Discussion: A-Meet vs "National Meet"

Awhile ago, we started calling ourselves Orienteering USA because it was simpler and stated what we really were, the official orienteering group in the USA. The attempt was to make us more transparent to those who were new to orienteering.

There has been some discussion about trying to change the name of our A-meets, or how we reference them, to "National Meets". From what I hear, this is how man people talk about these meets when trying to explain them to the non-hardcore. The use of A, B and C meets is clear to most of the avid orienteers but not everyone. It might be that we should change the names to "National", "Regional" and "Local" or "Club" meets. We might also want to have a fourth category of "National Championship" events as a fourth category.

Making the change will not really change much other than how people new to the sport see these meets. Perhaps, it is a stupid idea but if it is put up for discussion, at least the idea will be aired. We shouldn't look back 10 years from now and say, "Why didn't we do this earlier?". AttackPoint may be a good place to start this discussion because the people looking at AttackPoint are generally the group who most often attends A-Meets.
Peter Goodwin

A-meet should be renamed "National Meets", or something similar like "OUSA Meet". I don't consider B/C meets as common terminology, so that term "A-meet" loses its relativity.

The matching of B/C meets to "common terms" maybe shouldn't be defined "geographical", though.

In DVOA we have a pretty complex ranking system, so our B/C meets are more categorized as "Ranking" vrs. "Non-Ranking" events. For a meet that uses the standard 6-7 daylight courses we put a star on the schedule saying "Counts for DVOA Rankings" (given the meet followed good practices after the fact). I realize that is mostly unique to DVOA. Most of our events are "B" meets.

I'd vote for "Club" over "Local", and eliminate B/C terminology and let the club's decide how they want to define on their own schedule.

Perhaps, it is a stupid idea...

For sure. "A,B,C" meets coincides with nomenclature in other countries. And we get many foreign visitors to our meets. When they sign up for an "A Meet" they have some idea that they're getting a sanctioned, top-notch event.

What is next? Giving up coded clue sheets? Changing other O terms, such as "reentrant" to "valley?" Eliminating O maps that don't have paved trails for White course newbies?

Just like entering a fraternity, becoming an orienteer involves learning special terms and dealing with a certain "mystique." I wouldn't want to see that change.

how many clubs have "B and C meet" written on their schedule?

This is a trial balloon. Any change would be done with the approval of the "community". Also, we don't want to confuse Europeans although they tend to come to only Championship meets, although not exclusively. And no one is thinking of giving up clue sheets with codes, they are universal as are orienteering maps. Replacement names for C meets is less of an issue and different clubs might deal with it in different ways.
The fact that few, if any, clubs use B or C to describe their meets may indicate that they are trying to be clear to all people who might come to their events. Changing to "National" would be doing the same thing.

Which Europeans have A/B/C meets?

Absolutely rename the archaic "A-meet" to National meet. Or perhaps National Ranking Event, to be more in line with the IOF/World Ranking Event naming scheme. Just get rid of the "A-meet" terminology.

I vehemently disagree with chitownclark, and think that anyone from abroad coming to race here will have a better idea of what they are getting involved with if they are signing up for a national meet.

As for designating lower-level meets, I'd love to see "Regional meet" have an implication that there will be OUSA ranking points associated, and have many more regional events that are easier to host and easier to attend, with a smaller number of national meets. Perhaps only sanction 4-6 national events, and the rest are regional? That would make it somewhat special to attend a national event, and hopefully save competitors some travel and organizers some hassle.

I still like the idea of "local event" to designate the lowest-level event; can be anything a club wants to put on, with no sanctioning or other hoops to jump through. The trouble with calling it a club event is that regional and national events are also club events, so this becomes a little murky.

Names are just that, names. But, names can be very powerful.

I surveyed all six supported languages on the Winsplits search page, and the categories always looked to my English-centric eyes to be some form of International, National, Regional, Local, and Club.

yeah, that makes sense, let me switch back to "local" as a better term. Attackpoint uses national/regional/local/club for its events too.

We don´t * - all meets are divided into the following categories - sorry for the Swedish, but I think you may find a word or two that you understand even without my brief explanations:

Nivå 1: Internationella värdetävlingar i Sverige, samt O-Ringen. VM, EM, världscup och O-Ringen. --> WOC, EOC, WC...

