Southern Michigan Orienteering Club

That's a wrap! Our 2026 Spring Forest Season has ended, with fun courses at Waterloo HQ (and homemade bread!) courtesy of Jess. Warm temps and lower visibility made for a challenge, as did "double dipping" for the hearty folks who did a very hilly and sandy Muskegon Edition adventure race on Saturday and scurried back in time for some orienteering on Sunday.

Thank you to a helpful flag pickup crew - Grace, Yeki, Steve, Adam, Igor, Cooper, Anna and Alex divided up the retrieval ensuring future events!

Splits are on Attackpoint:

https://attackpoint.org/racesplits.jsp/race_51466

Tracks are on LiveLox:

https://www.livelox.com/Events/Show/191380/SMOC-Waterloo-Headquarters-HQ

See you in six weeks at Maybury State Park, for short, medium, or long courses, each with varying ratios of summer-friendly parkland to forest excursions. This will be a great intro event for your orienteering-curious friends, and especially young folks with a variety of orienteering games on hand!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6212

The last epic woodsy orienteering until the fall is this Sunday at Waterloo HQ! With access to huge hills near Crooked Lake, ambiguous intermittent marsh land to the NW, trail zig zags and rocky small depression confusion north of the headquarters, and more gentle terrain such as the farm fields or woods off towards the Discovery Center, there is sure to be variety and route choice.

Not all courses will be as tricky as Brown, Green or Red - our beginner friendly options will get you started in the sport and then you can try again in a little while at the Maybury summer event in mid July.

Be sure to sign up by Thursday night so we can order the right number of maps!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6117

Our spring season finale is this Sunday at Waterloo Rec Headquarters!

Choose from beginner-friendly through very expert courses. Jess reports that with 95% leaf out, Brown, Green, and Red will not be for the faint of heart - expect them to be harder than a late fall or early spring event thanks to reduced visibility. You may need to rely on direction and distance more than usual, and you will definitely want to go to circle center rather than glancing from afar and hoping to spot a flag!

Please sign up by Thursday night - the print order will be sent that night shortly after 11 pm. See you there!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6117

Our 2nd to last spring event is Sunday at Island Lake! Alert Strava stalkers figured out BJ has at least seven total miles of flags across all of the courses, although we wager the courses themselves will be roughly their typical lengths:

White/Beginner - 1-2 miles
Yellow/Intermediate - 2-3 miles
Orange/Advanced - 3-4 miles
Brown/Expert Short - 3-4 miles
Green/Expert - 4-5 miles
Red/Expert Long - 5-7 miles

This assumes you don't...add any detours....

Please sign up by Thursday 11 pm to help us get ready for you and you can avoid late fees. We have run out of preferred courses recently for late registrants as we do make the print order off the Thursday night registrations.

See you there!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6176

With just two events left on our spring calendar, you won't want to miss Sunday's point to point courses at Island Lake!

Our beginner-friendly options will be beginner-friendly; there are rumors that the expert level courses may feature a tweak or two to test your map reading skills a little beyond the typical....

See you there!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6176

Thank you to Melissa for setting up our score course at our annual meeting!

With around 6 km straight line and 20 flags, it looked to be clearable, especially given the welcome flat terrain after two weeks of steep hills at Silver Lake and Chilson. Pre race predictions thought the winner would be around an hour flat but Richard blazed it in just 54 minutes, with several more clears sub 70 and a few more before our 90 minute limit.

Speaking of the buzzer, our Time Management award looked to be a lock for Connor, who had just 20 seconds to spare, but then along came Jason with just 13 seconds left before penalties would kick in. Phew!

Many thanks to an efficient flag pickup crew - Cooper, Steve, Richard, Michelle, and Grace - that cleaned up the course and got us on to potlucking and discussing club business at our annual meeting.

Results are here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GhJQtLBwiYHfBzRotDsHFe4cyrgv9Wk6uZipo1BEyyA/edit?usp=sharing

Investigate route options at LiveLox:

https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/SMOC-Proud-Lake-Annual-Meet-O/Score-O?classId=1172491&live=false&tab=player

See you in a week at Island Lake!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6176

Our 90 minute mass start score o (any order, any quantity) for Saturday is all shaped up! Point difficulty will often vary based on your approach - take a longer easier way for simpler flag finding, or aggressively shortcut with more difficult approaches (and wet feet). If you can't locate one, switch to morel hunting for bartering stock for your next farmers market.

The open woods are still beautifully open, so it should be a fast, pleasant course, just enough to work up an appetite for the potluck.

Please sign up for the score o by late Thursday so we can be ready, which will help you get your maps and timing stick during the planning window in time to tackle the course.

Parking is limited at the Annex so expect to end up in overflow parking nearby.

If joining for the potluck, consider signing up on the sheet link at the event page to help with variety.

See you there!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6166

Our annual meeting is coming up, with three activities for your enjoyment. You can participate in any combination - eat and meet, race, race and eat, race eat and meet, etc. your choice!

90 minute mass start 20 flag 6 km score o - find as many as you can before we break for food

Potluck - bring a dish / treat and hang out with your navigation friends or make new ones

Annual meeting - shape the future of the club, overthrow a despot, or make suggestions for improvements

Sign up for the score o by Thursday night for smooth check in Saturday

See you there!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6166

April Fools turned out to have the biggest Fool in our host, who as he sat as his computer got a little rambunctious trimming #43's circle for..."legibility", and cut it too much to be noticed at running speed. I swear it doesn't look nearly as bad on my monitor at 400% scale. Oops!

By sheer miracle, this did not impact the results since Grace, the only near-clear to bag #43, managed to miss an eastern point by accidentally punching one from the no-fool serious course en route thinking "man this one is off a lot".

Fool's highlights included the debut of our new camo flag, courtesy of Addie G's sewing skills. Placed at the bottom of a huge depression, it has the desired effect. Steve arrived at the edge of the depression, and thought "there's no flag!" Then it fluttered and he scrambled down. Others did not heed the "just go to circle center" warning and assumed they were at the wrong spot when they did not spot it from 20 m off and moved on.

Also courtesy of Addie G, we now have a gigantic flag, about 1 meter per side, today functioning as #34 but expect it to serve as a welcome for future events!

Big thanks to a large and speedy flag pickup crew - Igor, Michelle, Rick, Zari, Alex, Melissa, and Harvey.

Congrats to Steve for successfully being the least Fooled with the top score in the fastest time, just 31 seconds faster than Michelle.

Richard blazed the 5.7 km long point to point for the win in just over an hour.

Fools / Serious Business / Super (everything we had) results are here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wiMOYEEB7x9zu0HDHA5J0_GdHs3KSxDaEw6OmB8exDI/edit?usp=sharing

Long splits here:

https://www.attackpoint.org/racesplits.jsp?raceid=51267

Short splits here:

https://www.attackpoint.org/racesplits.jsp?raceid=51268

LiveLox is here:

https://www.livelox.com/Events/Show/187903/2026-SMOC-April-Fools-at-Chilson-Impoundment-Brighton

See you Saturday for any combination of Score O, Potluck, and Annual Meeting!

https://smoc-runs.com/events/view/6166