Lan Kelly from South Australia shares her experience helping design the Tatachilla College sprint orienteering event in South Australia. Initially unaware it was an Orienteer of the Year (OY) event, they faced challenges fitting OY sprint distances onto the compact, building-heavy campus. Ongoing issues included expanding temporary fencing, unexpected tennis matches, restricted access to mapped multi-level bridges, and inconsistent gate statuses. Despite late changes to controls and start location, they adapted the course layout to maintain route quality and ensure a smooth experience for competitors.
Re-printed with permission from SA Orienteering news.
Read the full article below

Photo credits: Images above by Erica Diment 

Lan writes: “I volunteered to help Ben set the courses for the Tatachilla College sprint event when it became clear my back would prevent me from competing. Originally, we didn’t realise it was an Orienteer of the Year (OY) event; but at least being a sprint there were only 6 courses to set, not more than 10 for a bush OY! However, it soon became clear that the distances required for sprint OY Courses 1 (running distance 3.5-4km) and 2 (3.0-3.5km) would be challenging to achieve on this compact campus, with all buildings clustered to the west of the map. The map was on a 1:3000 scale, so smaller than it seemed at first glance. The site had been used previously for a Sprint Championships in 2018 so it could be done; we just had to decide how we were going to do it. Would we have long legs around the ovals or multiple passes through the school buildings?

Planning the courses

When we first visited the school two months before the event, there was temporary fencing that was blocking access to areas we’d planned to use. We were told that the fencing would be gone by the time the event was held. However, when we visited a month later, the fencing had grown and continued to grow on every visit. Plus, one Sunday morning we discovered a tennis match being held in the NW corner of the campus and were told these were held every Sunday.

The campus has a few bridges to buildings that were mapped on multiple levels, opening up choices for upper or lower level control sites. We planned to use the most complex of these, but one week before the event, the upper level was completely blocked so we had to hastily change control 189 to the bottom level. This caused some angst, but the route choices still seemed to work. We also added Control 191 to the top of a different bridge. With only 40 controls available, we had to shuffle other control sites around to fit. We deleted most of the controls in the NW corner due to all the fencing as well as the tennis match, so we had some to spare. We also changed the start location from east to west of the gym to avoid landscaping equipment that had been parked nearby, as well as provide shelter under the

veranda for forecast bad weather. This meant the start and finish were near each other which wasn’t ideal, but we felt it was still better for the competitors overall.

Other challenges were the gates that Paul Hoopman had mapped with flexibility to be shown as open or closed. The gate into the interesting parkland in the NE of the map was never open, so we couldn’t use that area. Other gates were either open or locked when we visited. One gate between controls 183 and 186 which was key to route choices had been mapped as closed but was always open when we checked. We brought textas with us on the day in case we had to manually mark up the maps!

All controls map

Last minute changes

Three days before the event, when we went down to pick up the keys we discovered yet more temporary fencing. We forgot to add this to the map but luckily it didn’t affect route choices. Toby kindly volunteered to check the courses (maybe he was worried after overhearing Ben’s “dog leg” comments?) and help put out controls on the day when it became clear I’d struggle with my bad back to put out my half of the controls in time. On Thursday night, Toby took one look at the long legs and immediately vetoed some of them.

With the maps due at the printers first thing on Friday morning, we were able to change Courses 2 and 3, but at 11 pm decided we were too tired to change Course 1. We also only put the straight-line distances on the control descriptions since we didn’t have time to work out the optimal running distances.

In the end, we used long running legs across ovals for the three longest courses but kept the three shortest near the main school buildings. All but the easy Course 6 had a map flip so that competitors could navigate through the buildings in two passes.

On the day

Of course, when we arrived on Sunday morning the landscaping equipment near the gym was gone and the bad weather was delayed by a day, so we could have kept our original start location. Oh well! We also discovered we’d forgotten to print out the start lists and to add the age classes and climb to the control descriptions. (Marcus had to rush from behind the download computer to run his course and claimed he forgot it was an OY since there were no age classes on the control descriptions.)

There were a couple of other glitches – control 190 went on the wrong tree and one of the SI Air units stopped working. All fixed once we were notified. At least the gate we worried about was open and we didn’t have to manually mark the maps!

During the event, it was fun seeing people running everywhere and others standing still with perplexed looks on their faces. Afterwards, a few people told us they enjoyed their courses, so that made everything worthwhile.

Post event

It wasn’t a traditional sprint event and ironically, given our concerns over the distances, the winning times were a little too long. Still, having a slightly longer course was “value for money”, especially for those who had a long drive to McLaren Vale. In hindsight, I should have listened to Toby’s advice (shh don’t tell him) and shortened most of the courses by 2 or 3 controls and changed the long leg on Course 1. I think it would have been better from control 206 to 188 instead of 171 (I blame Ben for that one). Courses 1 and 2 were the most difficult to set because of the distance, a bit of back and forth through the buildings and a few in and out controls to avoid the dreaded “dog leg”. I think Courses 3 to 5 worked the best.

It was fun using our free Orienteering Australia subscription to Livelox to analyse route choices. (As far as I know Livelox can’t handle the map flip, so the map is cluttered). A useful tool in Livelox is analysis by leg, comparing distance, time and pace between runners. Some of the route choices weren’t what I expected. For example, on Course 2, on leg 8 to 9 I’d expected most runners to take the path to the west, but only one person did (at least among those who uploaded their routes).

On Course 1, from control 10 to 11, I was surprised to see the left choice (in green) was the about the same distance and faster than the routes to the right (Ethan Penck also had the fastest pace of the group.)

Course 1: control 10 (bottom) to 11 (top)

Setting a course has given me a new perspective on the effort involved, especially on the more challenging maps (although I don’t think Tatachilla College was that difficult in the end). Would I do it again? For a sprint maybe, though I don’t think I’ll be putting my hand up for a bush OY a long distance from Adelaide!

Many thanks to all the heroic Tjuringans who turned up to help on the day, especially Chris who manually wrote the start lists. And special thanks to Paul, who updated the maps and liaised with the school. And finally, thanks to everyone who competed on the day!