Nivå 2: Nationella värdetävlingar. SM, USM, serie arrangerad på uppdrag av SOFT (t ex Silva League), Tiomila, 25manna, U10mila, Dala- Dubbeln, Smålandskavlen samt landslagstester. --> Swedish Champs, major "national events" + Team Trials

Nivå 3: Övriga nationella tävlingar med eller utan elitklasser, riksmästerskap, regionala mästerskap och distriktsmästerskap. --> national events without the added value + various regional/lower championship levels ~ "the rest"

Nivå 4: Distriktstävlingar --> district events with lower standards

Nivå 5: Närtävlingar, inklusive motionsorientering --> local events

The term club events is not used - most events are naturally put on by clubs, then it´s just a matter of who you invite.

Sanctioning for level 1-3 is on the national level, while sanctioning (if needed) for 4-5 is done on a lower level

*) this was a direct answer to ndobbs above, but several others contributed while I was writing...

Yes, let's move away from A-meet, please! And I wholeheartedly agree with Alex.

My impression is that a club event is something smaller than a local event in terms of invitation scope. For example, a weekly training for members or something like that.

I happen to dislike the term "meet" and don't use it, though I concede that it is common with at least XC and track, where it sounds better for some reason. But that's just me (and AP).

I am definitely with Ken on the dislike of "meet". "Race" or "event" sound better to me.

Last time I read through the Rules, a B-meet was something that required sanctioning from the national organization, although with a lower level of scrutiny than for an A-meet. And to the best of my knowledge, actual B-meets by that definition almost never exist. I think I've been aware of only a handful in my orienteering career, and I've probably attended only one or two. Which is not to say that clubs don't put on meets that they call B-meets, but as far as the national organization is concerned, they aren't. And this particular concept of a B-meet may be an obsolete concept (if it ever made sense in the first place) that should maybe go away.

If you get rid of that, then anything that goes through sanctioning is a nationally sanctioned meet. Or a national meet, for short. Or a sanctioned meet. And you let clubs worry about what to call their own different levels of club/local meets.

(But in practice, people will still call the national ones A-meets, I'll bet.)

dvoa also uses "event"... including "A event"

I want to do an unsanctioned B meet, just for an excuse to have three races in a weekend, but without generating as many threads about crappy maps or printing as an A meet.

I would change "meet" to "regatta". It sounds fancier.

I agree 100% with PGoodwin's proposal, especially acjospe's version of it.

I also second ken's comments. As RMOC's webmaster and Facebook admin, I use the terms "event" and "race" as often as possible (instead of "meet").

It might be that the "Regional Events" (B-meets) could be put on a calendar on the OUSA website which might make people more aware of them. The events that I have seen in this category are multi-day events and might draw people from other places. If they have a business appointment in DVOA land on a Friday or Monday, they might stay for the weekend for more fun. I know that the UNO Camping weekend draws people from greater distances than a local meet (including two from Alaska last year) so these events might be of interest to people.

I am definitely with Jack, and I oppose to Brian.

@jj The reason for no B-meets is that sanctioning committee is not working.
Quite a few recent A-meets I've been to did not qualify as such (Mainly, due to low map quality and/or underqualified course design)

I agree with Alex that it would be good for the "regional" category to be ranked. I would even go so far as to put the "regional" label on all non-championship A-events, and reserve the term "national" for championship events.

The reason for no B-meets is that nobody has ever applied for B-meet sanctioning, because there's no benefit to doing so, or no perceived benefit, at least. Whether A-meets are up to standard is a separate issue.

However, it would be nice for said "regional" events to proliferate more widely than A-events have done, so it might be good to drop the onerous sanctioning fees a bit.

If B-meets were ranked, everyone would apply for B-meet sanctioning, and nobody would apply for A-meet sanctioning, because that's the only advantage of hosting an A-meet. Then again, maybe nobody has tried this approach... perhaps the ranking committee would happily rank B-meets?

National Meet is descriptive... but maybe too descriptive? That is, if you have a nationally marketed event that is not actually nationally sanctioned or is not for ranking points, etc... it may be confusing.

Also. Some thought should be placed on whether the label should describe the event, or the race at the event. This can be an issue for those events that have a combination of sanctioned races and lower-key races. Since OUSA has clear criteria for nationally sanctioned races, but almost no standards for nationally sanctioned events, I would suggest that "National Meet", as a phrase typically applied to the event, may not be the right choice of branding.

How has the "Canada Cup" branding worked out up north?

Wouldn't an A meet then be a B meet? If both are sanctioned with the same outcome, then there would be no difference.

