Western PA Orienteering Club
Report for 2022

2022 was a year in which WPOC was still recovering from the affects of Covid-19.  You can look at the statistics page to see the details about each of our events, including location, event director, types of courses offered, total starts, member starts and the total number of participants.  If we compare 2022 totals versus the average of pre-pandemic years (2017, 2018, and 2019), we see that the number of starts and the total participation is less that 65% of that 3-year average.  Also, the 2022 totals are only slightly higher than the 2021 totals, even though there were two more events in 2022.  In addition, club memberships have fallen below 50 for the first time since 2008.  Clearly, the club need to build its clientele back up.

Thanks to all of our event directors (Alexis Rzewski, Joe Logan, Sherry Shank, Jen Livingston, Ryan Knecht and Jim Wolfe), our vetters (Dave Battista, Andy Strat and Jim Wolfe), and all the event day volunteers (too many to list) for making all of the events run smoothly. Also, thanks to Ryan Knecht for coordinating the volunteers and maintaining the control boxes, Sherry Shank for maintaining membership records, Giuseppina Mecchia for setting up Allegheny County events and Naomi Jarvis for posting events to Facebook.

2022 marked the first year of the Babcock Bog & Boulder Challenge.  This mini-rogaine event is meant to complement Raccoongaine and give adventure racers and endurance orienteers a different kind of venue for our longer races.  The turnout for 2022 was relatively small; but there was a  lot of positive feedback and that should translate into greater participation in the future.

In addition to events, Jen Livingston conducted two orienteering workshops for scouts and one related activity for the public.  Jim Wolfe conducted one orienteering workshop for school students and one orienteering demonstration for the public. You can view the details of these activities at workshops  These are in addition to the training day activities supervised by Joe Logan.

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 a separate Facebook page and Twitter feed, as well as a Yahoo group;  this is handled by Alexis Rzewski on behalf of the club.  At our last event of the year, several club members were interviewed for a segment of the Kaleidoscope television program.  The segment will aire on WATM and WWCP sometime in 2023.

Alexis Rzewski devoted a significant amount of time to completing the map of South Park; this resulted in Alexis directing our first South Park event.  Jim Wolfe, Joe Logan and Alexis Rzewski made minor updates to the maps used at events in 2022.  Jim Wolfe mapped about 200 additional acres of the Babcock Division.  He also made a beginner's orienteering map of Montour Woods and extended the base map of Hollidaysburg schools - Mark Frank then completed the Hollidaysburg schools map for a night event.