CNYO is hosting the USOF Collegiate and Scholastic Championships for 1999 at our A-meet the last weekend in April. While the rules for the collegiate event are clearly specified in the USOF guidelines, the rules committee is still working out the format for the scholastic event. We have some opinions of our own as to what would be best, so in the absence of preordained guidelines in 1999 we are going to be trying a slightly different scheme from that used in past years. We think that this scheme should make it much easier for more schools to assemble teams, and will result in both a meaningful and fun competition. For an aid to people who are already thinking about recruiting and assembling teams, here is a summary of the 1999 format.
Teams will consist of 3 to 5 runners, any age, either sex, who all are currently enrolled as students in 12th grade or below in the same school district. There will be a single scholastic championship rather than separate high- and middle-school championships.
"Novice" orienteers may run any course they feel suited to their abilities. "Experienced" orienteers (anyone with a USOF ranking on any course the previous year, or currently intending to be ranked in the present year) must run at their normal age level course or higher (but no higher than red level).
An individual's contribution to the team scoring is determined by his/her order of finish amongst the scholastic team competitors on the same course on the same day.
Team scoring is in the style of cross-country racing. The scores of the three runners on the team with the best (lowest) individual scores each day will be summed to reach a final total. The scores need not be from the same runners each day, if there are more than three members on the team. The best possible score would be 6 points, if all three members of the team ran on different courses and won (relative to the other scholastic competitors) on both days.
There will be no separate "individual" awards for the scholastic events, though of course all competitors will be eligible for the awards in the category in which they have raced in the event. This is fundamentally a team competition.
Some rationale for these rules is perhaps called for. The main reason for the scoring by place is that it allows the combination of results from students running in different age classes. There are presently very few schools in the US that can actually field full teams of students who have had extensive prior orienteering experience. Others may try to fill in the gap by recruiting cross-country runners, etc., but it's not really very satisfying to these cross-country runners to spend three hours or not finish because the course is too hard. It makes much more sense to have them run a course on which they have some prospect of doing well. It should be noted, though, that just having a 17-year-old track star running the white course is no guarantee of a low order of finish. We would expect rather more than the normal number of white and yellow runners, so many of them will end up with older students, something that will likely happen in many cases. Certainly there will still be an advantage for boarding schools such as FUMA that maintain an active orienteering program and have many skilled runners- but there should be such an advantage. Likewise, kids in larger school districts may find it easier to recruit teams than those in smaller districts, but by putting fewer restrictions on age, sex, or prior experience, any serious orienteer should find it easier to find a couple of others from his/her school to put together a team. There will also be strategic considerations for the more serious regular competitors: whether to run their official orange courses, or to skip up to brown, green or red where there may be fewer scholastic runners to beat, but where there is the possibility of not finishing or running overtime by going above their ability level.
A further advantage of this format is that it allows the experienced runner to get the usual ranking points from the A-meet for running his/her regular course, rather than in many cases requiring him/her to run a level down from the normal level, thus discouraging some students from even thinking about forming school teams.
We think that in the immediate future this looks like a good way to address the low density of orienteers in the schools, and to boost the number of schools competing. We think that a meaningful competition will result, and that if the experiment is indeed successful this year that it might make a useful model for the rules committee to consider in the future.
In order to build and maintain an appropriate level of interest, we recognize
that it is important to make the results and standings in the school competition
(and the collegiate competition) immediately available during the event.
We will have extra members of the results crew who will be working specifically
on these "extra" results which will be displayed in "real time" so that students
can see how they (and their competition) are doing as soon as possible after
the times come in!