Please change the name from A meet to "national event" for those events that are sanctioned. The A meet term was outdated and confusing when I first started orienteering 25 years ago; it's worse now.

All other races can be called whatever the organizer wishes (local, club, etc).

It seems that the purpose of labelling an event (or individual race) is to convey what people should expect to get out of it (medals/a title, ranking points, quality, full set of courses, etc) and what clubs have done in preparation (gotten approval of OUSA, had a controller/vetter, etc). So why not label things accordingly instead of using more indirect geographical or A/B/C terms? (along the lines of what ErikEddy and acjospe have mentioned)

e.g. a set of terms to denote outcomes -

Championship Event/Race - a title
Ranking Event/Race - counts towards rankings

(with the prefix "National" to indicate a national title or national rankings)

and a set of terms to denote inputs -

Sanctioned Event/Race - gone through sanctioning and met various standards with regards to procedure

One should probably stipulate that National Events/Races (whether Championship or Ranking) also be Sanctioned Events/Races, but otherwise terms could be combined e.g. a club could have its own series of ranking events/races or a local or even regional championship without sanctioning.

Labelling the event/race according to outcome and inputs is separate from the question of advertising said events. It doesn't seem like any labelling scheme would preclude a national calendar somewhere that clubs can submit any events/races they wish to, whether national/championship/ranking/sanctioned/local/etc. (Hmm, kind of like Attackpoint's calendar.)

Agree that the A- B- C-meet nomenclature is obfuscating and should be replaced. 'National event' or a similar designation is appropriate. I also have a slight preference for 'event' over 'meet'; though a 'National orienteering event' sounds somewhat ambiguous or haughty. Consider 'National Orienteering Competition.'

I echo the consensus above that there are four levels of competition in the US:
- North American/National Championships
- (sanctioned) National Competitions
- Major local/regional events
- Minor local events

The distinction between the latter two is subtle, perhaps like Bubo's 4 and 5. Given that we don't have Oringen or WOC, this hierarchy maps to Bubo's 2 - 5. Right now, there isn't much distinction between championships and competition in terms of OUSA support. For championships, the organizers work harder, the event quality is generally higher, and the attendance is greater; it would be nice if a support team were made available at cost to the organizing club. Consider an Ed or Valerie + equipment and maybe a few extra staff.

I checked my records. Out of 1332 races that I've competed in since 1978, 6 of them are listed as B level:
6/19/88: a rescheduling of the second day of an A-meet that was cancelled due to an expected snowfall the previous October.
8/7/93 (x2): the Troll Cup, which was not an A-meet that year because of the WOC taking place that sucked up too much manpower, so Jim Baker put this race on himself, two short courses with a chase start for the second one. Reduced set of courses offered.
8/8/93: ditto for the New England Championships, reuced set of normal length courses
12/1/01: daytime course preceding the US Night-O Champs
12/2/01: daytime course the following day
That's it. I don't actually know which (if any) of these courses actually did the paperwork to officially be USOF B-meets, but at the time, I was under the impression that that was the correct classification.

to clarify my previous statement about dvoa- I didn't understand B-meet was something that required national sanctioning.. I thought it just loosely meant the meet was 'high quality'.

(a) The fact that nobody actually knows what a B meet is tells you how stupid the current classification of events is.
(b) There have been precisely three official B meets in the US since 2009; two held by FLO and one by NTOA.
(c) The term 'meet' sucks. As does 'A meet.' Enough said.

I already call them "national events" when talking to non-orienteers. Nobody at work or in my extended family or friends would understand what I mean otherwise. Among orienteers, I tend to use the terms "A meet" and "A event" interchangeably. I probably lean more toward "A meet" simply because I find it easier to say. "A event" sounds like a grammatically incorrect version of "an event".

Honestly, if it gets changed I will probably still call it an "A meet" around orienteers. Half the time I forget and still say USOF.

Ooooh what a flurry about something of seemingly little consequence. Now if you were going to change "re-entrant" to "small valley" or "gully" then that would have some real benefits for newcomers. At least around here, maybe there's a country where the word is in common parlance. Or is it an anglicised scandinavianism, like the word "orienteering"? Um, I'd better stop now before I go any further...

I like national, regional, local. I've used that terminology a lot in explanations to newcomers. No long explanation of the term is required and you can focus on the important aspects of explaining orienteering instead.

