Discussion: UNO Boulder Dash 2023 - Jr Nationals?

The next Boulder Dash hosted by Up North Orienteers is now being planned for the spring of 2023. We are considering putting in a bid for it to
be the US Junior Nationals. Looking for input on date preferences. Weekends under consideration are April 15-16, April 22-23, or April 29-30, 2023.
We expect preference will be driven by timing of school vacation weeks, to the extent those have been announced for the 2022-2023 school year, however our insights are somewhat limited to NH and MA school schedules.
Event will be held in Hollis, NH - just west of Nashua.
What say you??

West Point is often quite date restricted in that time frame, so you might check with Jordan for dates to avoid.. But back to back NRE weekends in the northeast might be a draw for those outside the region.

15-16APR would probably be the best from USMAOC's Point of view. USMAOC's national event would likely be the one of the other two weekends.

I would expect that the 15-16 or 22-23 might be best for midwest schools. Later in April increases likelihood of conflicts with prom and getting closer to finals.

Flying Pig (US Nationals) will be late March; Easter is April 9.

Juniors and their families probably would not be able to easily do back-to-back weekends during the school year; otherwise I love the idea of week-long O festivals, but Junior Nats might not be the best fit for one.

I just did a spot check of some Seattle-area school district calendars (including Tahoma School District, which would likely bring the most kids west of Texas), and spring breaks here for all of them is April 11-15, 2022. I'll forward this message to our regional orienteering community, which consists of a lot of coaches, athletes, and parents not active on AP.

Is this thread the best place to respond? If so, I'll report back when I hear something.

PinkSocks - either here, or my email address is in my profile - feel free to send to me directly.
Also - note we are asking about the spring of 2023, not 2022.

Thanks. I know it's for 2023. I was just saying when the breaks are for spring 2022, since those are the schedules that are published so far, which would give an idea for 2023.

Tahoma and many of the schools around here in the Seattle area have spring break either the week before or after Easter depending on if Easter is early or late. This year spring break is before easter. we have spring break April 11-15. But we have had it as early as 4-8th of April before.

Is snow a factor on date choice?


It’s hard to tell out to 2023 but with Easter on April 9th my guess is Tahoma will be on spring break the 10th-14th back to school on the 17th so a champs on the 15-16th might work really nice for my team. Many of our long time racers will be seniors so I hope to rally a great showing maybe 20 kids on my school team plus parents racing. We would prefer to travel over spring break and make a trip of it, missing school is hard in High school. the later dates likely interfere with our track season and I will lose about half of my top varsity runners to track.

I think my preference would be for April 15-16th for best showing, But I will bring a core team whenever it's held.

By April, the snow around here should be gone.

MA public school spring break aligns with Patriot's Day (3rd Monday of April).
That makes Apri 17-21 the spring break for local folks. That said, it is easier for local folks to make it so it might not matter quite as much.

Boston Marathon will be the 17th.

1 vote for San Diego or LA during spring break. Actually, I should get about 8-10 votes I think.

Option 2: Orlando or other FL beach area (during spring break)

Option 3: Arizona

Clara Durand...you listening? You're being volunteered. RED ALERT!!

UNO has decided against bidding for the 2023 Jr Nationals.

BTW, at the recent annual meeting of the club, UNO voted to not bid to host the Junior Nationals. (Clint beat me to it by a minute!)

voted to not bid or voted not to bid?

@soonerjcb LAOC is putting together a bid for Nationals in late 2022, so we won't be doing that back-to-back with a 2023 Jr. Nationals.

smittyo - One can dream of a warm weather Jr. Nationals:). One with swimming. One with golf and beer and ...wait a minute, this sounds more like a different kind of vacation now. Maybe I am flying too close to the sun:).

I've heard anecdotally that someone has an O map of a park in Hawaii....

Since we are on this topic... has anyone bid on Junior Nationals 2023?

No. There is another club currently deciding whether their arm is rubbery enough for my vice presidential powers of persuasion to successfully twist it. And if it isn't, I haven't quite exhausted my list of seemingly plausible targets for persuasion. But if anyone out there who isn't on my radar screen has been preparing a bid in stealth or wants to put one together on short notice, the door is open.

The map in Hawaii is a 40 year old bad street-O map that includes a small city park. With modern tools, it could be completely outclassed by somebody sitting at a computer for an hour or two.

Kapiolani Park is not a great o-map, but it is the largest public park in Hawaii, There was a time I lived only a block away. It was a good life. According to Wikipedia, it is 1.2 square K.

That is what Wikipedia says, but I'm scratching my head. I measured it with GoogleMaps, and got less than 0.75 sq km, including the zoo (which is fenced off), and some other stuff that looks like it may not actually be part of the park. Maybe there's more of it that I'm not seeing. The part inside the roads is about 0.35 sq km, largely open lawn (athletic fields).

Kap Park in Waikiki was a map just made for one of those orienteering world tours in the days when flights between NA and Aus had stopovers in Hawaii.
But if you want to see an interesting O venue nearby look at the crater of Diamond Head. I made a 'fantasy O map' of it a few years ago.

But back to the Junior Nationals: It seems as if it is an awful lot of work for very little return. Can someone convince me differently?
That being said a JROTC team in Florida is just back from the Flying Pig/ Junior Nationals where one of their many thrills they report was being able to meet and run in the same area as cadets from West Point.

The point that Gord is making is the reason why UNO declined to host the event. It's worth noting that one member felt strongly that we UNO should be focusing on local events, and not hosting any NREs whatsoever.

It seems as if it is an awful lot of work for very little return.

Assuming scholastic orienteering programs eventually rebound completely from the pandemic, it's not clear to me that this is any more true of Junior Nationals than of any other bid event or of hosting anything beyond a single local event as a fee waiver NRE annually. All this assuming you measure returns in purely monetary terms, which would be a very strange yardstick to apply for a non-profit orienteering organization (you didn't found SOAR for the money, did you Gord?). Junior Nationals is pretty much guaranteed a significant bump in attendance over just an NRE weekend using the same terrain. Granted, most if not all of that bump is juniors, for whom it is traditional to charge significantly lower fees. A countervailing factor when QOC hosted Junior Nationals in 2019 was that we were able to qualify for some funding from the county tourist bureau on a per non-local area resident head basis, with no distinction between young and old heads. The scoring for JNs is somewhat complex and more courses may require X and Y versions than at other events due to the large numbers in IS classes. I've hardly exhausted everything I could say as a recent Junior Nationals event director but I'm having a hard time seeing how thinking JNs aren't worth the effort doesn't lead pretty directly to agreeing with JJ's fellow UNO member that no NREs are worth the effort.

NREs are hard work for the organizers, no denying that. Sometimes it's hard to see the payoff others experience from attending, but having events that bring us together isn't just important for competition, it's important for sharing ideas and making connections that sustain our sport. I appreciate every club that takes on organizing, and I'm more willing to volunteer for my own club's NREs to provide that experience for others.

If dealing with the results / scoring for Jr. Nats is a major obstacle, perhaps we could put together a group to help out with that ahead of time? Perhaps even a standing group? I worked results two years in a row - it was much easier in year #2 because I was already comfortable with the process and knew how to be efficient.

The results/scoring and other special requirements was in fact a contributing factor in the decision. After some discussion at the meeting, there was a moment of "Oh, wait, Junior Nationals is the event that NEOC put on at Mt. Tom a few years back? Yikes, no thanks!".