Prospect Hill Orienteering Meet October 16, 1999 Summary and Results

Prospect Hill Results Pictures

The weather was perfect for this, our fourth Prospect Hill Orienteering meet. We hit the peak of the foliage season in Boston, much as it was this year after a summer of drought. And the colors combined with a sunny 70 degree to offer our participants some great vistas of the Greater Boston area.

This year we returned to our original starting location, at the bottom of the ski hill. This alleviated the need for shuttling people deep into the park but it meant that everyone had to contend with the hill. For yellow and orange runners, that meant an 85 meter uphill climb right from the start. White runners, whose course went in the reverse direction, had to descend those same 85 meters at the end of their course.

However, even with the hill everyone we talked to had a great time.

Approximately 175 people turned up. Less than we expected but that may be attributed to the UNO trail maintenance event which took place on the same day. None of the standard UNO participants came to help bump up our participation numbers :-(. As always we had a lot of beginners, but the big surprise this year was the popularity of the green course which attracted almost 1/3 of the groups.

The day started off busy since Pete Lane was using our meet to train a group of scout leaders in preparation of the Scout-O scheduled for October 30th. Most of the scout leaders showed up right at 10:00 for training. (However, at least one scout leader showed up late and without realizing it just went out on the yellow course by herself.)

Jeff Saeger was at the meet and he brought his own camera crew. A crew from NESN (New England Sports Network cable channel) came to the meet to interview Jeff and Samantha Saeger. They also spent some time filming the participants, following at least one group around on part of the white course.

As always, Daphne made hundreds of homemade cookies for the finishers. But with the lower than expected turnout, not all the cookies were finished. Good news for the Gould family for the next few weeks.

With the great weather, many people stayed long after they had finished their courses and ate lunch on the grassy field or just sat around and talked. The younger kids spent much of the morning on the merry-go-round which was next to the field. The older kids sat in the shade and talked about Pokeman cards.

We want to thank our meet workers: Dean Sturtevant, Scott Meeks, Liz Brooks, Dennis Struble, Linda Kukolich, Debbie Terman and 2 members of her girl scout troop, Mike Lints and Ben and Beth Gould.

One other comment of interest: Roger Underwood was at the meet with his family, celebrating 25 years of orienteering (by hanging around the finish area).

White Course

Yellow Course

Orange Course

Green Course

This web page (http://www.gouldhome.com/ProspectHillResults.html) was last updated on December 19, 2001. For any comments or suggestions about the site contact Daphne Gould. Contents copyright © 1999-2003 by Joel and Daphne Gould.