We don't use 're-entrant' in WA - I didn't even know what a re-entrant was until several years into my orienteering life. We call a spade a spade and a gully a gully.

Is A gully of higher quality than B gully?

I still don't know what a re-entrant is.

I also tend to say "national event", rather than "A-event" when talking to people who are unfamiliar with orienteering. With non-orienteering friends, who know about orienteering from me, I will use either.

@Mike: What would you consider "regional"?

I still don't know what a re-entrant is.

It's where a competitor goes back on course after already downloading at the finish station and is subsequently disqualified.

Oooooooooh! :)

I would do well at Balderdash.

If you want racers to come, use the term "race". Don't use "event" or "meet". Racers go to races. Bridge players go to events. While I have nothing against bridge players, (and was once nationally ranked in bridge), that is not the target market. Look at a trail race calendar and see how many are called "events" or "meets".

Newbies won't care if its ranked, or the level of sanctioning, or other esoterica that Clark seems to want to maintain. You can leave that out; it is not necessary or appropriate at the initial marketing level. It can be explained later in the advertisement; keep it out of the hook. (Insiders will already know; they don't need the jargon to remind them).

While you are at it, get rid of the term "orienteering". I know that this has been a non-starter since I first suggested it in 1999, but that doesn't mean it is a bad idea. It is a good idea. You don't see it as such because you are insiders, not outsiders who view the larger market. Trust me, that term is a liability.

Compare (my recommendation is first)

Boulder Dash Navigation Race
Boulder Dash Orienteering Race
Boulder Dash Orienteering Event
Boulder Dash National Orienteering Event

and so forth

Write them all down, and I hope you will see that my recommendation is the best hook for that market. Now, if you are not looking at a running market (more of a letterboxing/geocaching/hiking market), "Event" might be better. Define your market first, then your words, keep it as tight and as jargon free as possible ("orienteering", BTW, is not only jargon, it does not describe what you are actually doing to an outsider audience).

If you absolutely need to get into all that sanctioned/local business, that is appropriate on a second line after the click thru --

Boulder Dash Navigation Race
(a nationally sanctioned event)

if it is a championship

Boulder Dash Navigation Racing Championships
OUSA Navigation Racing Championships

HTH

Oh, and BTW, it totally astounds me that the term "Rogaine" wasn't dumped like a bad comb over years ago. Talk about a marketing liability and totally non-descriptive of the activity, forget the SEO implications.

@GuyO: Regional would be non-A meets with a wider than local appeal. Often more than a single day. Some examples I'd include would be Anza Borego, Tucson "B" meet, NTOA's Red River Ramble, OLOU's Ohio Valley School Champs weekend, Gord Hunter's Florida weekend in January, DVOA's Hickory Run weekend. Perhaps major Goats, although those are sort of a separate animal. This year BOK combined the Bubba Goat with another meet on the weekend - that would qualify, as would OLOU's 3 races in a 2-day weekend at Barren River. I realize the term is somewhat discretionary - sorry if it lacks "precision in language" :-)

Excellent advice from randy. My club has stopped using the terms events, meets, orienteering and yes even re-entrant. We host adventure running races now and by Orienteering Canada standards they are technically classed as "C meets". ;-)

I've decided to illustrate my rebuttal to randy's nomenclature point with the clever use of links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienteering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_race

contrast, e.g. with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_contest

It can certainly be said that awareness of our sport is low, but the term 'orienteering' connotes a specific definition. 'Navigation race' is both disconnected from established nomenclature and generic; there are more activities which quality as navigation races than as orienteering events. When I hear the term 'adventure race,' I expect a long event with a poor quality map and a bunch of enthusiastic competitors who really like their gear.

Perhaps we use "navigation race" as a subtitle. Branding is definitely a challenge, but this isn't 1984. Orienteering is not "run double plus good."

I would endorse a change to National Race/Event for what is currently known as an A meet. I am concerned over the use of Club or Local. Out here in Colorado, we can easily travel over 100 miles for a "Local" meet, which may make them all regional. And I assume back east you probably have quite an overlap with club personnel in some of the races, confusing the naming that way. This makes Club more accurate for us and Local more accurate for the eastern area, further confusing the issue.
To my knowledge, RMOC has done 2 B-Meets, one was a couple years after our 1985 A meet on the same maps to help recover the mapping costs, and then in 1989 at Philmont.

Uk fairly recently abandoned the "National" "Regional" "District" "Local" nomenclature in favour of A, B, C, and D, because nobody knew the difference between Regional and District, least of all passing Canadians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regional_dist...

