping with it) will be staying at the same motel in Athens, two hours southeast of Dallas. We have 23 rooms reserved, 17 of which will be filled with COC and SAMM orienteers, five of which will be filled with fellow travelers from the BAOC (San Francisco) and SDO (San Diego) clubs, and one which will be filled with orienteering friends from the DVOA club (Philadelphia area.) In all, there will be 63 of us staying and traveling together. The motel has a free continental breakfast, though Jim Siscel has warned me that because orienteers eat so much the food will probably run out, so he is going to buy his own breakfast.
COC orienteers will fill four club teams (two JV and two Varsity) and three school teams (two Intermediate and one Varsity.) There will also be some participants running individually without teams.
At the end of this article is a list of the COC juniors that will be competing. Also attending as coaches, chauffers, chaperones, and cheerleaders are 21 COC and SAMM adults, most of whom will also compete in their own age categories. This is the largest group from WIOL to ever participate in the US Interscholastic Championship.
To get to the meet, 43 of us will be traveling on the same flight to Dallas, where we will meet some of our fellow travelers from California. This party plane will be arriving in the late evening on Valentine's Day, so some of us will stay near Dallas that night and drive to Athens Friday morning. The more adventurous types will drive to Athens upon arrival Thursday night. We will compete in a sprint race Friday afternoon (the results of which do not count for the meet) and an A level race on Saturday and another A level race on Sunday. The combined times for these two A races will determine where competitors place. The scores for the top three finishers on each team will be used to determine the team scores.
The Interscholastics, though open to all, is geared mostly towards juniors, and typically has the largest junior turn-out of any meet in the U.S. In addition to being a great competition, it is a very special social event, where juniors can get together with friends they have made from other parts of the country in previous years. This will be my fourth, and final, year of having the privilege of bringing the Lakeside team to the Interscholastics. I have enjoyed every minute of it, including the locking of the keys in the van, the running through the airports, the lodging mix-ups, the buried cell phone, and the pranks played on Matej. I have also greatly enjoyed traveling with the other juniors from our club: Anna, Matej, Lance, and Huw, though I could have done without Matej's balcony gymnastics. I highly recommend anyone who has not had the opportunity to participate in this meet to do so, as I wouldn't have missed it for the world these past four years.
The following Pacific Northwest juniors will compete in the 2008 US Interscholastic Orienteering Championship in Texas:
Matt Skorina
Claudia Günther
William Koster
Catherine Olsson
Holly Kuestner
Anna Urbanova
Tori Borish
Gabrielle Lindquist
Jorden Lindquist
Ryan Breseman
Dana Breseman
Kelsey Breseman
Huw Stradling
Marissa Roecks
Tracy Whelen
Lance Miller
Max Maxwell
Drew Inglis
Danielle Spencer
Andrew Spencer
Joseph Spencer
Katherine Ratliff
Hilary Ratliff
Anne Wilkinson
Bonnie Gilbery
Becky Forgrave
Ethan Barnes
Natalie Lew
Steve Roberts
Tyler Chu