okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

5 Things A-Meet Organizers Ought to Do:

In no particular order, here are five things I wish A-meet organizers would do:

Publish winners' routes on the internet after the meet. It'd be cool if you could see the courses and routes for the top runners at every A-meet. It'd be cheap and easy for the organizers to do.

Tell us how the map will be printed before we register. I don't mind running on color copies of maps printed on an ink jet (though I prefer offset printing). But, it'd be nice to know before you start what you're in for. The Chicago A-meet info give this sort of information. It is another cheap and easy thing for organizers to do.

Remember that the focus of organizing an A-meet should be on putting on a good event for people from other clubs, NOT giving locals a chance to go to an A-meet without traveling. I think the quality of events will go up if people from the local club focus their time and efforts on organizing. Keep in mind that people spend a lot of their own time and money to travel to A-meets. The organizers' job ought to be to make the trip worthwhile. This is another cheap and easy thing for organizers to do.

Have a PA system and an announcer at the event headquarters. It really helps the atmosphere of the event to have a speaker who announces incoming runners, updates the main results, provides information and even plays a bit of music. You can probably rent a PA system for a reasonable price. Finding a really good announcer is probably not that easy. But, even a not-too-terrible announcer would help create a better atmosphere.

If you screw up, admit it and move on. If a control is in the wrong place and it makes the course unfair, don't wait for a formal protest, just admit you screwed up and throw out the results. Organizers could even offer to refund entry fees if the problem was foreseeable (e.g. a misplaced control rather than a stolen control).

posted by Michael | 7:21 PM

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