Now we're debating the difference between B and C. If only half the energy expended on this had gone to promoting the races in the first place.

There should be two sorts of meets:
"I promise the map and course setting is good, feel free to complain if its not, because I'll be as gutted as you are"
and
"I'm just a volunteer doing this for fun. You get what you get, so don't complain"

We don't have to have "local" or "club" things. They can just be regular things. So:
"Are you going to the A/National/Ranking race/meet/event down at DVOA next week?"
"No, but I'm going to the race/meet/event in the Blue Hills the week after."

I wasn't going to express my thoughts about "orienteering" but Randy and Hammer did it for me:-))

Trouble is, language is culture-dependant. The word "rogaine" is way cooler than "orienteering" round here. The word "orientering" may be uber-cool in Scandi where long composite words are the norm. I guess the message is to study the audience and use what they recognise. Not something we're good at.

The tameness of the O-word may help with getting permits. Otherwise it is not good at all. Folks are often surprised that people run at an "orienteering meet".

It can certainly be said that awareness of our sport is low, but the term 'orienteering' connotes a specific definition.

You beat me to it, even down to the same example. I was going to say 'WTF is a tennis?' Doesn't describe the activity at all and yet everyone knows what it is.

I think in the case of orienteering, many people know what it is and it's for that reason that they choose to avoid it. As with tennis, everyone knows what it is (even if the word itself doesn't adequately describe the activity), but there are certain professionals that make squillions from it (unlike orienteering) so that means there are celebrities involved and that makes it cool.

I always go to Urbandictionary whenever I am looking for definitions. It helped me to figure out Bubba Goat

I totally support the UK with their ABCD system, I would also add F level,
and maybe +/- . This would help to achieve the truth in advertizement, like you know exactly where you are heading.

Talking about things confusing to newcomers, I am surprised nobody mentioned the color-coding of the courses. How is one supposed to know that orange is easier than green and red is shorter than blue? At my club (Ottawa), we just have novice, intermediate, short advanced and long advanced - pretty easy to remember and understandable - and I think nobody needs more than 4 different courses anyway, except maybe at championships.

Regarding race/event/meet, as randy put it, it all depends on the market. But I am not sure runners are the best market - they are certainly not the only major market. There are probably more people who like hiking and "nerdy" people who like maps but not so much running, and to them the word "race" can be discouraging. My experience may not be typical, but growing up in Ukraine, I knew about orienteering since childhood, but never thought about actually doing it as a kid, even though I was interested in maps and navigation, because I thought you need to be a serious athlete and I was not particularly athletic or interested in sports. I think people like me should be kept in mind as well.

By the way, I think "re-entrant" is fine, as long as it is not used in (verbal) control descriptions for courses where novices can participate. At this year's Ottawa Rogaine even the shortest 2-hour course had "re-entrants" in the descriptions, even though there were a lot of people from a local ski club, most of whom probably knew nothing about orienteering.

We don't use colours. I have no idea how the colour coding works in the US and other countries that use it. We use Very Easy, Easy, Moderate and Hard 1-2-3-4. Explains itself really.

We did briefly switch to Beginner, Active and Expert (for one year) but that was deemed more confusing than the previous descriptions.

Every activity has its jargon... I don't think that is as much of a problem. You learn the terminology while you learn the sport. All of us figured it out. I learned what a re-entrant was on my very first day of orienteering. Why wouldn't new folks be able to do the same? If I decided to pick up football or golf or bridge or crocheting, I am sure I would learn more new words that the average person doesn't know. And there are things that most people never encounter unless they do the sport, so it doesn't matter what you call it. It will be a new concept.

I always wondered about course colors - everything else in this sport is designed to be the same no matter where you go in the world. So why does each country have a different system of naming/numbering courses?

I'm all in favour of clubs hosting "navigation races" (and training), à la DGL model. But they should also have "orienteering" training and races and call them so.

Use the terminology that works best for your club to maximize local (and maybe regional) participation, growth, sustainability and fun. Depending on local pressures, target audience, and perceptions the marketing approaches different clubs take will inevitably (and probably should) differ. One size doesn't necessarily fit all.

The color thing is tricky. People I have recently introduced the sport to actually seem to like the color coding so while not using the color language on the Facebook/Meetup outreach(for my recent event)-I haven't given up on it. Colors are at least more interesting than numbers, something to talk about.

