Riverstone Classic Results

Michael Bading having a blast on a beautiful Riverstone Classic course!

Despite being bookended by rain, wind and cold, the December 13 Riverstone Classic treated participants to wonderfully cool weather with blue skies and puffy white clouds, and in stark contrast to last year's icy and slippery conditions, the course was soft and grippy! More than 30 turned out to compete on the White and Yellow (Beginner), Orange (Intermediate) and Green (Advanced) courses, with many trying their luck on multiple courses.

Before the full report, special recognition to all of our first-timers! The Shaughnessy family (Michael and Ella) and Molly Maybach, the Simon crew (Randy, Finn and Cooper), Holly Ponath, Raino and Taavi Zoller, Nick Liebich, Walker Coyle, Aggie McGinnis, Beatrice Tornaghi and Ethan Treadwell all came out for their first CTOC Orienteering event and were enthusiastic about coming back for more!

Now, some results...

This month featured a twist on CTOC's traditional beginner, intermediate and advanced classifications. US Orienteering Federation course guidelines were used to differentiate between two beginner level courses; a White course almost exclusively utilized existing pathways and was just over 2km while a slightly longer and more challenging Yellow course took participants off-trail using obvious handrails. The team of Taavi, Nick and Walker barely held off Taavi's mom, Holly Ponath by 15 seconds to win the White course, but I suspect next time they'll have their work cut out for them if they want to retain that top spot. On the Yellow course, the brother/sister team of Derek and Jordan won by a healthy 15 minute margin. The variety of beginner courses gave newcomers the chance to try out multiple courses and they got more time with map-in-hand without having to tackle one of the longer, more technically challenging courses.

White

Tavie/Walker/Nick	15:30
Holly Ponath	15:45
Jordan/Derek Liebich	16:02
Bea/Aggie	16:30

Yellow

Jordan/Derek Liebich	33:15
Holly Ponath	49:21
Cooper/Finn/Randy Simon	51:20
Ella/Michael Shaughnessy & Molly Maybach	51:20

Next up in the Orange (intermediate) class, which was made up of predominantly youth orienteerers (9!), the more challenging navigation and control placement played out in the results. While Bea and Aggie finished with the fastest time they fell victim to some intentional parallel control placement and mis-punched #11, opening the door for Ethan who, despite his slower time, correctly punched all controls in 67 minutes. Other participants in the Orange class were closely grouped between 90-100 minutes, and more than a few had difficulty with controls #8 and #9 which were placed in the newly mapped wetland area just across the river from Barber Park. Kudos to Mark Liebich who even went back out in search of #8 with the dog. Your course setters acknowledge that placing controls so close to the edge of mapped terrain without a clear catching feature might be avoidable in the future...

Orange

Bea Tornaghi/Aggie McGinnis/Francesca Tornaghi	0:51:37 *mispunch
Ethan Treadwell - 1st Place	1:07:56
Jeff Black	1:26:10
Taavi/Nick/Walker	1:31:30
Mark Liebich	1:37:25
Robyn/Frederike	1:38:18
Jay/Nikolai/Aleksi Morgan	1:40:00

Finally, the Green class. Why Green? The USOF divides "advanced" orienteering courses into 4 classes which should involve equally challenging navigation and terrain, but which vary in length, with winning times as follows: Brown 45-50minutes, Green 50-55minutes, Red 60-65 minutes and Blue 75-80 minutes. Sergey won this month's two-loop Green course in a time of 65 minutes, (exclaiming how out of shape he was...) and agreed that "fast" orienteerers would have completed the course in about 50 minutes. Right on the heels of Sergey, Todd finished in 69 minutes, but although his Runkeeper GPS route indicated an appropriate route, one control was oddly mispunched, sliding Michael into 2nd place with a time of 80 minutes.

Green

Sergey Velichko	1:05:53
Todd Dinkelman	1:08:58 *mispunch
Michael Bading	1:20:32
Bill Leahy	1:22:40 (1st loop only)
Greg Davidson	1:23:04
John Murray	1:38:39
Melanie Schuster	1:39:55
Melanie Wright	2:26:30

Finally, thanks to:

Riverstone Orienteering Club members Levi Schmitt, Brian Bohme, Natalie Pusch and Becca Tabb who showed up bright and early on Saturday to place the 40+ controls needed to make the 4 courses possible and then helped to run the start/finish!
Robyn and Rike for helping with registration and control collection!
Jeff Black who ventured out onto the Orange course with his camera to capture the courses in action!

See you next month in Hidden Springs!