This inaugural event was conducted for the Polk County Army JROTC Summer Training Camp. The venue is the Boy Scout Camp Flaming Arrow located about 5 miles east of Lake Wales. The 5-color, IOF Standard map was created by Gord Hunter for FLO and for the Training Camp. The event was a huge success with lots of good comments from all of the instructors and more importantly the cadets.

The planned format was a Score-O with 15 controls, 60 minute time limit, with cadets competing in teams of two. With Score-O, teams may visit controls in any order and each control is worth a certain point value, so that the team with the most points wins and in the event of ties score, the shortest finish time is the winner.

On the day of the event the plan was altered due to the very hot humid weather conditions. For Safety's sake teams of 5 were permitted, with express orders not to exceed a "range walk" speed and the time window was extended to 2 hours. After instruction on the game of orienteering, the "O.Mov" video, map reading review and use of the compass about 100 cadets per day competed over the 4 day event. Teams had 2 hours to complete the course.

Several groups completed the course by visiting all controls in around 1 hour and 15 to 1 hour 20 minutes and that was walking quickly. Most groups finished the course within the 2 hr. time limit. There were 415 cadets that completed the training and at least got 90% of the points.

As is common, the compass training course used in previous years (non-orienteering; no map) required cadets to follow a particular azimuth and distance where they had to locate a marked point. From there they had a different azimuth and distance to the next point, and so on. There were also dummy points and if they found the wrong point, the chance of hitting the second point was slim. The leaders found such a course fails to be self correcting in any way and in any case, did not include map literacy skills.

Orienteering, on the other, proved to be fun, full of learning and self correcting by nature. Unlike the simple compass course, the kids were finding the controls and were reading maps and so were able to see how the ground corresponded to the map. This gave them all a feeling of confidence, unattainable otherwise.

The Camp Flaming Arrow map is now a permanent part of the FLO catalog and will next be used for a public orienteering event in early 2013. It will be made available to the BSA units with access to the Camp, as well as for the 2013 JROTC Summer Training Camp again.

Rick Leach, On-Site Camp Director
Bob Putnam, Event Coordinator