It was funny hearing someone talk about how they did their first blue the day before-5k middle distance-so they felt good about the ultra long blue- a course 4x as long.

Is the color thing is tricky - no

He is a regular Sandgroper

Have you marketing types really done your research carefully enough? Any normal American knows that all significant athletic competitions are referred to as GAMES, not meets, events, or races. We have baseball games, football games, basketball games, hockey games, the Olympic Games, and in this country we even refer to football matches as soccer games. And in the minds of most of the general populace here, I think I have probably already listed all types of real athletic competitions (they wouldn't consider track meets, xc meets, swim meets, other minor sports events, bicycle races, horse races, NASCAR races, etc. as important athletic competitions, although the latter two have plenty of spectator interest, and the bike races inspire lots of conversation about drugs in sports come Tour de France time). I would even go so far as to speculate that the name of our "game" probably has essentially no impact on attracting new competitors or retaining existing ones.

I always try to bring my A-game to orienteering events, where I race around the woods matching my map to the terrain and hopefully meeting controls. Incidentally, I'd prefer to call controls regattas.

Wit the exception of the Olympics, all of the other things that you listed as games actually are games in the sense of one team against another playing for a fixed amount of time (the one exception being baseball, which uses a weird way of determining when the end comes, shared only with cricket as far as I know), with the winner being whoever has the highest score. Tennis is also a game. But there's no NASCAR game or marathon game. Races are a different format.

I cannot account for the notion of a game of golf, however (though sometimes it's called a round of golf).

Tournament?

Actually, I think that the point JJ raises is one of the real fundamental problems with recruiting and retaining new orienteers. We are trained to think of real sports as an interactive head-to-head competition against a bunch of other people. If you aren't a cross-country skier, the usual orienteering race probably doesn't feel much like competition against a bunch of other people, because you don't see most/any of them out there with you. If anything it may feel much more like a competition against an invisible course setter, not even a competition against the forces of nature out in the wild. I think that it is this lack of continuous social contact during the race which many people find missing. That leaves us introverts as the potential promoters of the sport, and I'm dubious about picking introverts as leaders of a successful marketing program.

A tournament is an aggregation of games in that determines a winner from a group of more that two. So, a tennis tournament, or the NCAA basketball championship tournament. I guess golf has tournaments, though that's a different kind of structure.

Orienteering is (usually) a time-trial race. It's not the only sport that uses that format, you see it some in cycling, there are hill-climb events in auto racing, it's totally how things like downhill skiing works, I think at least some equestrian are similar, and you can probably find other examples. And many (most?) judged sports like gymnastics and diving are also one-at-a-time events.

Is a Galoppen is an Orienteering tournament?

I use the "r" word (race) a lot when promoting to athletes, eg at 10km races or trail runs. But I'm less inclined to use it when promoting to families, hikers, nature lovers who might be more recreational in their approach to our sport. In that case, "event" seems more neutral and non competitive. What other choices might we have? "Match" seems to imply one on one (like tennis), "tournament" tends to imply elimination or multiple rounds, "rally" is a bit too retro for my taste, "adventure run", as mentioned by others, seems a little too broad-spectrum and has too many varied meanings / implications. Marketing ideas are welcome - we need a slogan!

Whenever I see a swimmer interviewed on television, they refer to the competition as a 'meet'. This includes the Olympics.

Orientracing?

Swim meets are galas in the UK and South Africa but Carnivals in OZ

I would refer to swimmers as galahs too.

Different course coding systems should be used to reach to potential customers.
Here in the Deep South some appealing names could be "Fun-a-Plenty Course",
"Thick Vetter's delight", "The Six Dollar Course", "The Belly Bruiser Course", you name it.

Occidenteering? Occidenteering gathering?

"Bubba-Goat" seems to fit yurets' criteria...

What other choices might we have?

Have you considered to use "Open" or "League"?
A quick introduction how things work here. Our major sports are organized in a way that when event label "championships" is used most of potential recreational sports people would think: This is a closed event only for registered athletes. If you are not registered (club/federation) you can't apply.

Our championships are open, you can get a medal and status of a serious athlete within Olympic committee rules (you need to be registered).

Term "League" should give you information (or is just me) that event is ranked, there are limited number of events per year, you can race against others (competitive classes) and you are welcome to the next one too because it is a sport not just a random recreational event. On lower level there are non ranked events.

