okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Thursday, June 06, 2002
A Brief History of TJOC
I just got home from TJOC. I had my PDA with me and wrote up some blog entries while I was there. I'll post them over the next couple of days. Here is the first one.
TJOC started four years ago. The story is that the U.S. Junior Coach made some disparaging remarks about orienteers from Texas. A couple of the folks in Texas decided they needed to set up a training camp and teach the juniors how to orineteer. The goal -- get a Texas junior on the U.S. Junior WOC team.
I like the story. The Texans were dissed, instead of whinning about it, they came up with a plan to be able to show that Texas juniors can orienteer.
This year, Ashley Smith, a junior from Texas, made the US JWOC team. She's the first from Texas. Don't be surprised to see more in the next few years.
Major V (who along with Miki Snell are the driving forces behind TJOC), told me that they've got to take advantage of what they've got that other orienteers in the U.S. don't -- organization and planning.
The TJOC is very well organized.
What TJOC doesn't have is great terrain (though it isn't terrible). The forest this year is rough. There are cacti, thorns, rocks and spear grass. The map is adequate, but not great.
Good organization and a lot of enthusiasm help make up for the terrain.
posted by Michael |
7:33 PM
