News from QOC: A close race at the top - Feb 10, Riverbend Park, VA. Green Course 1. Mike Meenehan 40:05 2. Peggy Dickison 42:35 3. Nadim Adhmed 42:51. Meet director Valerie Meyer commented: "..I bet those two sat down and looked at their splits pretty closely."

Mike, Snorkel's older bro, is #1 in QOCland according to Sid Sachs ranking system. If your name is Mike and you have a camera, you end up being the photographer for the club newsletter (kinda like a Mike in OK).

-- mean gene (gmw@ku.edu), March 30, 2002

Answers

Re. rankings in QOC land & how to reach the top: The more people you beat on the course, the more points you get. You also get points for meet directing, course-setting, and (fewer) helping/not running and (fewer still) helping/running.

So Mike Meenehan has figured out the system: he runs Green (we usually offer a Red & a Blue as well) -- which is usually the biggest course in terms of participants. Then he wins or finishes high up, garnering big points. Perfectly legit. He also has been seen working a whole lot of meets this year, raking in more points.

Bottom line: Mike is good, but put him in a Red or Blue against the Big Boys of QOC and SVO, and he would finish much further down the list. (I was running Green only while injured, and was always behind Mike but not by much. In last week's Susquehanna Stumble, where the Short is the first loop of the Long, I beat him easily (I ran the Long, he ran the Short).

He does take nice photos for the web & the newsletter.

-- Peggy (Pdickison@aol.com), April 04, 2002.

Greetings to all my "old" O friends from way back. Since there seems to be some whining about the QOC ranking system, let me defend my honor. I haven't done much O in the past number of years due to committments as Scoutmaster, two kid's activities, etc. But when I gave up the scoutmaster job this past year I suddenly had lots of time on my hands. So I decided to see if I could still orienteer. But since I have a scarred hamstring and CLL (lukemia) that affect what little endurance I once had, I do courses that I have a hope of finishing in less than an hour. That is usually green.

So I go out to have fun orienteering, not to kill myself.

btw - Sid stepped in with his ranking system because, supposedly, someone dropped the ball with the previous, more complicated version. I wasn't even aware of the ranking system until about a half dozen meets into the season.

-- Mike Meenehan (mmmeenehan@aol.com), April 05, 2002.

Mike, glad to see you're reading the Orienteer Kansas web page.

It sounds like there is more to this whole story than we're getting.

Maybe the answer is for you and Peggy to go head-to-head on a nuetral court?

-- Michael (mike_eglinski@kcmo.org), April 06, 2002.

I know Peggy is a better orienteer than I am, so we would have to discuss an appropriate handicapping scheme.

-- Mike (mmmeenehan@aol.com), April 07, 2002.