December 10, 2000 William B Umstead State Park - Camp Whispering Pines

• Mike Sigmond Registration and Hot Beverages
• Joe Halloran Registration and Pickup
• Gary Wiggins Instruction
• Dick Webb Pickup
• Jonathon McDaniel Pickup
• Charles E. Scharlau Radio Course Setter
• Mike Brooks Course Setter

I want to thank everyone else on the list for helping with this event. Having good, skilled clubmates and friends pitching in to help, some promising in advance with others stepping up when needed, truly makes running events fun and easy. This meet, like all others, does not happen without club members volunteering their time to make them happen.

The weather turned out to be better than the forecast. The 50% chance of rain had come and gone leaving dry skies and a slight, bearable chill. The turnout fortunately matched the actual conditions instead of the forecast. 78 individuals in 44 entries turned out for the event. The big groups of the day came from Northeast Guilford High School and a scout group from Durham (I forgot to write down the troop number). David Werlinger joined BOK's happy family as a member. Mark Williams of SVO (central Pennsylvania) included our event in his travel plans.

Visibility in the woods was great. Therefore, most of the Orange and advanced controls were buried in ditches and thickets to avoid being too visible and easy. The strategy seemed to work since I received more compliments than complaints. The start at Whispering Pines allowed me to set advance courses that reached the southeastern section of the park, a section we have not used in a while. The camp area also provided many different objects to use on the beginners courses.

The only error was letting a draft copy of the Brown Course be issued to one participant instead of the correct, final version of the course that everyone else got. Apologies go to Phil Sweigart for receiving that mistake. Fortunately, Phil found the orange course control that was in the circle he received and went on without reporting a delay.

The White and Yellow courses were led by participants doing doubleheaders. Chris Bennett's group from the Durham scouts did a reverse twinbill, doing Yellow first, then sprinting White while waiting for the rest of the troop to finish their Yellow course. They won White after a third on Yellow. Amber Chambers from NEHS did the traditional double, running White with teammates, then joining her coach for Yellow. Her groups were second on White and first on Yellow. Blaz Krtalic & Martin York also did a traditional double with fine results.

Yasuaki Habara won a close race on a slightly difficult Orange. Joe Halloran blitzed Brown. Pavlina Chladkova used fast open choices off the straight line to beat Jonathon McDaniel and four others on Green. Martin Greiner of Duke led a strong field on Red. Finally, the Cornejo family successfully completed the radio-O course, which used a subset of Yellow controls.