Attendance: 80 in 63 groups

Thanks for meet assistance: Tom McClory, Larry Berna, Fred Dudding, and Sharon Bond.

The Miami Valley Junior Orienteering Championships and the Shamrock Hunt were held on the same day. Those who want to compare their results with additional orienteers may do so by visiting the Shamrock Hunt page.

After armchair design of the courses and the snow mostly melted I went out to the park on March 3rd to scout out the control locations. Immediately after the snow melted Germantown Dam was operating in a most impressive state. On the upstream side water was being held back and the intake at the base was not visible. It looked like a nice sized lake with a huge wirlpool containing several trees spinning about 40 feet above the intake. The downstream side was even more impressive. The output tubes were at full capacity creating what I would call Class VII rapids. I know the scale only goes up to VI, but if you were in it you would surely die. Over 52,000 gallons were passing by each second.

Needless to say my two lowest planned control sites were under water. Everything else looked fine. After the snow melt drained Gabe Svobodny pre-ran the red course on March 11 and reported that the park was nice and dry. Then just before the event it rained all Wednesday night into Thursday. I scouted out the Miami Conservancy District website and found a link to real-time data on all the area flood control dams. The report from Twin Creek at Germantown showed the level was again rising. It did so until Midnight Thursday and then started to drop. When I set controls on Friday I could have placed a control at every planned site, but one would have involved muck almost up to my knees (mid-thigh on most people). So I only had to relocate one control for the green and red course.

On the white course Piqua High School swept the standings with their cooperative groups, though they must have just been out for future training. As stated in the Junior Championships rules, "The white course will be a championship course for ages 12 and under."

In general, all of the trophy divisions were hotly competitive. In looking at the top three times of the teams, I couldn't readily tell who was the clear winner. Only after adding up the times did I see whose times were lowest. As in any close competition, the awards seem to have been distributed among all the competing teams.

In the Rookie Division the Hamilton High School's team of Glancy, Schaff, Grewe, Lynch, & Brandenberg laid down a total time of 274:24 closely edging out Fairborn High School's team of Morales, Rieff, and Kumanchik with a time of 278:05. That's only a 1.3% difference! Wow! Great performances by both teams!

In the Rookie Cooperative Division Boy Scout Troop 26 from Miamisburg came out, challenged themselves on the yellow course, had a great time, and left with bragging rights to the division! Awesome job!

The JV Division had the most teams going head-to-head. Both Springboro and Wayne came in with strong team performances of 306:05 and 325:56 respectively, and Fairborn's star performance from Jihoon Kim was phenomenal; but in the end Hamilton edged them all with 288:37 to emerge victorious! All right Big Blue!

The JV Cooperative Division had Springboro written all over it, but Greenville made them earn it. Way-to-go Springboro!

In the top Varsity Division Hamilton's Mat Roark bested all other runners by almost a two minute margin, but on his heels was the talented and closely matched Wayne team of Brandon Wilson, April Powell, and Ryan Clark who would not be denied. They returned from their tough course well before others from their school on shorter courses to capture the top trophy and return it to Warrior Territory after a two-year hiatus with Hamilton.

As always, the top 1/3 of finishers on a course (not counting OT's) should consider moving to the next higher course. Finishers with an OT or DNF should move to an easier course and master it (top 1/3) before moving higher. Competitors on the green course should be confident enough in their navigation to run the entire course.

In the result tables below:

HHS = Hamilton High School Navy JROTC
PHS = Piqua High School Navy JROTC
SHS = Springboro High School Air Force JROTC
WHS = Wayne High School Air Force JROTC
XCHS = Xenia Christian High School
BSA = Boy Scouts of America

OT = Overtime
MSP = Mis-punch (punched wrong control)
DNF = Did not finish (number of controls visited)
DSQ = Disqualified