Delaware Valley Orienteering Association

While it unfortunatley may be a while until we can safely have another event, just wanted to share a few administrative thoughts that came up during the Gov Dick event, some COVID related, others not.

1.  I created a score-o "event" in UsynligO (with no map posted online) that contained some of the harder controls.  Some of the people who were helping with control placement and pickup then used UsynligO as a backup to help find the streamer or control.  Provided a nice backstop for people who are working under a time limit with darkness setting in.  Could also make control pickup more accessible for some of our more intermediate orienteers.

2.  The park has been much busier than normal this year with more people going outside.  The Saturday before the event the weather was nice and the parking lots were packed by 10:30AM.  We lucked out that the weather Sunday was not as nice or we would have had a major parking problem.  Something to keep in mind when selecting locations that I didn't think about at all before the event.

3.  We had 172 people attend this year, our biggest turnout ever at Gov Dick.  A large number of these people we non-members (some beginners, some adventure racers).  Pre-registration was very helpful in a few ways

• No lines to register at the computer.  With so many non-members registration into the computer would have been very slow.  In light of COVID, this was especially important in preventing crowding.  COVID aside, not having to wait in line was nice, and the computer operator's job was much less stressful.
• We had enough maps.  We were able to print some extras on Saturday (thank you Ava!) since we knew demand exceeded supply.
• The weather was threatening rain (though turned out great).  I think that pre-registration caused more people to actually show up as opposed to deciding not too.