JWOC 2011 - Carl Underwood

by Carl Underwood

At the beginning of this past summer I went to Wejherowo, Poland to compete in my second Junior World Orienteering Championships. I arrived to the training week a few days late because my high school graduation was on Sunday the 26th, so on the 27th I flew to poland to join the team. It turns out that it may have been luck to arrive late; the day after I arrived the majority of our team, along with the Swedish team, had food poisoning. Everyone was throwing up and were sick for at least a day after becoming sick. Luckily a few others and I managed to stay healthy and were able to train every day.

During the training week the woods were beautiful; they literally clean their woods. You could see very far ahead of were you were and could easily pick out spots in the distance and find them on the map. Then there were basically two types of terrain: one was hilly with large contours and bland hills, the other was relatively flat but was filled with pits and small hills.

During the week of competition there were the typical five events. For those who do not know, each day they have a different event with a rest day in the middle; the order is the sprint, long, rest day, middle qualifier, middle final, and finally the relay. The sprint was held in the city of Lebork, the first part was in a park and the second part was in the city. The long was very different than I expected it to be, so I was thrown off a bit. The woods during the long were very dense and had a lot more green than the woods on all of the training maps. Besides this major change the long was difficult and tiring, there were two very long legs with a lot of hills and no quick direct route. Then there was a butterfly loop and six more legs to the finish which was in front of a stage with stadium-style seating.

After the long there was a rest day, so a small group of us got up around eight to take a train into the city of Gdansk. We walked around the old town and along the river, bought some world famous Gdansk amber and ate lunch at a local restaurant. Once we had our fill of the city we went back to our hotel and got ready for the middle qualifier. The middle qualifier and final were on the same map, just on different sides of it, and they both had the same finish location. The middle qualifier overall went well for America; we had two boys make it to the B final, where last year only one American boy made it to the B final. The terrain for the middle was similar to the terrain for the long; it was hilly and thicker then the training maps led us to believe. The final race of the week was the relay which consists of a three person team. The terrain during the relay was very mixed, it started off in a completely flat area with no contours and went into a very hilly area. Then it came into the event arena for the spectator control and went out for the second half of the course. The evening after the relay the closing ceremony was held for everyone in a gymnasium in Rumia. Once the coaches and spectators left the gymnasium they had the banquet for all the athletes where we all had a good time before we went our separate ways.