The CompassSport Cup weekend saw another orienteering competition taking place in the centre of England – the English Universities Orienteering Championships (awkwardly shortened to EUOC, not Edinburgh) brought the university clubs of England together for a weekend of orienteering as individuals and teams in forests and urban environments.
On the Saturday, many early mornings were had as 70 students descended on TVOC’s event in Park Wood, Bradenham for the individual competition. TVOC had kindly laid on extra courses for us at blue level, in addition to their usual Saturday Series setup. The start line was a particularly muddy affair but, once you were in the forest, this gave way to endless holly bushes which the planner had kindly directed you straight through – all good fun!
Sheffield came out on top after the first day and a similar story would be true of the team event on the Sunday. However, before that, everyone returned to Oxford to get showered, have dinner in the hall of Mansfield College, and get a £7 pint from one of the city’s many pubs on their return journey to the scout huts.
Day 2 saw another early morning as a few of us rose to set up controls for the team event. This was to take place around the Oxford Brookes campus, an area that has required much remapping since its last use before the pandemic. A series of planning decisions resulted in an intricate format which could loosely be classed as a chasing relay. First the competitors were mass started in groups of 8 including their team-members. They had opposite gaffles but many shared legs and any teamwork was encouraged. The times were then converted into a delay for part two of the event which was a 2x1 relay run in series in a chase style.
Planning the team event was a fun challenge – in setting the Sunday event up in two parts, we gave ourselves the opportunity for some shenanigans when revisiting specific areas of the campus. What was a straightforward leg in part 1 became on “hard mode” when repeated in part 2 after a barrier had been inconveniently placed on top of the previously optimum line. Further, a control which had been on “wall west side” had suddenly moved to “wall east side”, taunting the runner by dangling 3 metres above them should they have made the wrong decision. Apologies to the folk we caught out twice with that one…
OUOC has also recently been having fun with the concept of a “toll barrier” – a barrier you may pass through once, and at most once. Where one is usually asked to judge whether to go left or right in an urban, here competitors were asked to judge whether taking a route through the toll was better on leg 10, or leg 16, or leg 20 – forcing them to plan ahead in ways they might not have before. We policed this system by giving everyone a token at the start, and the marshal on the barrier a bucket. You can see another time we used a toll barrier in our recent Town vs Gown event against TVOC here.
The weather was fantastic and once again ShUOC took the victory cementing another year as the EUOC champions. Thanks everyone for coming!
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