WPOC had another successful year in 2015.  We sponsored 11 local events, including 9 regular events, Raccoongaine and our training day.  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), and R (red).  The same page shows our membership at the end of 2015.  

Attendance at our events in 2015 compared to 2014 was up in total numbers by about 100 people but down in the number of starts by about 50.  By virtue of the fact that we had people sign waivers only once during the year, we can also say that of the 896 people who attended our events, more than 550 were unique individuals.  The implication is that few people attended more than 1 or 2 events.  The lower number of starts is probably attributable to people going out on courses in larger groups. Thanks to all of our meet directors (Alexis Rzewski, Jen Livingston, Jim Wolfe, Andy Strat, Sherry Shank, Anneliese Steuben, Joe Logan, Yaki Barak, and Dave Battista), vetters (Alexis Rzewski, Dave Battista, Joe Logan, Andy Strat and Jim Wolfe), and event day volunteers (too many to list) for making all of the events run smoothly, even when the number of participants was very low or very high.  Also, thanks to Ryan Knecht for coordinating the volunteers and Sherry Shank for maintaining membership records.

Electronic punching has become a standard part of our events during 2015.  We now use this way of managing the events at nearly all of our events.  The exceptions are only for special circumstances.  We even used e-punching at Raccoongaine for the first time in 2015; many of those participants were new to the idea of using the SI cards and were surprised and pleased at the speed of getting results when they finished.

In addition to the events, 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.  Thanks to Jen Livingston, Eric Steinbring, Jim Wolfe, Alexis Rzewski, Al Sheaffer and Ryan Knecht for conducting these sessions.  This section of the club's activities had the greatest growth in 2015, as it did in 2014.  We made presentations to about 35 people and had 196 get small group instruction and about 300 get large group instruction from us (these numbers do not count our training day).  This is a very large jump in numbers from last year, partly because we increased the number of workshops from 16 in 2014 to 22 in 2015.  And for the first time, two of the workshops were for corporate entities.  You can see the complete list of these activities at workshops.
 
The club continues in a variety of ways to try to publicize orienteering. This is done through the club's web pages, Facebook page, Twitter feed, the Attackpoint website, various meet-up groups and other social media.  For Raccoongaine, there is another Facebook page and Twitter feed, as well as a Yahoo group.  Much of this is handled by Alexis Rzewski on behalf of the club; he also hands out printed material at REI and other locations around Pittsburgh, as does Joe Logan at LL Bean.  This year we have partnered with Get Outdoors PA and the Allegheny Adventure X-Fest to promote the sport, as well.  With Get Outdoors PA we promote our workshops on their event listings.  With the X-Fest, we handed out promotional material and put on a demo orienteering course.   Jim Wolfe put notices in the Johnstown Tribune Democrat to advertise our events in Indiana, Cambria, and Westmoreland counties; he also tries to get our Allegheny County Park events listed on the county's web site. 

A lot of mapping work was done in 2015.  Alexis Rzewski finished the map for Brady's Run Park enough to conduct a regular meet there; he updated the Frick Park map and elements of the Raccoon Creek map; and he began mapping North Park.    Alexis also worked on parts of the Settler's Cabin map.  Jim Wolfe added to the Laurel Hill map; he redrew the Blue Spruce map, did  a significant update to the Stackhouse Park map and made a simplified orienteering map of the ski area in Forbes State Forest.  Jim also made a ski orienteering map of Laurel Ridge ski area and worked on making a regular foot-o map of the same area.