Coyote Hills Regional Park
Date: (Sat.) Sep. 15, 2007
Location: Fremont, CA
Event Director: 
- 408.313.3753
Course Setter: Jim Fish
Type: C; National Orienteering Day "Come and Try It" event for beginners
Course Setter's Post-Notes
My apologies for the errors made at the event on 9/15/07. It's over now and you've had your various experiences (good and bad). The most glaring errors were the two missing controls: #48 and #70.
[Note: I replaced #48 when notified it was missing. Penny DeMoss made the extra effort to place control #70 after the meet had been under way and discovered to be missing. Unfortunately, since the site was not flagged, the control was put in a location that didn't match the circle on the map and added additional confusion for some runners.]
This message is to acknowledge errors and to offer explanations for those of you who would like to know what happened.
Many hours were spent mapping the courses and changing the courses after vetting and field checks. In the final version of the courses, controls #48 and #70 were changed (the location of #48 was moved and #70 was deleted due to it being in an indistinct and rocky area).
Anyway, the major error was sending Bob Cooley, the map maker, the second-to-last version of the courses—not the final version. The Course Setter and volunteers (Dean and Nancy) used the latest version of the courses to set controls on Friday and Saturday; we did not have #48 and #70 on our maps. Oooops! You're right in thinking that the Course Setter did not double check the maps Bob printed against the latest version. If I had, I would have set #48 and #70 to correspond to the maps you had.
A second error the Course Setter made was not flagging the control sites. I thought the control circles and descriptions were sufficient for placement—wrong. At least two errors were made in placement on the North Sprint course: Control 1 (#75) was hung from the wrong tree; Control 2 (#61) was hung too high.
Despite these glaring errors, which caused confusion, unnecessary hunting for controls and obvious time delays, I received a few neutral and positive comments:
- The courses were interesting in design without too much gratuitous climb.
- There was good use of the site (which has it's limitations).
- Some controls were "tucked" into rock formations which resulted in some extra searching (slightly negative), and they were "tucked" into rock formations which resulted in them not being seen from a distance (positive).
- Control placement at the top of the hill (near the staging area) resulted in interesting patterns, but some runners were a bit tired by this time.
- Some runners thought there were too many courses, which decreased the number of runners on any particular course with a resulting loss of competitive energy.
There were about 140 participants. I want to thank all of the people that gave me feedback for being candid and offering appreciated positive criticism. I'm sorry for the confusion and time delays. I want to especially thank Jeff Lanam for his expertise with the EP program for correcting the several control number changes that needed to be made so the results could be posted with a high degree of accuracy.
Jim Fish
An exhausted Course Setter