We don't promote term "Open" because nobody does and events are marketed only for insiders and everyone knows that you can apply also for Elite course although you are not registered for a club. We have had condition that you must be a member of a club but we decided to leave this out.

I don't know how it sounds US Open (Tennis) but I always have association that anyone can apply. How about:
-> Open orienteering championships
-> Open orienteering league

And here I'd never realized that tRicky was a swimmer!

@ GuyO "Bubba-Goat" seems to fit yurets' criteria...

This one would be "Extra-Long Gut-Buster"

I am to swimming as kofols is to deviating from ISOM.

He does have a point though; our 'Championship' events tend to deter those people not familiar with the sport. We get very few non-members come to championship races because of the general perception that you have to be good.

tRicky makes a great point - the name you chose should reflect your marketing aim. Championship is a great term for attracting a national audience, but can be a deterrent for attracting local recreationalists. You need to decide what role you want the A-meets to serve (and I think we are far from consensus on this point), and then you can sensibly chose a name.

If you decide that A-meets should cater to national-die-yards (which appears to be the status quo), then you need to ask whether the meet-structure is failing to satisfy other urgent needs (such as providing exciting and high-end events for recreationalists).

If you decide that we are failing to meet such an important need (and I'd say we are), then you have to decide whether we should modify the A-meet format to make it better for recreationalists and/or create a new event format to meet those needs.

These previous questions are what I would like to see discussed in a strategic plan. Anyway, I feel like simply changing the name is jumping to the end of this procedure and making superficial changes without understanding why.

From the outside... I was never sure what your A-meet actually meant.

I just assumed everything in the US was an A meet and that anything else was training.

Mind you, we used to have Badge events here - I think the east may still have them but we got rid of them. What the heck are those???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_contest

Is a racket contest one of those things where all the fully siq doof-doofs rock up with their 800kg cars with 1200kg of amps and try to shatter their windows? Doesn't seem to have a lot to do with with a sport where the umpire frequently says "Quiet please."

Yes: "National Event." I already call A-Meets "national events" when describing the sport to newbies, and my experience leads me to believe that this will be a better name than "A-Meet" for every conceivable audience that matters. Some of us old-timers will still sometimes say "A-Meet" out of habit, while happily patronizing National Events.

Some fresh ideas from Patrick Nuss, who claims "I'm not a branding expert, but I play one on TV, so here's what I would do". I thought these were some good ideas, so decided to bump them here. Ultimately, discussing things in an online forum is somewhat pointless to actually getting things done, but the idea is to stimulate some talking and thinking, and hopefully the discussion can inform our president and executive director.

O-USA National Championships
The same as before
One weekend: sprint, middle, long

O-USA Team Championships
Combining IS, IC, and Relay events for a festive team atmosphere
Day 1 is the relay
Day 2 is individual point-to-point with team scoring
The scoring and competition classes would need some thought, but it would be great to have a team/club based weekend. We'd keep all of the individual IS/IC medals for the one-day race.

Night-O, Classic-O
They're not part of WOC or NAOC or Canadians, so these feel superfluous.

O-USA National Race Series (What Alex wants to call the "Elite Series")
The A-Meet rebrand.
Orienteering becomes more and more competitive as you get higher and higher up. Therefore, I'd advocate using race > event > meet. You can call local events whatever you want, but for the national series, I want to race.

O-USA Adventure Run Series
Re-purposing the Ultra-Long Champs & Goats.
Take some national ownership and pump up the marketing for the existing series of goat races. Long and grueling appeals to people (mud runs). Mass start and head-to-head racing is fun! Compete solo or work together (more inviting to newbies). I'd pick 4 events per year (Grand Slam-esque) and try to mass-market them to as many people as possible. This is a much more attractive format to newbies than any of the above. [insert comment from Hammer here about how successful the Raid Series is]

Regional Events
This is a joke. Get rid of the B-Meet designation and let the clubs do what they want to do when ranking points and medals aren't on the line. Focus on nailing the above events first.

I *love* the Adventure Run Series idea. I would love to see that happen, at least on the regional level (Billygoat + Hudson Highlander + Blue Hills Traverse + Susquehanna Stumble).

I'd suggest adding in the east coast A-meets too for a big regional elite cup series. This can be done by the relevant clubs, no need for OUSA board to get involved.

Classic is classic; look at the winners list, reason enough to keep it alive.

National Series is ridiculous. It's the equivalent of World Cup in Europe, barely any country can afford to go. Called it a National Race if you like, but don't expect everyone to turn up.

