EMPO wins Perm Trophy

The Empire Orienteering Club won the team competition at the recently completed US Nationals. Many New York skiers contributed to the points totals. Congratulations!

Complete results are available under the results tab on this NYSSRA Ski-O page

Note: Some of the results below have changed due to non-US citizens being eliminated from medal awards.

The message below was sent by Phil Hawkes-Teeter

EMPO Folks & Friends-

For the second time, EMPO has won the “Perm Trophy”

as the top performing club at the US Ski-O Championships. We last won it back in 2000, when the US Ski-O Champs were held on our home turf, at Garnet Hill XC Center. Back then, we won largely because we had more Juniors who competed (and did well) than any other club.

(Marty Hawkes-Teeter, Rob Tryson, and Bryan Sweet, the youngest members of the EMPO team, accept the Perm Trophy from Larry Berman in 2000.)

This time ‘round, it was primarily because our old-timers kept picking up points, while our couple of Juniors did very well once again.

All of the Ski-O Champs results aren’t posted as yet, and their whereabouts may change, but right now you can find the Sprint distance splits for each of the four courses, and the Middle distance splits for each course, on the “Recent Races/Splits” page on Attackpoint here:

http://www.attackpoint.org/splits.jsp

I don’t know when or where the final point totals for the various clubs will be posted, but Larry Berman awarded EMPO the Trophy based on the first two days results and our virtually insurmountable lead (and the fact that we medaled in number of classes in the Long distance event on Sunday). Larry said that while there was a close race for 2^nd among 3-4 clubs, EMPO was clearly the Club Champion.

Obviously having a good number of our members attend gave us a good start towards accumulating enough points to win the Trophy, but in fact every one of the EMPO folks who attended contributed some significant results, and thus points (and points are scored for completed courses down through much lower places, I think even 10^th).

The only person to score wins (Gold!) on all three days was Janet Findlay, who clearly is our Club Ski-O Champion. David Hunter got two Gold; Chris Frielinghaus had two Silver; Will Frielinghaus had one fifth and two 4ths (as a Junior competing in M21); Candice Raines had a Silver & a Bronze; Doug Swank had two Silvers; Terry Allard (a Junior) had one Gold; Thayer Raines had one Bronze; Sue H-T had two 4ths; Phil H-T had one Bronze. It really was a Team effort. Because all results are not posted online as yet, and what’s there on Attackpoint isn’t identified by Class, I may have some of this wrong, but it should be close to reality.

Now, not only do we have the very cool Trophy/Samovar to pass around for a couple of years, which you can see in the photos, but EMPO will receive $200 for Ski-O promotion as a result of our victory.

For me, at least, this is a fine end to our Winter focus. For you die-hard skiers: keep at it. We need your skiing expertise in the future. But, Spring is almost here, and the EMPO Spring schedule will be going out (at least tentatively) soon.

-Phil H-T