WPOC had a very successful year in 2012.  We  sponsored eleven local events, including our first event devoted exclusively to instruction and training.  The associated page  shows information about each of these events, including location, meet director,  type of courses offered, total starts, member starts, total number of participants and meet fees collected.  The course abbreviations used are:  W (white), Y (yellow), O (orange), Br (brown), G (green), and R (red).  The map fees vary a lot relative to the number of starts.  There are many reasons:  for Raccoon Creek, we charged "adventure race prices";  the Deer Lakes Park meet was National Orienteering Day and we let anyone who was new to orienteering in free; and at Bushy Run each map fee bought two starts.

We had an excellent increase in the number of starts during 2012; the increase over 2011 was 58%.  Of  course, we did have one more event in 2012; but going from 358 starts to 566 starts is still very impressive.  In addition, the total number of participants increased 29% over 2011 levels and for the first time we had over 1000 people attend our events in one year.  The last event of the year, at Frick Park, deserves a special note.  We were expecting a good turnout; but to get 135 starts was a shock.  Prior to that, the most starts we had ever had at a local event was 77.  Thanks to all of the meet directors and volunteers who made our events so successful.

In addition to introducing a training event in 2012, we also experimented with two new event formats:  sprints and a relay.  Both seemed to be successful, although the turnout for them was rather low.  We are planning to use both of these formats again in 2013 and hope to get more participants in each of them next time around.

One big addition for 2012 was the introduction of electronic punching.  It was used on a sort of trial basis at a couple of meets during the year.  In 2013, we need to make e-punching a regular component of our meets.  We do not have enough equipment to set up all of the courses for e-punching (we can do one or two); but as  time goes on, we are planning to acquire more equipment so we can build toward that goal.

In addition to the meets, WPOC members also conducted a number of presentations, workshops or classes to educate a variety of people about orienteering.  Most of these included an orienteering exercise of some type.  The table below is from our workshop web page for 2012; for most of these events, we did not keep track of numbers of participants.  Thanks to Alexis Rzewski, Al Sheaffer, Dave Battista and extra special thanks to Jen Livingston for conducting these workshops (Jen was involved in most of them).
 
 

Date	Time	Location	Type of Activity	Audience	Presenter
Feb 29	7:00 pm	Pittsburgh REI	Intro to Orienteering with  emphasis on Raccoongaine	Open to the public	Alexis Rzewski
April 12	Evening	Beaver Valley District Roundtable	Beginning orienteering skills	Cub Scout leaders	Jen Livingston
April 21	2:00 pm	Canoe Creek State Park	Beginner instruction	Open to the public	Al Sheaffer
April 28	All Day	Canfield Fairgrounds, OH	Beginner Instruction	Girl Scouts	Jen Livingston
May 6	All Day	Keystone State Park, Shelter #1	Youth and Family Outdoors  Show - pamphlets, flyers,  discussion	Open to the public	Jim Wolfe
May 18	11:00 am	North Park	Orienteering instruction	High School students	Dave Battista
May 23	?	Sts Peter & Paul School	Orienteering for 1st graders	First Graders	Jen Livingston
June 1	9:00 am	Frick Park	Basic orienteering training	Day CampStaff	Alexis Rzewski
June 1-3	?	Camp Elliot	Orienteering instruction	Girl scouts & leaders	Jen Livingston
June 10	11:00 am	Keystone State Park, Shelter #2	Instruction for all skill levels	Open to the public	Jen Livingston  Jim Wolfe
June 23	10:00 am	Yellow Creek State Park,  North Shore Pavilion	Beginner instruction	Open to the public	Jim Wolfe
June 24	?	Bradys Run Park	Compass Skills & Games	Girl Scouts	Jen Livingston
July 25	10:00 am	Yellow Creek State Park,  South Shore	Orienteering instruction  and exercise	American Adventure  Sports Camp	Jim Wolfe
Sept 9	?	Jennings Environmental Center	Map and compass skills	Open to the public	Jen Livingston
Oct 14	All Day	Bradys Run Park	Tri-state Conservation  Fallfest - Distribute info	Open to the public	Jen Livingston  Alexis Rzewski
Oct 15	6:30 pm	Hopewell Park	Orienteering for Merit badge	Boy Scouts	Jen Livingston

WPOC has also been distributing information about the club and orienteering in general through various media.  Alexis Rzewski distributes event announcements to REI stores and other locations around Pittsburgh.   For our meets in Indiana, Cambria & Westmoreland counties, Jim Wolfe put notices in the Johnstown Tribune Democrat.  Through contacts with Allegheny County Parks, our events at Boyce, Deer Lakes and Hartwood appear on the county's web site and in its activities brochure.  Alexis maintains the WPOC Facebook page, a Yahoo group for Raccoongaine  and posts notices of our events in a variety of online forums and social media sites.

Jim Wolfe has kept busy generating orienteering maps; and in 2012, Alexis Rzewski, joined in by field checking and drafting the map for Frick Park.  The two main maps that Jim produced were a map of the south shore of Yellow Creek State Park (to be used for night orienteering in 2013) and a map of part of Prince Gallitzin State Park (to be used for a regular event in 2013).  He also produced several small orienteering maps:  Highland Regional Park in Johnstown so that a permanent orienteering course could be set up there, Jennings Environmental Education Center north of Butler so that DCNR could teach orienteering more effectively there, and Fox Chapel High School so that Dave Battista could teaching orienteering exercises there.  He produced a base map of Bradys Run Park that may be turned into an orienteering map at some point.