SML --> National Championships
Classic champs --> Masters or Age Group Championships

National Meet sounds OK.
National Ranking Event might be better.

Classic reminds me of ancient Rome or a golf tournament.

We are in the (post-ad) age when certain words are highjacked and totally lost their original meaning, and these days serve for something entirely different.
Like you do not want to stay in a "DeLuxe" hotel--it's gonna be total dump.

Just like that, words "League", "elite", "adventure" leave bad taste in the mouth.
Stay away from them.

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

"Classic" (2 day shortened long) in the US sense has quickly become the essential opposite of the original (and still international?) meaning, which is single-day Long in current IOF format terminology. US WOC 93 used this exact "Classic" term for the 90min individual course.

No need for this term, just call it a multi-day Long, which has always been a common sense shorter distance, everywhere.

Coincidentally we have the WA Classic weekend, which is a two day event with the first day being 3/4 long distance followed by the standard 'classic' length event on day two.

I always use "National competition/event/race" when describing an A-meet to a non-orienteerer.

The BAOC board discussed this last week. We decided to try to use "event" instead of "meet". We like the term "National event" instead of "A Meet". BAOC has what we call "B Meets", which are 7-course point-to-point events, but unsanctioned. We didn't get a good consensus on what to call these. I'm leaning toward "Standard" or "Regular" events. We also have had non-standard events. We tried calling Score-O events "Scrambles" and Goat-style events "TrailCrosses", and marketing them to non-orienteers and trail runners, respectively, with limited success.

ETA: I just checked our website. We almost always use "event".

Once we've got the event terminology sorted out, we could move on to the people. Are we meeterers? Could use "racerer" depending on the athleticism of the audience. "Goatstyler" would possibly be shortened to "goat". "Trail-crosser"? Around here "Rogainer" has so much recognition factor that it is being used in the context of 1hr solo score events, could just apply that more widely. But I sense reservations in some countries...

We tried

Some tried. Other chose to ridicule. The lack of success wasn't among non-orienteers or trail runners; it was among the core club membership, and lack of support from it killed Wilderness Scramble and TrailCross.

Only by being honest with yourself can you move forward.

Once we've got the event terminology sorted out, we could move on to the people.

You are called Kiwis.

Rogainer sounds like an awfully active noun. Might turn off some people by giving the impression that Rogaines require physical exertion. I feel that the more passive form, Rogainee, is more inclusive.

You could borrow from legal terminology and call them rogainers or rogainants and contrast that with rogainees. Because, you know, sometimes you conquer the rogaine, and sometimes the rogaine conquers you.

A rogainee sounds like someone who has been adversely affected by a rogaine and lived to tell the tale.

And now he looks like Cousin Itt?

a rogainee would be one who has been thoroughly rogained?

Finally applied this thread, to this race: https://www.runtheday.com/registration/race_info/3...

Aim is to:
a) externally advertise to runners/trail-runners that don't know what Orienteering is, per Randy's (& Hammer's long standing) advice, and
b) to keep things as similar as possible for the Orienteering club/community - this is just a "Long White(Beginner)" course to us - with same fees/etc. - as change-is-hard.

Hopefully by advertising a single event, in different ways aligned with the different audiences, we can get some newb's, w/o scaring away the old timers. ;)

I like it Wyatt!

keep us posted on how it turns out

this is awesome Wyatt.

Is it ~5km actual distance?

Mergeo has used "navigation race" around the Northwest for maybe 5 years now? Seems to have some traction, I think.

About a year ago, I made a promo poster for an annual event and used "trail run with checkpoints" as a description for a long, trails-only beginner course, and the local trail running companies shared it on Facebook and it became our most viewed Facebook post ever, and we did get a little bump in registrations because of it.

Since DVOA's is a standard distance and a trail run, if you haven't already, I'd try putting it on some of the bigger running calendars like Gametiime or a local equivalent.

I forget whether this was mentioned in this thread but we promoted 'Trail Nav' once (it was basically a long E/M (easy/medium) course by our standards) and got a few trail runners along to it, most of whom didn't come back.

SVO has done this twice and promoted to running groups - once in 2001 (Looks like 6 people did the "runner's challenge" aka the yellow course. All the names except one were established orienteers.) The second time was in 2009. (2 people did the 5K yellow "trail run". One an orienteer, the other name I don't recognize.) Hopefully DVOA has better results.