Compass Sport Trophy Final 2024Holcombe Ranges (Lancashire), 20 October
ESOC turned out a stupendous 31 runners for this wet and windswept CST final, claiming a fabulous 4th place. Margaret Dalgleish led the charge with a win on Course 10, but this was a real team effort with counting runners evenly spread across age and sex classes. With only 3 points required to make 3rd place, we'll be refining our strategy for next year!
For the last 2 years, ESOC has counted as a "small" club due to its reduced BOF membership, with many of our members opting for SOA membership only. This is in line with most other Scottish clubs and means we compete for the Compass Sport Cup Trophy rather than the Cup (which is awarded to the winner of the "large" club competition). In the trophy competition, we require 13 runners to count. You might think, therefore, that we got our digits mixed up when we sent a team of 31, but not so! All runners are awarded points, then the top 13 scores for each club are counted (with limits on how many runners can count from each course). Therefore, a large turnout is advantageous because non-counting ESOC runners can still push the points down for counting runners from other clubs.
This year the venue was the army area of Holcombe Ranges - a bleak moorland surrounding a muddy semi-forested valley - with the weather obligingly supplying heavy mist, windy and rain for the duration of the event. Nevertheless, we decided to embrace cheery cagoule chic, and put our best smiles firmly in place as we waited to set off.
We had discussed during our pre-event Zoom geeking session that navigational strategy would depend on the weather - and indeed, careful compass bearings turned out to be the order of the day in order to thread our way through the mist to hit lonely gullies, pits, marshes and streams. Then a descent into the valley for the slippery, tussocky finish. Exhibit A, map (see pic).
Overall we placed 4th out of 11 competing clubs, behind SROC, INT and CLOK, with WCH as close 5th. We had some great runs from ESOC competitors, with our 13 counters as follows:
- 100 points - Margaret Dalgleish (W70, Course 10) - Winner :)
- 97 points - Alison O'Neil (W35, Course 3)
- 96 points - Megan Brown (W16, Course 8B)
- 96 points - Calum Robertson (M16, Course 8A)
- 96 points - Mary Williams (W70, Course 10)
- 95 points - Kevin Harding (M65, Course 6)
- 94 points - Abi Kerr (W21, Course 3)
- 94 points - Keith Brown (M60, Course 4)
- 92 points - Alison Harding (W60, Course 7)
- 92 points - Richard Oxlade (M65, Course 6)
- 88 points - Crawford Lindsay (M60, Course 4)
- 88 points - Walter Clark (M45, Course 2)
- 86 points - Vicente Lopez Sanchez (M21, Course 1)
Very well done to Keith Brown and Crawford Lindsay who were "running up" to a longer course than their official age class course, but still counted! Also, well done to Sarah McAdam who did not officially count (we were limited to 2 counters from Course 3), but in fact pushed 2 counting Walton Chasers runners a little further down the list, denying them 2 of the 3 points they would have needed to equal ours and keeping them firmly in 5th place ;) And finally, very well done to our newest ESOC members Alex Ang and Gideon Lu who encountered us in an Edinburgh Park via ESOC's 2024 "Event-in-a-box" development initiative and bravely signed up for the club day trip, making very respectable attempts at the Light Green - hoping you come again next year :)
Credit: Walter Clark
Finally, Walter took a leaf out of the performance orienteer's psychology book, by helping us all to visualise what an ESOC win would look like. Let's keep manifesting and see what we can do in 2025!
See Individual Results, Club Results and Routegadget.